Only 2 or 3 weeks now until we leave. We’re still waiting for answers to a couple of emails we sent out. We’ve started getting provisions for the trip. We are trying to get stuff that is nonperishable and can just be eaten without much preparation. We will fire up the camp stove for awhile in the mornings, most likely, so we can heat water for coffee or tea and to fill our thermos. We have a grill that we can use once in awhile to cook some chicken or something, but we plan to cook enough during those times to last for a few days. There will be so much to do on this trip and we will never know what will happen, so we need to be prepared. I have issues with my blood sugar--there are times when I get hungry and just feel hungry. But at other times, I feel queasy, get a headache, and have trouble focusing. I need to be able to eat something right away during those times and Clif bars seem to do the trick. Bill also has issues sometimes, though his symptoms are different. The Clif bars work for him, too. So we knew that one thing we wanted to have was a good supply of those. Happily, the weekly ad for my local Fred Meyer store had those and Luna bars on sale for 89 cents this week. We each got a box of Clif bars and a few Luna bars. They also had bulk walnuts--$2.99 per pound, which is a $2 a pound savings over the regular price. Walnuts were on our list too and I was hoping they’d go on sale. We mix them with raisins and eat this with breakfast, lunch, or for a snack. They can be tossed into what I call soaked oats. I put some raw oats into a container and cover with vanilla soy milk. Let it sit in the fridge overnight. For breakfast, I put some of this in a bowl, top with berries, peaches, or raisins, add a handful of walnuts and then add a bit more soy milk if needed. Yum!
We had also hit pay dirt a bit earlier in the day when we went to our local Grocery Outlet store. We’d gotten our cold brew tea bags already, since in the summer we drink a great deal of water and iced tea. But we still needed some kind of coffee. We had decided on instant coffee. I am not sure how this will go--I don’t think I’ve actually had instant coffee in a couple of decades. But practically speaking, we won’t have time or equipment to keep on making coffee on a camp stove with a percolator. So instant it shall be. We knew it would be cheaper at Grocery Outlet and indeed it was--$2-3 cheaper per jar. I would have preferred to get some kind of organic/fair trade coffee, but we couldn’t find any. Anyway, we picked up some other stuff for the trip there--canned fruit, peanuts, and a few other things. But the big bargain was the crackers. We both love Stoned Wheat Thins, but they are so expensive--$3 per box in one local store. I’d gotten some at Grocery Outlet before when I found them for 99 cents a box and was happy with that deal. Yesterday, I turned the corner into the cracker aisle and figured they’d be out, but it didn’t hurt to check. They were not out and the price had dropped to 2 for $1! That’s because the date on the end was a couple of weeks ago. For some things that would make a difference, but not for crackers. Since we’d already put a dent into the boxes I’d bought before, we decided to buy the two full boxes they had on the shelf. Each larger box contained 12 boxes of crackers. We left four loose boxes of crackers on the shelf for someone else. So it was a day for bargains on stuff we really needed. The crackers cost us $12. Had we bought them in another store, they would have cost $72. I probably would not have bought 24 boxes at that price, but now we have them. Buying the Clif/Luna bars on sale saved us about $20. And buying the walnuts saved us about $18. Best of all, we will have healthy food that we can grab and eat on the run if we need to and enjoy in a relaxed way when we can. We plan to stop at farmer’s markets when they are available to buy fresh local produce that will supplement the staples we are stocking up on here. It’s important to us to maintain the healthy food lifestyle we usually have. It makes such a huge difference. It would be really easy to end up eating lots of stuff that has too much fat, sugar and salt or that is just empty calories. But if I do that, I will end up getting sick with my migraines and blood sugar issues and I don’t want that! Plus, we just feel better when we eat better. We’ve gotten used to a diet rich in fruits and veggies, with some lean protein (chicken or fish), nuts, and whole grains. Whenever I deviate from this way of eating, I can feel it. I get more headaches, I feel lethargic, and just out-of-sorts. Since I do not want to be dealing with those things on this trip (or anytime, really!), I will make it a point to eat well. And it will be easier to do that if I provide myself with the staples to do that. Then we’ll see what we can find at the farmer’s markets to round things out!
