What do you eat all week?!

So I’ve just done a weekly food shop and thought I’d photograph it for you as people are always asking ‘what on earth do you eat all week’?  So here it is…

So this was two trips – one to an independent greengrocers in Southfields for all the fruit and veg…

…and one to Wholefoods for everything else…

The fruit and veg cost £31 and includes some quite expensive imported goodies such as pineapple, avocados, limes etc..  and the Wholefoods shop came to £52 and includes some quite specialist expensive things like a big bag of Cocoa nibs (£14) to keep me in chocolate and banana soy milkshakes for the rest of my pregnancy!  and Arrowroot for tonight’s frittata fiesta… posh crackers, posh chocolate, a sushi rolling mat, posh dressing, very posh crackers, elderflower cordial etc so this shop would normally have been more like £30.  We then usually do an online shop at GoodnessDirect.com for all our toiletries and house cleaning kit, roughly every 3 months, and that comes to about £50.  So that’s a monthly spend on everything of between £250 and £300 which for a greedy family of four I’d say is pretty good. 

Before turning vegan, we shopped in Sainsburys and I could never keep the weekly shop to under £100 a week.  Meat and cheese are expensive!  And we hardly eat any processed food any more.  We were always filling the trolley up with whatever was on offer in an attempt to spend les and the result was we ate far more, far less healthily, always shopped in supermarkets and spent more money. 

Now, we shop in far more ethical sops, have massively reduced our carbon footprint as a family, buy far better quality food, way healthier food and spend less overall.  And the whole shopping experience is a far nicer one too.  I don’t miss battling through Sainsburys on a Saturday afternoon with screaming children hanging out of the trolley whilst I stuff breadsticks into them in a bid to keep them occupied whist I grab anything with a 2 for 1 sticker on it…    

Now I’m on first name terms with my veg man and the kids help him fill up the bags whilst he teaches them the difference between yellow courgettes and Spanish courgettes and Wholefoods is basically like food porn for anyone who enjoys eating!  

 

 

 

My stuff!

So what have I replaced my old items with?

After a fair bit of trial and error (and the assistance of the most wonderful and patient man in the world in Wholefoods who painstakingly took me through the relative merits and demerits of each shampoo, deodorant and dishwasher tablet…!) this is what we’ve switched to mostly… there’s a huge variety of products available so you really don’t feel you’re compromising or missing out.  We’ve come a long way since the days of hemp shoes and nut loaf 12 ways….!