Value tips from our shoppers continue to roll in. Thanks! You guys totally have this saving-while-shopping thing worked out. A couple of comments this week reminded me that to get a full understanding of your food budget, don’t forget to include all of your restaurant and fast food meals in addition to your groceries.

Some of our customers mention cutting back on eating out and instead making great meals at home with quality ingredients. For example, whenever you order fish in a nice restaurant, it’s expensive. But if you cook fish at home (which isn’t hard, our seafood team members can give you simple instructions) you get a great meal at a fraction of the restaurant price. Give a thought to your food spending outside the grocery store to see where you might be able to save some dollars by preparing your own meals. And, of course, check out The Whole Deal™ to see what other great tips our customers are sharing.

Remember, if we choose your tip to feature here on Whole Story, you’ll receive a $25 gift card! And our featured tips this week are:

From Wendy:

I started shopping at Whole Foods when I lived in Chicago many years ago (the original store on North Avenue!). When we moved to the burbs, I was happy to find the Palatine store close by. Especially since both my kids have food allergies! I don’t think I spend any more money on food than any of my friends who don’t shop there. For one thing, I make almost all my meals from scratch and don’t buy premade items or order carry out very often. We eat leftovers for lunch or take to work for dinner. But most helpful is that I plan my menu for the entire week prior to my trip to the store. This cuts down on unnecessary trips to the store for last minute meals. It eliminates waste because I can stretch my purchases farther by planning meals around certain items that might be left over. I find that I do less impulse buying when I have a list in my hand. My family likes knowing ahead of time what is for dinner, and I also include their suggestions for meals. Sometimes it isn’t easy to think of 6 or 7 meals at once, but in the long run, it is a time and a money saver.

Read the rest of this entry »

August is prime tomato season in many parts of the United States. To me, a tomato is defined by its texture. Flavor, moisture, acidity, and ripeness are all important but all these factors are meaningless if you have a tomato that is soft and mushy. What makes a tomato mushy and soft is temperature — if at any point a tomato is cooled below 45 degrees for an extended period of time, its cell structure will collapse. You should never refrigerate tomatoes at home for this reason. The further a tomato has to travel, the greater the chance it will be exposed to refrigeration so the best tomato to buy is a local one.

So choosing a great tomato begins with knowing when tomatoes are in season in your area. This can be hard to know because demand for tomatoes has forced a virtually year round supply in green house and import supplies. In fact, truly great tomatoes are available only a few short months out of the year. The other thing about tomatoes is they need heat to grow well so while you would expect to get great tomatoes at the start of the summer (and we do in the warmer areas of the US) - tomatoes actually grow best in the summer for harvest in the late summer and early fall. Cherry tomatoes are excellent most of the year but if you want a really great slicing or large tomato the best time to look for them is the late summer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since 1967, Sparkman’s Cream Valley, a family-owned, all natural dairy, has been committed to quality and treating their all-jersey cows with care. They don’t use artificial hormones and even their milk is sold in containers made from cornstarch. Sparkman’s Cream Valley offers a superior line of local sustainable dairy products available at the farm or through retail locations across the South.

Check out our South region’s local grower and vendor profiles.

Thanks for watching our slide show and please let us know what you think!

Learn the big reasons why most kids can benefit from a little daily multivitamin. Despite even the best attempts at a healthy diet, many don’t get all the essentials they need. Think of it as a combination of insurance and investment, and get the most recent nutritional recommendations for smart parents and smart kids.

 Does Your Child Need a Multi? [5:28m]: Play Now | Download (440)

If you haven’t strolled down the pet food aisle lately, you may not know that we’ve expanded our private label line of pet foods. We continue to offer our 365 Everyday Value™ pet foods for a quality human-grade pet food at a value price and have added 365 Everyday Value™ Holistic pet foods for well-rounded nutrition without the use of by-products.

Think all pet foods are the same? Think again. Pet food is divided into two separate categories: human and non-human grade. All of our 365 Everyday Value™ pet food products are human grade. Human grade pet foods are processed according to the same manufacturing standards as human foods and they contain ingredients that are free from contamination, disease or adulteration. This means that the meat sources used in our products, including any by-products, are NOT from animals that have been rejected for human consumption. The ingredients are inspected with the same care as if they were to be sold as human food.

Our pet food brands offer choice and affordability: the original 365 Everyday Value pet food provides a safe, human grade product that meets pets’ nutritional needs at a great value. By using human grade by-products, we can provide a safe meat and protein source for your pets at an affordable price.

Our Holistic selections are made without the use of by-products. Every ingredient used in our Holistic pet food is carefully selected to provide nourishment to the whole pet. Whether it’s oatmeal (promoting a healthy digestive system) or Menhaden Fish Oil (an excellent source of Omega 3 fatty acid), each ingredient in the Holistic pet formula supports important system functions and dietary needs. Additionally, our 365 Everyday Value™ Holistic food is baked and not extruded. Baking is done at lower temperatures over a longer period of time, which maintains the integrity and quality of the ingredients.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s recipe is a Secret Ingredient team favorite. Not only is it a brilliant use for leftover bread, it’s a lively salad of peppery arugula tossed in roasted tomato vinaigrette, topped with toasted goat cheese and generously garnished with Whole Catch™ Wild Caught Crab. Summer salads don’t get much better than this!

Get the Recipe: Panzanella with Crab, Pistachio-Crusted Goat Cheese and Roasted Yellow Tomato Vinaigrette

 Whole Catch Crab: Play Now | Download (1508)
 Whole Catch Crab: Play Now | Download (935)

Hi. I’m Danielle, a high school senior in Northern California. There are simple changes that we can make to better “green” all aspects of our daily lives. Below are four more tips that will get you started as we head back to school. If you CAN make healthier choices, why not?

This past year I replaced my plastic water bottle with a Klean Kanteen. I feel much better about drinking from a bottle that it is not contaminated with phthalates, a chemical used to make plastic softer that is a known endocrine disruptor and toxic to our bodies.

In the process of doing my own research, I’ve come to realize that there IS a “greener” alternative for pretty much every action you do and every item you use.

Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing the theme from my last post…which was about products designed for kids with special diets…I have more new “special” products available at Whole Foods Market to share with you. This time we’re talking non-dairy. For those folks who have an allergy or aversion to dairy, their choices can be limited — think rice- and soy-based products. The good news is that there have been some recent innovations that have created more choices.

Let’s say you’d love to eat yogurt, but…you can’t because of the dairy, so you look for a non-dairy yogurt and all you see is soy-based products and…you’ve got an aversion to soy as well. Sound unlikely? It’s not. There are thousands of people who have problems with both dairy and soy. There are even more who want an alternative to dairy, but don’t enjoy the taste of soy. Enter So Delicious Coconut Milk Yogurt. Turns out, coconut milk is dairy and lactose free. Who knew? The good people at Turtle Mountain did. They have been innovators in frozen non-dairy products since 1990, but only recently got into the yogurt business.

In January we launched their first foray into the category with a fantastic tasting soy-based yogurt. After testing the waters successfully, they let their creative juices flow and recently showed us…in my opinion…the biggest innovation in non-dairy yogurt since the first soy-based yogurts hit the market years ago. These coconut-based non-dairy yogurts are what we refer to as a “no brainer” — as in an obvious choice to sell in our stores. There are six flavors available. Some have a bit of the coconut flavor shine through but others don’t have a hint. My fave is the Passionate Mango. Besides tasting great…and being dairy/lactose free…they’re soy-free, cholesterol-free, trans fat-free, contain pre- and probiotics and are certified vegan. These innovative new products are in stores now. Whether you have an allergy or are just looking to try something new, give them a try.

As you’ve seen on some of our other blog posts, it’s back to school time! Do you have favorite value tips that keep your food budget on track when heading back to school? Share them with other customers on The Whole Deal™. If your tip is chosen to feature here on Whole Story, you’ll receive a $25 gift card!

Without further ado, here are some excellent tips from grad student, Julie who knows how to stretch a dollar!

My husband and I are both full-time graduate students so we have to be really careful with our food budget.  It would be really easy to fall into the trap of not eating quality food but we make the effort to make sure that doesn’t happen.   Our effort goes beyond checking fliers for multiple stores and taking advantage of the best deals on organic food that week.  Here are a few things that save us a lot of money:

1) Eat meatless meals 5 times a week.  People may find this boring but these are some of our most interesting meals.  Some of our staples are chickpea curry, lentil curry, salads, stir fries with tofu, Thai peanut noodles with tofu and frozen vegetables, scrambled eggs with onions and zucchini, and vegetable stir fries with whole wheat pasta.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Ultimate Grilled Cheese

• Shrimp, Corn & Red Pepper Sandwich

• Skirt Steak with Blue Gouda

• Cuban-Style Panini

 Sandwiches: Play Now | Download (5528)