Hi, friends! How was your weekend? Ours was great and quite busy. I taught a class, went to three Christmas get-togethers and got to take BODYATTACK with 250 other people for a big and fun special group fitness event. More on that soon, but today, it’s all about food …

Do you know how hard it is to narrow down your list of five grocery staples? Very hard! But I went ahead and tried to do that for you in this post.

And by the way, this post is not at all sponsored, but I’m telling you about the exact brands that I love and am obsessed with and am constantly putting in my cart. I always get requests for more food posts, so I hope you like this. Ready? Here we go …

Five grocery staples I’m currently obsessed with

1. Vital Farms eggs

I’m an egg eater, folks. Usually two to three whole eggs, every single day. I find eggs to be delicious, they go with everything, and they add some great protein to the plate. I usually have eggs with lunch and with dinner, because I like to dip the other items on my plate into the runny yolks. Other than salmon salads on the weekends at restaurants, eggs are the only animal protein I eat, because I never make meat at home.

My favorite brand of eggs, hands down, is Vital Farms, and I like that they are pasture-raised. The yolks are orange and so good. I sometimes buy the organic version, but being pasture-raised is the most important part to me, because pasture-raised eggs are more nutritious (the hens are able to get more sun and roam free to eat plants and insects, so the eggs they lay have more vitamins and minerals). Once you try these eggs, you’ll never be able to go back to conventional ones.

2. Ripple Foods milk

For a very long time, I swore by the canned full-fat creamy full-on coconut milk from Trader Joe’s. I mean, it’s tasty, it’s got a ton of coconut flavor, as well as is only one ingredient: coconut — perhaps the cleanest of the alternative milk options. However, it turns into a solid when it’s cold, and the cans are not easy to deal with at all because of that.

After we had Brady, and I found myself struggling to open a can and not cut myself, and then warm up the solid coconut milk to turn it into a liquid to put in my morning tea after a sleepless night, I decided it was time to find an easier “milk” option. I’m not into soy milk (I don’t like soy anything, except for straight-up miso soup made from fermented soy). I’m not into processed almond milk with carrageenan. And I’m also not into unflavored light milk that does nothing for your morning tea latte but add liquid. Then, one day, I decided to pick up Ripple Foods pea protein milk, and I haven’t looked back.

I buy the original or vanilla-flavored Ripple Foods milk to froth and put in my morning and afternoon green tea lattes. And I buy the chocolate Ripple Foods milk to heat up and drink with my Organifi GOLD powder at night. Ripple Foods milk is not unprocessed, but the ingredients are not bad at all, and it has less sugar than many other milk options and is dairy free. It tastes great, has a good flavor and just so happens to be a Bay Area company, so I support them. Love it.

3. Produce: Organic purple sweet potatoes, conventional bananas and conventional avocados

Okay, so maybe this is a little cheat to combine these three in one, but it had to be done. I don’t buy tons of fresh produce, because I always worry about it going bad. But not a day goes by that I don’t have a banana and an avocado, and I have a sweet potato almost every single day too, so those items are always on hand in our house.

I don’t worry about choosing organic for the avocado or banana (because the thicker coating that is peeled away before eating protects the insides a bit more from pesticides), but I always buy organic for sweet potatoes, because I eat the skin on those. I also get a lot of frozen cauliflower rice, but I could totally live without that, so it doesn’t officially make the list. Also, I think we need a bigger produce basket on the counter to store everything. 

4. Qrunch or Hilary’s Eat Well veggie burgers

I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t eat veggie burgers. I think they get a bad reputation because of the name, but they are so easy, so healthy and so deliciously filling and satisfying too. Almost every weeknight (Monday through Thursday), I eat veggie burgers with eggs, avocado and cauliflower rice or a kale mixture, and it’s a dinner I just cannot get sick of. (Dave eats it too, so it’s not just me being a meal repeater.)

My two favorite brands for veggie burgers (I’m certain on this, because I’ve tried them all) are Qrunch Organics or Hilary’s Eat Well. In fact, those two are the only brands that I will eat at all (there are a few good Dr. Praeger’s ones, but they aren’t as good as these). In the frozen section, you’ll find some lesser veggie burger brands out there that include a lot of junk in their products, so you have to check the labels. But both Qrunch and Hilary’s are primarily made of plants, and they are gluten-free. Did I mention they both have a great crunch and taste excellent? They do.

5. Bard Valley Natural Delights Medjool Dates

I would save a lot of money if I wasn’t obsessed with Bard Valley Natural Delights Medjool Dates. They aren’t cheap. And not only do I love them, but so do Brady and Dave. That means we buy several cartons per week, and I like to have one or two dates after lunch and dinner every single day. I crave them. They are scrumptious and pleasing. And when we go out to lunch, I often have a little baggie of dates with me to hand out to us each after we finish our meal just for a sweet bite. I mean, I’m literally obsessed here, folks. 

I like all the flavors of dates, and I like that they are a healthy dessert, with beneficial potassium, antioxidants and fiber too. Yes, they have natural sugar, but that doesn’t bother me at all, because they are sure better than eating a processed cookie twice a day. 🙂

Honorable mentions of grocery staples I’m also obsessed with

I can’t neglect to mention a few other things …

• Organifi GOLD tea powder (for a nightly treat, and if you use the code ALADYGOESWEST, you get 15 percent off your order on the Organifi site)
• Organifi plant-based complete protein in chocolate (after a tough workout)
• Organic green tea bags (every morning and often in the afternoon)
• Vital Proteins collagen creamer (every morning)
• Stevia (for my green tea lattes)
• Salsa (to put on top of veggie burgers)
• Guacamole (to put on top of sweet potatoes)
• Chardonnay (because wine)
• Larabars (snacking for the whole family)
• Sparkling water, like Topo Chico or Pellegrino (one a day, because life is short, and I like fancy water)
• Almond butter (with bananas for breakfast)

There we go, that should do it!

Thank you for reading the blog today, and I’ll see you over on Instagram, until we meet back here. Have a fabulous start to your week!

P.S. Here’s another post you may like: “All about food: What I’m eating and what foods I currently can’t live without.”

Questions of the day

What’s a grocery staple that you’re currently obsessed with?

Have you tried anything on my list?

How often do you go grocery shopping? (Me: Probably 3-4 times a week.)

How was your weekend?