Now that school is out and we are on vacation for the whole Summer, it is easy to go grocery shopping and make impulse buys in order to prepare easy and convenient meals and get back to having fun outdoors. Unfortunately, these impulse purchases are not always the healthiest choices for our family. As a result, I have challenged myself to create a new plan of attack for my trips to the grocery store.
In order to make our grocery shopping trips more meaningful and health-conscious, we have devised a plan to make sure that we choose items that will be beneficial to our diet as opposed to being unhealthy for us. Making a list of items beforehand and sticking to it is a great way to make sure that we only pick up the groceries that we need to prepare the meals that have been planned for in advance. We almost never make lists and have found that this causes us to wander around the store haphazardly picking up items that we think we might need.
We actually sat together as a family and created the list allowing each member to suggest items that we might need. This is extremely important in our home in order to allow all of us to make our voices heard. Of course, our boys mainly made suggestions for snacks and juices, however, we were pleasantly surprised that they also suggested a lot of fruits that are healthy for them.
Our grocery shopping excursion actually went much better than we originally planned. It was great to enter the store with a purpose and a list in hand instead of wandering around aimlessly thinking about what we might need to throw in the cart. Many of the items on our list were found in the Hormel© Foods section due to the fact that they include a variety of products that are a part of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and party solutions.
Their foods are created with convenience in mind which is very important for this Working Mom, especially in the Summer when I want to spend less time cooking and more time bonding with my children. Some of the new Hormel products that we picked up during this grocery trip were Hormel© Refrigerated Entrees. They were really easy to prepare, contained wholesome ingredients, and tasted great.
How will you approach grocery shopping this Summer? Do you have any goals in terms of healthy eating? Have you tried any new Hormel© Foods products lately?
Disclosure: In the spirit of full-disclosure, I’ve partnered with Hormel Foods as part of the Hormel Foods Extended Family Blogger Program. While Hormel Foods provides me material and necessary resources to complete various activities, all statements and sentiment in Tough Cookie Mommy are my own.
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