Costco and Whole Foods Gluten Free Grocery Haul | Mom of 8

Friends, it's that time of the month again. Not my time of the month, John's face just went ghost white. No, it's the time of, it's time where we go over our grocery order with you guys and help you save money, hopefully, maybe. We are gluten-free, large family. We have eight kids and celiac disease. So we have to eat gluten-free. We try to stick to organic and whole foods as much as we can. With this economy, we're all giving a little, taking a little. So we have had to figure out how to feed this many people a very particular diet on a budget. And that is what I'm hoping that some of this will help you guys with. There are three places we shop. Azure Standard, where we get all of our staples, pantry things, like things that we can buy in bulk. And then we go to Costco for a lot of the in-between. Our Costco's really good with gluten-free and organic stuff. And then we do Whole Foods, especially their sales. You guys, sometimes you're like, Whole Foods, that's the bougie store, that's expensive. But I'm telling you that they have some things cheaper than anywhere else, even Walmart. And especially given the quality of the produce compared to places like Walmart or Food Lion, even some of these cheaper places. But when they have things on sale, and if you're an Amazon Prime member, boom, the savings are amazing. So let me get started. It's all kind of mixed together. So I'm just gonna tell you where it's from, tell you roughly how much it costs, or if it was on sale, if I can remember, and maybe what we'll make with it, I don't know. Let's dig in. First off, we have chickens. They're worthless, absolutely worthless. We love them, my kids love them. They all have names, so we cannot get rid of them yet. But if they don't start laying eggs in the spring, we're done. This is, I almost said six dozen, it's not. It's 12 dozen eggs for the next week. We bake a lot, we cook from scratch a lot. We have a lot of eggs for breakfast. These are $8.70 each for two dozen of pasture-raised organic eggs. I'm telling you, they have bright yellow yolks. They meet the humane standards. And yeah, they're really, they're good. They're huge eggs, and they're $4 a dozen. You cannot beat that, you can't beat that. So if you need eggs, go to Costco. Okay, next on our list, we have these sweet potato fries. These are like $10 a bag. One bag feeds our entire family. We usually top them with like black beans, cheese, guacamole, you know, kind of like nachos. But with sweet potato fries, it's a really filling meal on a budget. You're talking like $15 to feed a family of 10. Pretty good. Okay, we got this organic creamy tomato basil soup. These do need to go in the fridge. They're packets, but they were on sale for like $5.50 off each. So we paid $13 for both of these. So this is like having soup twice, basically, for our family. Another thing, these are from Whole Foods. These Dr. Prager's spinach littles. They're like potatoes and spinach in these cute little bites. The kids love them, and they're an easy thing to throw on the side. These were on sale there, which is one of the main reasons I get them there. But also these family size bags are cheaper than buying. They usually come in small boxes, but they're on sale at Whole Foods right now. So I grabbed those. These were not on sale, but I really have been craving like falafel. And I saw a recipe for homemade pita bread the other day, gluten-free pita bread. So I got this so I can make a falafel pita with tzatziki. Got that at Whole Foods too. All right, some of my kids and I are vegetarians. So when we do burgers, we like to get veggie burgers. I got these for me. I'm really excited to try them. I've never had them before. These are from Whole Foods, actual veggies. The ingredients are literally just, because I don't like the fake. Like don't give me fake genetically modified laboratory meat. I don't want that. But I do want black beans, carrots, peppers, parsnips, onions, and oats, sure. Elena cannot eat oats though, so we had to go with something that doesn't have oats or quinoa in it. So we got these Hillary's, world's best. I don't know if I'll have to update you on whether or not they are actually the world's best, but this is an option for my kids. I got them at Whole Foods. Another thing we get from Whole Foods every time, every single time is red bell peppers, rainbow bell peppers. These bags are $7. And look how many peppers there are. I kid you not, one red bell pepper is like $5 from Publix for one pepper. It's insane. So we never shop at Publix anyway, but this. And then if you buy red bell peppers from Walmart, they always are moldy by the time you get home. So that's my experience. Maybe it's not yours, but here we go. Whole Foods is the place that I've found for the cheapest bell peppers and the best quality. Another thing we grabbed from Costco is this Greek yogurt, vanilla, organic, big old tubs. We really should just make some with our milk from our cow, but this is our easy button. And I feel like it's a really good price for a big tub. Usually the tubs at normal grocery stores, like we need at least two to just give all of our kids yogurt, but this feeds all of our kids in one tub. Amazing. Speaking of yogurt, my kids love these. I don't know why. I do know why, they taste kind of like candy, but we put them in the freezer and then it's like a freezer pop. These were on sale for about $6 for 24 yogurt tubes of organic yogurt. So run to Costco for that. That's all I'm saying. Okay, speaking of candy and things that my kids love, I just got these recently. These are not from Costco or Whole Foods. They are from Lama Naturals. They are gummy vitamins. And I am like real picky when it comes to vitamins for my kids because I don't want them to be useless. What I mean is synthetic vitamins, your body doesn't know how to use it. So you just end up like peeing it out. So essentially you're like taking these vitamins every day and it's doing nothing for you because it's not bioavailable. These are made with nine pounds of fruits and vegetables. It's just like Whole Foods. So the folate comes from natural food sources. It's not folic acid. They check literally every one of my boxes. This one's a prebiotic and a probiotic for your kids. This one is a multivitamin, strawberry flavor. They smell literally incredible. And my kids are obsessed with them already. But the best part is that they're only $25 for this. For like, there's 90 gummies in this one. And then there's 60 probiotics. You can use my code, Danielle. Super easy, right? And you can get 20% off your first order at Lama Naturals. I'll put the link in the description for you guys. But if you've been looking for a vitamin for your kids, this is the one. They also say that if your kids struggle with constipation, they like guarantee this or your money back, the probiotic to help move things along. So we've been loving these. I just want to share with you guys. They are organic, dentist approved. They don't stick to your teeth. There's no acids in them. It says 13 natural vitamins from nine pounds of fruits and vegetables. And they're vegan. So if you need to eat kosher or if you just don't need animal products, these are for you. Okay, back to Costco. Butter, butter, butter, grass-fed butter. You guys, this is the best butter. I'm sorry, you can fight me on that one if you want, but I will not concede. Grass-fed is the way to go. It's bright, yellow, not white, full of nutrients, good stuff. Costco is a great deal. Was it like $10 for one of these? Yeah, about $9.99 or something like that. We got five because I put it in the freezer. That way we'd never run out. And how many sticks of butter would that qualify as? Because everybody was, you know. That's true. Everybody always goes, that's not cheap at all. This is eight sticks of butter. So $10 for eight sticks of grass-fed butter is a good deal. We put it in the freezer. Nobody wants to be like, oh, we're going to make something. We don't have any butter. So this way we never run out. We always just keep the freezer stocked. Parmesan. Why, I've been buying shredded Parmesan. It's easier, sure, but it costs more and it has additives to keep it from sticking. So buy you a fresh block of Parmesan. This at Costco was $10.61, which seems like a lot for a little cheese. But when you grate this, it like multiplies like the fishes and loaves. I'm not even kidding. I was really, weren't you surprised? I feel like mozzarella doesn't like expand like that. This, like for whatever reason, you grate a little bit and you've got a lot. So buy your Parmesan in a block. It's way cheaper in the long run. We use this for a lot of like pasta, mac and cheese thrown on top of things. I love me a good butter Parmesan sauce. Anyway, another thing we get at Costco is squash and zucchini. I'm about to make a really yummy vegetable lasagna or vegetable lasagna soup. I haven't decided yet, but, and then we have one more bag for chili. I love to throw veggies in my chili. It's the best. Tomatoes. Why did I buy these? The falafel. Yeah, you need your cucumbers. You need your tomatoes. You need your, that's what this is for. And I got basil. This was for the lasagna soup. I'm trying to remember everything. You guys, this was like $4 for this big, like beautiful leaves. And it was greenhouse grown. So even though it's not like USDA organic, it is pesticide free. Cool. Carrots and celery. You cannot find organic these anywhere cheaper. We've tried. This was $4.50 for a six pound bag of carrots. And our kids eat those like snacks. Like you're, you know, when I was a kid, I was eating like candy bars, but my kids are eating carrots. So somewhere along the line, healthy changes have been made. And then celery sticks. I don't know. We buy regular celery sometimes, but this is just like easier, you know, when we're trying to make a quick one. These are probably not cheaper at Whole Foods. Sorry to say, but I just needed, like I didn't want to make a hundred stops at different stores. So we did get some kidney beans. We usually buy these dry from Azure, like dry beans, and then put them in our Instant Pot to cook them. But I needed these for our minestrone before our Azure order gets here. So I bought six things of these kidney beans that we will be using for some minestrone soup. Whole Foods has the best cilantro. Look at that. Beautiful. Are you kidding me? And it's like less than $2 and it's beautiful and it's not wilty and it's not slimy. And it's like a big bunch of it. Yeah. I'm a fan. I'm a fan of their produce. Okay. Cilantro, that goes on everything. You might think cilantro tastes like soap. Some people do. I happen to love it. Maybe I like soap. I don't know. Lettuce. This is kind of a smaller head of lettuce than what it normally is, which is fine, but we use this to wrap burgers in. Just easier sometimes instead of gluten-free buns, because they're either really hard like bricks or really dry and bleh to eat, or you try to make them yourself and that takes too much time. So wrap it up in lettuce. It's just as good. It saves you some carbs sometime. Okay. We are going to have salad at some point this week. So I got some spring mix and some Italian sauce. I'm just going to mix them together. I wanted like more crunch than this offers, but I wanted more nutrient density from this. So I got that. I got two dressings. I grabbed these at Whole Foods. I've never had either one, but they sounded delicious. This is an herb de province. Do you know what that is? You mean, herb de provincie? Just kidding. I don't know what that is. Could be though. Could be. I don't really know. I'm American and- This is herb de province. Herb is, herbies de province. Whole Foods is my favorite place to get lunch meat. Their 365 brand of organic lunch meat is $5.99. I think each, which is a pretty good deal for organic meat at all these days. We got John's favorite, the oven roasted chicken breast, cracked black pepper turkey. That's my favorite. That was your favorite? Mm-hmm. Got two of the wrong one. I thought you liked chicken more than turkey. I do, but that, for some reason, that cracked black pepper turkey breast is- I thought it was you liked the applewood smoked turkey more than this. I do. No, no, I like, I think I like that one the best. Well, I got this for you from the deli. This is not organic, which is fine. Honey maple turkey. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, honey maple turkey. This was $6.88 for a half a pound. And this is a little bit more than half a pound. These were on sale, I don't remember how much. I think they were like $2 off. The Belinsky's brand, we, not me, I don't eat it, but my family loves this brand of sausages. They have all kinds of different ones, but this was the only one. And then they had some like with spicy peppers, but I knew my kids wouldn't like that. But this one's pretty good. Belinsky's, $2 off at Whole Foods. So I grabbed some of that. Another thing we get from Whole Foods is tikka masala. This is like a good hearty, if you like spicy foods, if you don't like any sort of spice, then this isn't for you. But for the vegetarians here, we do cauliflower tikka masala. So you roast your cauliflower, like florets, and then you simmer the sauce, and then you mix it together and put it on top of some jasmine rice. And it's so good. Or you could do chicken, if you want chicken. We've also done tofu, but I think cauliflower is my favorite. Chicken is John's favorite. And we throw the rice in the Instant Pot. It's like a quick, easy meal. Whole Foods sells this sauce for like $3 or $4 maybe, for a jar. All right. John grabbed some things that we needed to just stock up on. The mayo we always buy, this nice tub of mayonnaise was at Costco. It was $7.50 for this big jar of like the Chosen Foods brand. John wanted to try this honey hot barbecue sauce that was on sale at Costco. So he grabbed that. And then from Whole Foods, we got some organic tamari. This is what you have to use. Instead of soy sauce, if you are gluten-free. All right, avocados. Costco, $6 for six big, nice-sized avocados. Look at them avocados. Them are some good avocados. Also get our sweet potatoes there. Sweet potatoes and avocados are not on the Dirty Dozen list. So they're ones that I feel comfortable buying non-organic. Hey, Tyler. Shh. Those are two things that I feel comfortable buying non-organic. Because basically that list tells you what's been sprayed with the most pesticides. And then there's a clean 15 that tells you what's been sprayed with the least. So we've got sweet potatoes. I don't remember how much was this. It was like $4.50. $4.30 for six and a half pounds of sweet potatoes. $4.50, pretty good deal. Whole Foods, these were actually probably the same price as the apples at Costco. I want to say it was like $4.99 maybe for three pounds of each. Which these are usually, Granny Smith usually costs more for whatever reason. Oranges, these are mine. I say that every time and then the kids usually end up eating them one by one. They slowly disappear. I don't really like mandarins and we buy them for the kids. I just like, there's something about, isn't there? There's something different about an orange, an actual navel orange. So I bought some of those. We're winding down. We got some of these dandies and vegan marshmallows. I don't know if you guys know this, but regular marshmallows have food dye in them. They also have pork gelatin in them. So we got these. These are pretty good. They melt just like regular marshmallows. They taste delicious. We like to make Rice Krispie treats with them. That's what I bought those for. I'm going to do that. From Whole Foods, I wanted some Earl Grey tea. So I'm trying this brand, never had it before. But it's aged Earl Grey. It's like a mature. I thought since I'm aging, maybe I should try the aging Earl Grey. With real bergamot. We got some brown sugar from Costco. This was $8.50 ish for this big seven and a half pound bag of brown sugar, which will last us probably a month at least. And then we also got some peanut butter powder. I really prefer to use this to regular peanut butter when I am making smoothies or muffins and things like that. It's just easier. It's easier to scoop it in. So you just reconstitute it with water. Or when I'm making muffins, I'll add peanut butter powder and then add extra milk just to keep them nice and moist. All right, these were on sale again, right? They were like $9 maybe for, there's two big bags. These are our favorite crackers. If you guys are gluten-free, these are the crackers, the crackers, I'm telling you. They're just like perfectly salty. They're good with cheese. They're good with like pepperonis. They're good with cream cheese. They're just good. And Costco is the best price. And then they were on sale from their normal, like $12, $11 a bag. They were like $2 for a box. They were like $2 off. I also grabbed two things of this Mafalda pasta. They're so cute. They're like tiny little miniature lasagna noodles, aren't they? Like, do you see them? They're like little baby lasagnas. So I'm gonna make lasagna soup with this. It just seems like the right choice. Okay, we got seven big bunches of bananas for $2 a bunch. I'll show you guys that just so you can get an idea. Oh, 1.36 kilograms, cool. Ah, three pounds. Okay, three pound bunch of bananas for $1.99. So we got seven of those. We stack them up in here. This is what magic happens. Anyway, that's what we got this time until our Azure order on Thursday, which if you guys want, we will be glad to share that with you and explain how the price is there and what we're buying compared to the stores. I hope this is helpful. We're gonna have sweet potato fries and burgers tonight. Let us know in the comments what you're having. Also check out Llama Naturals. Again, the code is Danielle. It'll get you 20% off your first order. And if you put it on a subscription, you save an extra 10% too. So try them out. Let me know what you think. But we're big fans. ♪ I still remember ♪