Say that three times fast.
I am a power shopper in every sense of the term. I’ll go in, look around for five minutes, and if nothing catches my eye, I’m gone. I just don’t like wasting time.
Yesterday I put my power-shopping skills to work. Groceries? Check. Books? Check. Clothes? Double check.
Best purchases of the day: a pair of my favorite running shoes.
(I needed them and they were $20 off. Score!) and some tempo shorts. Ok, so I didn’t need the shorts. But I am such a sucker for cute running clothes… and for good sales. I’ll never buy full-price if I know a certain item will eventually go on sale. Even coconut butter. When Whole Foods marks the Artisana down to $8, I pounce! (If you ever see a girl with 10 jars of coconut butter in her cart, it’s me.) Same goes for shampoo, vitamins, and some produce.
After all that power shopping, I worked up an appetite for Chinese (thanks, in part, to the aroma of Panda Express wafting through the mall. I swear, it’s like they use super-smelling chemicals on that food!). So, when I got home, that’s what I made:
I discovered—midway through cooking—that we were out of soy sauce. So I just let the veggies do the talking flavoring. Surprisingly, the soy sauce wasn’t missed at all. From now on, I’ll always leave it out. I don’t really watch my sodium, per se, but there’s no point in adding excess sodium to something that tastes just as good without it.
Have you ever done that? Just let the veggies flavor a dish, without adding a sauce? Sometimes I don’t like to add sauce, because then the entire dish tastes like sauce. Veggies have so much flavor to add in their own right, especially when garlic is included.
As a side, I forewent rice in favor of Home Alone Pilaf.
If you haven’t tried rye flakes, I highly recommend them. They’re chewy, yet soft, and they have an almost nutty flavor.
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Questions of the Day:
Do you like shopping? And are you a bargain hunter?
I’m definitely a bargain hunter in that coupons make me super-happy, and I love when my favorite things are on sale. But I don’t normally browse the clearance rack at clothing stores or run out when stores have special sales. I never seem to find good clothes on clearance.
Unrelated: I’m leaving the Artisana Coconut Butter Giveaway up on Twitter for one more day.
🙂
Yes, I love getting a deal on stuff. 🙂 It gives me such a great sense of accomplishment when I get exactly what I need, but I got a great price on it. 🙂
Being a student again (with less income!) has really taught me how to bargain shop… and my roommate, she is the master of frugality so I’ve learned a lot from her too!
I love shopping when I find really unique stuff, and I only look at the sale rack usually. Unless I absolutely ADORE something, it must have some sort of price cut. At least for clothes. Food? Not so much… I could spend hours in a grocery store and blow a lot of cash…
I always let the veggies speak for themselves. People always think I’m trying to lose weight or something when I ask for no dressing on salads, but the truth is it usually tastes soo much better!!
I love to shop but have no real money to do so, so yes I like to look for good deals 🙂
Yay for new running shoes! I love the feeling of hundreds of miles at my finger, er, toe tips.
I am most def a bargain shopper–they know me by name at TJ Maxx!
When stir-frying, I think I always add some sort of sauce, but when roasting, I like my veggies naked. I will definitely have to try my next stir-fry sans sauce. I hate the amount of sodium that is in soy sauce…I actually just switched to purchasing Bragg’s liquid aminos for that exact reason!
I used to love to shop! I could spend all day at the mall! Now, I am more of a speed shopper…well, except when it comes to groceries (I like to take my time sometimes and check out the labels of new-to-me products).
Ugh, soy-sauce-less stirfry! Maybe I’m a wimp but sometimes a big bowl of plain veg just terrifies me 😉 If anything, I always over-season my cooking…guess it’s the Indian in me. I have the biggest spice collection of anyone I know.
As for bargains…on a day to day basis, I do all I can to save money – bake my own bread, eat most meals “in,” buy the half-price apples – but I always make up for it by splurging on something expensive later =p
LOL I guess I should’ve mentioned that I DID add salt, just not soy sauce. Gotta have my sodium :).
Katie, I am the SAME way when it comes to shopping…I walk in, take a look around from the front, walk to the back and do the same thing, and if nothing catches my eye, I am out. That process takes 5 minutes tops! Love that I’m not the only one!
I’m a super bargain shopping and prefer to buy most things second hand if I can, but I spend good money on shoes.. it just has to be done!
When using your orthotics take out the insole of your shoes. They orthotics will fit much better. My sister makes orthotics as well as artificial limbs, she fits my kids for orthotics and always tells me to remove the insoles put the orthotics in and then have the kids try them on. It does sometimes take a bit of looking around for wide shoes, but we can usually find something. Hope that helps… it tracked back to the post on your favorite shoes and saw that you wore orthotics and had a bit of a problem finding runners that fit with orthotics. Love the blog. I came here to get the link for your mousse for my nieces.