A Healthy, Affordable Lunch!

So many of us try to eat healthy, but get frustrated when our wallets fight back against the high cost of healthy food. It is truly ridiculous that you can buy a 99-cent breaded chicken sandwich at a fast food chain that is basically complete junk, but a (slightly) healthier salad will cost you over $6. And I say slightly because those fast food salads are loaded with hidden fats and sugars. Fried onions? Toast? Creamy ranch? Honey pecans? You get the idea.

I usually pack my lunch so that I don’t have to pay $$$ for a healthy option when my tummy starts growling at me. The lunch I’m sharing with you today came almost completely from Aldi’s. I’ve only recently become an Aldi’s convert because it is 45 minutes away and I always assumed they were cheap and low quality. But, WOW! Was I wrong!

Aldi’s is inexpensive, but they are putting a huge effort into being health conscious and affordable. They carry many organic brands and just recently removed all trans fats, synthetic colors and msg from their brands. We especially love their 95-cent steamable frozen vegetables!

We went on Sunday and stocked up on veggies (both frozen and fresh), dried fruits, baby foods, cheese sticks and lots of other yummy foods. On Monday, I used many of these purchases to make a simple, healthy lunch that cost less than $2.25. Take a look and see if you can get some inspiration!

Monday's colorful lunch

<All prices below are approximations based on my memory because, unfortunately, I lost my receipt. Duh!><UPDATE! Found the receipt! J had it in his wallet! All prices have been updated!>

Chicken breasts- We purchased a frozen package of 4 pounds of chicken breasts for $5.49. We grilled them up and then I froze them into 3 oz portions. This little 2 oz chunk was leftover so into my lunch it went! Approx. cost- 18 cents.

Egg- This did not come from Aldi's. I purchased these from a local farmer at $2.50/12. At Aldi's, the eggs are generally 99 cents per dozen, so that would be waaaay cheaper, but I really enjoy the farm fresh ones. Approx. cost- 21 cents.

Cheesy veggies- These are the Aldi's brand of California blend with cheese. Generally we don’t do the cheese version, but we purchased a few bags for a change up. Each bag was $1.29 and the variety without cheese is only 95 cents. This is a half a bag. Approx. cost- 65 cents.

Grape tomatoes- I LOVE GRAPE AND CHERRY TOMATOES! These came in a pint container and I believe they were $1.49. I’ve had to restrain myself to not eat the whole container! Approx. cost- 28 cents.

Sweet peppers- These came in a good sized bag for $1.79 (again, I can’t remember exactly). Approx. cost- 32 cents.

Hummus- LOVE LOVE LOVE Hummus! The Aldi’s brand is $1.99 and I’ve trade a few flavors. Warning: The “Significantly Spicy” flavor doesn’t lie. Approx. cost- 24 cents.

All total, this lunch is approximately $1.93. Of course, your caloric needs may vary and you may need a lot more protein or more carbs which would affect your cost. However, no matter the amount you need to eat, this lunch will be very reasonable on price and will taste delicious! All the lovely colors provide many micronutrients and it has just enough fat to keep your coat shiny, lol!

No more excuses on eating healthy being too expensive. It can totally be done!

Stay Strong Y'all!

Hey, I know you may not know me that well, but can I ask you to do something for me? Do  me a favor and subscribe to my email list. Not only will you be able to keep up with all my random thoughts, I'll send you my weekly planner printable!

And if you are hip on the social media, 

Follow me me on Facebook at Angie McCord, Fitness, Nutrition and Life Improvement.

Follow me out on Instagram, I'm doodleturtle. I'm even more fun over at IG!

Hobo Life Week 1

We’ve officially been homeless for one week now and it is proving, so far, to be an awesome choice.

             First breakfast as a hobo. 

Since I haven’t posted about our plans and the recent changes in our lives, I guess I should get you all up to speed. We had our home on the market for much of 2015, but got tired of keeping it show ready all the time. We wanted to move closer to our business and cut the 35 minute commute down some, but we pulled it from the market in the Fall of 2015 and just decided to stay put awhile longer.

About that same time we purchased an older motor home with the intention of taking a weekend trip somewhere every month. It seemed like a great way to be adventurous and would allow us to be always looking forward to something. We took our first trip to Florida in December and loved it!

Flash forward to January 2016 when someone who had expressed interest in our home previously came back and gave us a solid offer. We accepted and then quickly realized this was an opportunity to do something crazy!

Once we signed the paperwork on the house sale, we had 30 days to move out.  You wouldn’t believe how much stuff you can cram in a home if you live in it for 12 years! Holy crap! We probably took 20% of our stuff straight to the dump and 40% to the local thrift store. The other 40% went in storage and we are living in our motorhome!

We have a lot of plans to see the US eventually, but right now we are focusing on simplifying our lives. It’s amazing how much stuff we don’t miss! And it’s weird how much free time we have when we have no tv and no housekeeping to do.

I was setting outside last night panicking because I felt like I should be doing something. Normally when we get home from the gym I spend an hour or so doing dishes, washing laundry, sorting the mail and then plopping in front of the tv for an hour or so. When your home is less than 200 square feet, cleaning takes no time. And when you don't have cable or dish, you can't mindlessly watch for hours on end. 

And since we are using just our cellular data to do the internet thing, we aren’t quite sure yet how that is going to work. We aren’t scrolling through the Book of Faces or the IG all the time since we are trying to conserve data and that has opened up a lot of time as well.

There are a few things we haven’t quite figured out yet, but so far, the pros outweight the cons. And because the cons are kind of funny, I’ll be sure to fill y’all in on them soon.

Until then, I’ll be living the hobo life.

What would you do if you suddenly had 3-4 more free hours each day? Where should be go for first official hobo trip? 

Stay Strong Y'all!

Hey, I know you may not know me that well, but can I ask you to do something for me? Do  me a favor and subscribe to my email list. Not only will you be able to keep up with all my random thoughts, I'll send you my weekly planner printable!

And if you are hip on the social media, 

Follow me me on Periscope, I'm crossfitang.  I broadcast about fitness, nutrition, life improvement, planning and organizing and lots of random stuff.

Follow me out on Instagram, I'm doodleturtle. I'm even more fun over at IG!

Speaking at MSU yesterday was great!

My November goal is to blog everyday and I intend to reach it. So is it cheating if today's blogpost is actually a CrossFit Murray post?

Because I did blog over there! I wrote about how important it is to know your lifting maxes.

Lol, I'm calling it cheating.

Yesterday I was honored to be asked to speak at MSU to a group of Physical Education majors about owning your own fitness business. We discussed the pros and cons of owning your business versus working for someone else. They asked excellent questions about how to improve their skills once they enter "the real world" and how to value their time and knowledge level when deciding to market themselves.

My favorite part is always when I'm asked to tell about how we started CrossFit Murray. There is a lot of backstory, but the gist is this. We sold nearly everything we owned to get cash, including my car! Jeremy drove a Toyota truck from the mid 80s that we bought at a yard sale and I drove our mid nineties Chevy truck.

The reason we found the truck at a yard sale was because we were getting up on Friday mornings and going to yard sales and buying everything that we thought we could make a buck on. We were never rude or insulting and paid a fair price for a yard sale. Then we got up early on Saturday and set up at flea markets to sell the stuff. We also had a booth at Peddler's Mall where we put the nicer items. Many locations have flea markets on Monday mornings, so it was common for Jeremy to leave the house at 3:30 AM on those days to set up in a prime spot. This hustle allowed us to open CFM with no debt and confident that we could make it on just my salary as a teacher. And if it didn't go well, we could walk away and be no worse off.

I know a lot of people get aggravated when they have a yard sale and people show up early and buy "all the good stuff." I know some people get aggravated that those same people turn around and sell it for more at a flea market. And that is exactly what we did. Rather than using my words to possibly persuade those folks to change their mind, I like the explanation given here by Dana White at A Slob Comes Clean about why you shouldn't worry about who buys your stuff and what they are going to do with it.

You never know, you could be fueling a young couple's dream or putting food on a widowers table.

Thank you so much Tawnya for inviting me to speak! I love to encourage people to achieve their dreams!

I'm also speaking at Flex Fitness in Paris tomorrow night. Come see me! It's a St. Jude fundraiser and a $10 donation is suggested.

Oh and I PR'd my clean yesterday! WOOP WOOP!

Stay Strong Y'all.

Are you a lion or a lamb? Goals.

If you are a certain age you remember the Counting Crows song, "Round Here". There is one line that has always stuck out to me....

"Round here we talk just like lions, but we sacrifice like lambs"

Do we do that with our goals and dreams? I think we do.

We talk about our goals and we make plans to achieve them. We are all pumped up and excited

and then

a stumbling block appears.

And we bow our heads and quietly give up.

Maybe that goal is to get in shape so we buy a gym membership and new clothes and we go a couple of times. But then we have a meeting at work that runs late so we skip the gym. And the next day our to-do list is just too long so we skip the gym and run errands. We vow to get up early to hit the 6:30 AM class, but we decide not to wake the kids up early to go with us because it's too much trouble. And before you know it, the goal of getting in shape is long forgotten.

Maybe that goal is to organize our closet and keep it that way so we spend money on hangers and boxes and bins and pin lots of great looking closets on Pinterest. But then we purchase five new shirts and don't remove five so it gets a little crowded. And then we try on twelve outfits and none of them are right so we throw them on the floor. A friend shows up with a box of clothes for us to have and out of misplaced obligation we take them all. And then we can no longer see the floor nor shut the door of the closet.

Maybe that goal is to brown bag our lunch every day for 30 days. Week one we go to the grocery store and stock up. Week two we don't remember to get the bread so that throws our plan off and we decide to order in "just today" until we can stop by the store. But we forget. And then everybody is going out to lunch on Friday for Susie's birthday and we can't hurt Susie's feelings. And by day 9 we either feel like a failure or we are full of excuses why we can't complete our goal.

What happened in all these situations?

 Lion turned lamb.

ENOUGH PEOPLE!

Before you get all excited about your goal and roar, decide how bad you really want it. Are you ready to fight for it? Are you ready to put yourself and your goals high on the priority list? Can you comfortably and confidently explain to someone why you are choosing to be different? Because if you can't, you won't and you will sacrifice your dreams quietly.

But if you can, you can do anything! When faced with adversity you will behave like the lion, calmly observing the obstacle and calculating your best move. Option one, scaring it away with a core trembling roar or, option two, destroying the obstacle with ferocity. Either way, the lion wins.

Stay strong y'all.

Complaining (nicely) is effective!

Last week I was happy to find coupons in my mailbox for $10 off any $20 purchase and $10 off any $50  purchase at GNC. We were running low on a few things so the timing of this was perfect.

I read the fine print carefully and it didn't say anything about not being valid with any other coupons and, in fact, said something about applying other coupons if applicable. At the store we loaded up about $75 worth of product and headed to the register, expecting to get $20 total off our purchase.

At the register, the salesclerk said she didn't think she could do both coupons on the same transaction and we said that was fine, we would break it up into two transactions. We even grabbed a little something extra to make sure that one sale was $25 and the other was $53. The sales clerk was struggling a bit so she called her manager over. He proceeds to tell us, nicely, that GNC has a new policy that allows only 1 coupon per customer. And that if he wasn't there tomorrow, we could use the other one tomorrow so I'm not sure what to make of that one?? Apparently it's one coupon per person ever?

I told them that was fine, just sell us the $25 box of Quest bars and use the $10 coupon. We paid and left and I was flabbergasted that GNC thought this was a good policy.

If they had let us use both coupons, we would have had two transactions of 4 items. One for $15 and one for about $43. A total of almost $60 in sales.

Instead, we bought one thing for $15. Scratching my head. As a former retail employee and as a current business owner, that made no sense so when I got home, I emailed GNC.

I nicely explained how their new policy had affected their sales today and how I thought they should know it seemed silly.

Less than 24 hours later I received an apology and I'm getting a $15 off anything coupon in the mail.

The key here is to be NICE at all times. The employees at the store may not understand the policy or they may be enforcing it wrong, but making them mad won't help your case. Just go along and do the best you can and then email headquarters. The holiday shopping insanity is coming upon us and the person behind that cash register is just as aggravated at the holiday shopping ridiculousness as you are. Most of them aren't trying to be jerks. They are trying to do their job the best they can. If they are being a jerk, it may be because you are being a jerk. Maybe.

PS If you don't have a GNC nearby, you can purchase Quest bars online at Amazon. The Cookie's and Creme are amazing!

**The above is an affiliate link. If you choose to shop through that link, you get the exact same wonderful prices as you would if you went to amazon yourself, I just get a little thank you bonus from Amazon for directing you there.

The Wal-Mart Savings Catcher

Part of my goal with this blog is to just put my random thoughts out into the world. The other part is to share ideas and motivation with others like myself. Moms and wives trying to manage their lives and be bad-asses at the same time. Today I'm taking a look at how the Wal-Mart Savings Catcher can help us be more efficient and save cash!

Full disclosure: I have a love/hate relationship with Wal-Mart (Boo and I call it hell-mart).

 I hate every stinking minute I'm in there. Too many people, too much stuff, the annoying screens that blare commercials while you shop. The holiday aisles that appear 7 months before the holiday. Blech.

However, I love that you can get most everything there. I love the cool knick knack piddly stuff that you didn't know you needed that is so cheap you cannot leave without it. In fact, J and I had Friday night date nights when we were first married where we just wondered around HM.

All that said though, I try to avoid the place. Last weekend though we needed dog food and that is when we have to go to HM. We also needed groceries and I had heard about the new Savings Catcher that HM offered so we decided to put it to the test.

We purchased about $150 dollars worth of stuff and I figured the Savings Catcher wouldn't find anything because we bought some random, obscure stuff. The Savings Catcher only works if the item is exactly the same as an item advertised at a local store. Since our town is quite small and has few stores, I was expecting zero savings.

As soon as we got in the car, I downloaded the HM app and created an account. Then I selected "scan receipt" and was done. This took me 5 minutes, tops. The app told me I would get an email in three days telling me if any savings were found.
                                                        



Well, guess what? Apparently Rite Aid had my biscotti on sale and I was getting $0.58 back! Woo!

The way I figure it, if it took me five minutes to enter the receipt and get $0.58 back. That's $6.96 per hour and while that's not much, it's worth my time. And, from here on out it will be significantly faster because I've already downloaded the app and made my account.

My vote, this a great option to squeak out some savings! Have you tried it? What were your results?

No, Kroger, I'm not highly satisfied! And it's ok!

I think Kroger has some confidence issues. I mean, they are kind of needy and whiny.

On my recent shopping trip this week, I was offered 50 fuel points in return for completing a survey of my shopping experience. Ok, sounds good to me.

The survey started by asking what departments you shopped and then proceeded to ask my satisfaction level with each department. The options were highly satisfied, satisfied, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied.

Apparently, if you are merely, "satisfied", that gives Kroger a complex and you get inundated with questions about WHY you were not highly satisfied.

Well, let's see. It's a grocery shopping trip, not sex, so is it possible to be "highly satisfied?" No one grabbed my list at the door and then directed me to a massage table while they gathered my goods. I didn't see any Segways for me to race around the store on. I was not offered an adult beverage and given 50% off my total.

And worse, sweet potatoes were $1.29 per pound! $1.29! Of course I'm not highly satisfied!

Did I get what I came in for? Yes, pretty much, satisfied. Did I get EVERYTHING on my list? No, actually Kroger I couldn't find the cacao nibs, but it's ok. I'm satisfied.

Due to your responses, may we have your contact information so we can follow up with you? Um, ok, but I was SATISFIED.



I can't imagine what happens if you click highly dissatisfied.


PS I found the Cacao nibs.....at Amazon.

**affiliate link above**