Trader Joe’s Grocery Haul vol. 1

I am lucky to live a short drive away from a Trader Joe’s grocery store, which means it’s very easy to stock up on my favorite inexpensive and trendy food items at a moments notice. As a type 1 diabetic, and functioning human being, I try to plan my meals at the beginning of the week in order to save time in the morning before work.

Generally, I try to buy low-carb ingredients for meals with a variety of fun snacks to cover my low blood sugars. I try to eat low carb during the week to minimize the chances of a blood sugar spike after meals, which ultimately ends up making me feel crappy and also is better for my A1C over time. (click here to find out what A1C is.) I also try to switch up my meals every week to decrease my chances of getting tired of something specific. This becomes challenging when veggies, meat and cheese all sound bleh and your pantry is a sad, breadless wasteland… but we will get to that later.

Here’s what I picked up this week:

Meals

I normally have hard-boiled eggs for breakfast with a combo of 2 types of vegetables, hummus or avocado, and Cholula. This week I also decided to make turkey meatballs with chives, garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes to pair with zucchini noodles and pasta sauce for my lunches/dinners.

• Ground Turkey Breast
  • I rolled the turkey into meatballs and added the chives, sun-dried tomatoes, and garlic
  • Felt gross in my hands, probably won’t do it again for a while
• Chives
  • tbh they were out of green onions
• Sun-Dried Tomatoes
  • Easy to add to salads, sandwiches, etc
• Tomatoes on the vine
  • I cut these up to eat with my breakfast or to dip in hummus for a quick snack
• Zucchini Noodles
  • These noodles were sautéed and used for lunches/dinners with my turkey meatballs
  • I also added the pasta sauce to make me feel like I was enjoying a bunch of spaghetti on a patio in Italy or something
• Microwaveable Broccoli
  • I’m lazy and this takes 4 minutes in the microwave
• Herb Salad Mix
• Hard Boiled Eggs 
  • Okay, normally I hard boil eggs myself, and these ‘hard-boiled eggs in a bag’ look gross and that’s true and all… but they taste the same and I was just being lazy don’t judge me
  • I use these solely for breakfast but I’m sure they would be great in a salad
• Avocados
• Mediterranean Hummus
  • This is the best kind don’t @ me
• Cauliflower Gnocchi
  • This doesn’t have a major difference in carbohydrates per serving from the sweet potato gnocchi at TJ’s which I LOVE, but I figured it had fewer calories so I would give it a try
  • Also, cauliflower is just so trendy rn
• Rustico Pomodoro Pasta Sauce
  • This had the least amount of calories and carbohydrates out of the 8 other varieties I looked at. After a while I just picked this one, so who knows if it is TRULY the lowest.

Snacks

• Peaches
• Orange Juice
  • A low blood sugar staple item
• Sweet Cherries
• Cinnamon Apple Snack Sticks
  • These are strictly for my intense night-time lows where I tear the door off of the pantry looking for food to eat
• Bamba Peanut Snacks
  • These are just delicious and addicting
• Cornbread Crisps
• Strawberry Banana Fruit Wraps
  • My go-to low snacks. I always have these scattered around my purse in case of emergency

This grocery trip was only an example of some of the usual array of Trader Joe’s items found in my pantry. I have plenty of go-to snacks that I use to treat low blood sugar, low carb lunch items for my work week and interesting beverage choices that I plan on sharing very soon.

What’s on your grocery list?

– Ariana