- Today I want to share
with you my Costco haul, and show you how I shop for
traditional foods at Costco. Hi Sweet Friends. I'm Mary, and welcome to Mary's Nest, where I teach traditional cooking skills for making nutrient-dense foods, like bone broth, ferment,
sourdough, and more. So if you enjoy learning
about those things consider subscribing to my channel, and don't forget to click on the little notification bell below, that'll let you know every
time I upload a new video. As traditional home cooks, we really strive to create very nutritious as well as delicious meals for ourselves, our
family, and our friends. And when it comes to creating those meals we want to find as
high-quality foods as we can but at the same time to get
the most from our dollar. If you've been with me for a while you know that I live in Central Texas, and we have a wonderful
grocery store chain here called H-E-B, and I shop there a lot, but I also like to go into
Austin and shop at Costco. So today I want to share with you what I recently purchased at Costco that I feel fits very nicely under the traditional foods umbrella. Now the first items that
I want to share with you are my cold items. And of this cold lineup, I have to first start with this duck. I just thought this was so much fun when I saw this in the
frozen food section. Now, this was about $15, but I think that I can get a
number of meals out of this. Now, I thought this would be fun to roast when our son comes home, and that'd be feeding three of us, and I might have a few leftovers. And that would be great to use in, you know a salad or a
soup, something like that. But then I'll use the
carcass to make bone broth, and if you've been with me a while you know I make a lot of bone broth. I got a lot of videos on
how to make bone broth, which I'll be sure to link to. But I'll use that to make bone broth, and then after I strain the bone broth and the fat floats to the top, I'll skim that off, and then I'll have some wonderful duck fat to use for cooking. It's terrific for frying up potatoes or sauteing homemade breadcrumbs. I just love it, so I feel I
can get a lot out of this duck. It was about $15, but I do feel that I'm going to get a
lot of things out of it that I'll be able to use, the actual meal, the bone
broth, and the duck fat, so I thought that would be a nice addition to my traditional foods kitchen. Next, under the poultry umbrella I got some chicken breasts, which I just thought were
beautiful, and these are organic. And then I also bought two whole, oh, they're heavy, two whole chickens. Now, for the most part I really like to just buy whole chickens because you can just do so much with them. You can roast them and
then you can save the bones to make a bone broth. You can do a quick batch
with just one carcass or as I often have showed you
in the past in other videos I like to save three carcass and then make a really nice
rich chicken bone broth. But whatever the case
may be, a whole chicken is something that you can make, you know I'll make for Sunday dinner and then I'll have some
leftovers through the week. And then as I said, you know
I also get the bone broth, and then like with the duck when the fat floats to the top I skim that off and I save that. Chicken fat is also
wonderful to cook with, know as schmaltz. Also great for using if you
make chopped chicken livers, which is a very nutrient dense food. So I really am very happy when I can buy some
beautiful whole chickens. And what I do when I go to Costco is I look for the biggest ones I can find. You know it's hard to find
the big roasters today. Often the chickens are just
sort of your smaller fryers, but I will, I'll look
for the biggest ones. And so this was a total of 10, over 10 pounds, almost 11 pounds, so each chicken is you
know five plus pounds each, so that's fantastic. Now these are organic chickens and the price for both
of these was $24.25, so each chicken was, is
a little more than $12, and as I mentioned earlier, each chicken is probably a little
over five pounds each. And if you're new to
cooking a whole chicken, I have a lot of videos on
how to roast a chicken, how to braise a chicken, how
to cook it in the Instant Pot, and I'll be sure to link to those videos. But a whole chicken can
serve so many wonderful uses for the traditional foods kitchen. Now, I also did get some boneless
skinless chicken breasts. I don't try to rely on these because they are more expensive
than the whole chicken, and it's sort of what I call
like a limited use food. However, I do feel that
these can come in very handy for those times when
you're exceptionally busy and you just need to throw
a quick meal together. Now, these boneless skinless
chicken breasts are organic, and they come in three packages like this that you can easily cut
down the middle here, and store them in your freezer easily. And these were, this whole package weighs a little over five
pounds and it was $25.55. So unlike the whole chickens they are considerably more expensive, and I think no matter where you buy boneless
skinless chicken breasts, especially if they're organic, they also do tend to lean
on the expensive side. But I do like to keep them in my freezer for sort of a kind of an emergency when I know that I'm going to
have an exceptionally busy day and I just want to have
something that's very easy to maybe just bread up
and saute in a frying pan, and just get something
quickly on the table. Also too, something that I will do with these chicken breasts
is when I open them, as I said I usually see
about three in here, I will in essence filet them, I will cut them long wise
and turn them into cutlets, and that way I can stretch
in essence the chicken breast rather than just cooking one
big thick chicken breast, filet it, maybe pound it a little, and bread it, and fry it up like that, you know or pan fry. I have a video where I show
you how I like to prepare it. And that helps stretch it, especially if I'm feeding a larger crowd than just my husband and I. The next thing that I
like to get at Costco is this uncured Canadian bacon, and it has no nitrates and
no nitrites, so I like that. Now, this has two packages as you can see, and what I'll do is separate this, and just put the two
packages into my freezer, and then when I'm ready to prepare this if it's just going to be
for me and my husband, I'll actually just kind of
break this once it's frozen, and just prepare one sleeve of this, and then quickly rewrap the second sleeve, and that put that back into the freezer while it's still frozen. So this really I find works out very well because this whole package is nine, or at least at my Costco is $9.99. So in essence we're spending $2.50 for a total, you know
each serving in essence, four servings are coming in at $2.50 each. So I think that's pretty good. The next thing I picked
up was actually new to me, I've never tried this before, but it's hickory smoked
uncured turkey bacon, and it has no nitrites and no nitrates, so I said, "Well, I'm
going to give this a try." Plus, it has four packages
here, and it was $12.99, so I thought that was a pretty good buy. So that's going to work out
to about $3.25 a package, and so I thought that was pretty good. This is a total of two and half pounds, so I feel you know pretty
good, it's good quality, and I feel the price is fair. So this is definitely something that, assuming that we like it,
I think we're going to, and it's definitely something
I think I'll start adding to my traditional foods
kitchen on a regular basis. The other thing I love to
get at Costco are cheeses, they have a wonderful selection. And one of my favorite to
buy there is Pecorino Romano. This is a wonderful cheese,
it's made from sheep's milk, which is very nutritious. And not only do I like the flavor, it's also considerably less expensive than the Parmigiano Reggiano, but they're both nice hard cheeses. Now this about a pound and
a half, and it was $12.48, but this is going to last me a long time, and you're only going to
use this in small amounts. And the same goes for
the Parmigiano Reggiano. This also is about a pound and a half, little more expensive, as I said, this one was $12.48, it was $8.49 a pound, and this also is about a pound and a half, and it was a total of $19.87, so considerably more expensive. This is $13.99 a pound, but I am of Italian descent, so you know I'm going to have
Parmigiano Reggiano in my house. But this is, these are just two really wonderful traditional foods, and again you're using
these in small amounts, and they should last you a while, and so you can really get the most for your money out of them. Now, these are two cheeses
that my family really enjoys. This it the coastal cheese,
and this is from the UK, and this is the Kerrygold
cheese. This is from Ireland. This is almost a pound and three-quarters, and it's $6.79 a pound, so this entire block was $11.41. And this was about a pound and a quarter, and this is $6.99 a pound, so this came in at a total price of $8.67. But these are both high-quality cheeses and they would cost me more if I could find them at my grocery store, and now they would be in smaller portions, so for some people maybe the
smaller portion works better, but my family will go through
this relatively quickly. And I can also use it in different recipes and both are just a wonderful flavor and very rich in nutrients, so I think you can't
miss on either of these. Now, I want to mention two things, as we go through the list of things that I like to buy at Costco if there are things that you like to buy that I have not mentioned here, be sure to leave it in the comments below because that'll help all of us to learn how we can find other
traditional foods at Costco. Plus, if you open the
description under this video there'll be a link that'll says blog post, and if you click on that link, it'll take you over my
website Mary's Nest, same name as my YouTube channel, where I'm going to cover all of the foods that I like to get at Costco along with links to recipes and videos where I show you how to make the things using these traditional foods. Now, Costco offers a huge selection of fresh fruits and
vegetables to choose from, but I really price comparison
shop when I go there because my own grocery store H-E-B also has a wide variety of
fresh fruits and vegetables, many of which are grown here in Texas and the prices are extremely competitive. For example in the winter months, I can get a 10 pound bag of
grapefruit, fresh grapefruit for $5, Texas grapefruit, and that's pretty hard to beat anywhere. So when you're shopping at Costco for fresh fruits and vegetables just compare prices with
your local grocery store to see where you can get your best deal. But something that I have
found very affordable there are the romaine hearts
and the spring green mix, and these are two things
that I really like to buy. Now that the weather's warming up, my husband and I will often
have a salad every day, and this had six heads of romaine in it and so that'll last us about a week. And this was $4.49, and it's organic, so that I thought was an excellent price. And this big box of spring green mix, which is one pound was $3.39, which I also thought was a very good buy, especially since it's organic. And something like this there's so much that you can do with a spring green mix. You can juice it, you
can throw it into salads, or you can even saute it with
a little bit of olive oil or ghee, or butter, whatever you like, and create a great side dish. You can even mix it, which
is something I like to do is to mix into scrambled eggs with a little cream cheese
or a little sour cream. Oh, it makes a wonderful dish. And the nice thing about being able to work a lot of greens into our diet is these are a really great
source of important minerals. Costco also has a fantastic
selection of canned goods, and I really like to buy canned goods for my prepper pantry because they just store so beautifully because they put them in boxes like this. Now if you've not seen my videos on how I stock and
prepare my prepper pantry, I'll be sure to link to those. Those can be very interesting, especially now during the summer months is a really good time to start
stocking your prepper pantry in preparation for the fall, and the winter, the colder months. Now, I actually like to grow and can a lot of my own tomatoes, and I have videos where I
show you how to can tomatoes. You can water bath can tomatoes, so if you're new to home canning that's a great place to start. And I'll be sure to link to those videos where I go through all
the step-by-step process when it comes to home canning
with water bath canning. But I also like to buy canned tomatoes to keep as a backup in my prepper pantry. Now, I actually took this
box out of my prepper pantry because when we were at
Costco I couldn't find these. They had tomato paste and tomato sauce, but they didn't have canned tomatoes or diced tomatoes, which
is what I've got here, so always be on the lookout. If you shop at these big-box stores like Costco or maybe like Sam's, keep a lookout if you go
there on a regular basis because they do stock different
things at different times, and sometimes things just sell out. And during what we've gone
through over 2020 and then 2021, a lot of these big-box stores
sold out of a lot of things, so definitely keep your eye open for diced tomatoes or canned tomatoes if that's something
that you like to stock. Because I find having canned tomatoes whether they're home canned
or store-bought canned come in so handy for pulling
together quick recipes, a quick pasta recipe,
whirling them in the blender to make a quick tomato sauce, throwing them on top of chicken, putting them in rice and
doing a Mexican rice. There's just a lot of things that canned tomatoes
can come in handy for. So this is something
I definitely recommend looking for at Costco. And just speaking about
canned food in general the big-box stores like Costco and Sam's sell a lot of canned food, and not just canned vegetables. They have canned fruits. They also have fruit in the jar, and they sell canned meats. But when it comes to the canned meats I find you need to be a little selective. First of all you want to compare price with your local grocery store, and you want to read the ingredients. Sometimes the canned
chicken, or the canned meat, or the canned fish may contain a lot of preservatives that I generally don't like to have in my traditional foods kitchen. It may be okay to keep
a few cans in emergency but when it comes to Costco
and actually versus Sam's, I like the canned chicken at Sam's better because it's actually more natural when you read the ingredients on the back. At least the canned
chicken that both of them have been carrying recently. But again you always have to check, and you've got to read the back, you know the ingredients
on the back of the cans because a lot of times
what they are supplying in their store and selling does change from season to
season or even month to month. So that was just my experience recently. But something I saw at Costco
that I thought was wonderful was wild caught salmon in the can. And I have a recipe where I show you how to use canned salmon to
make really nice salmon patties. And I'll be sure to link to that. But that's something
to keep an eye open for because canned salmon
is very good for you. It's very high in omega-3,
an essential fatty acid that's really important for us. It's very good for the
heart and the brain. And so being able to
incorporate foods like that into our diet, really nutrient dense foods into the traditional foods
kitchen is very important. And salmon, fresh salmon can be expensive, but canned salmon is
often very affordable. And when you can find
wild caught canned salmon all the better because the wild caught is going to be the richest in your omega-3 essential fatty acids. Well, for me when I saw this ghee, and being a traditional foods home cook this was the star of the show. Now if you're not familiar with ghee, ghee is basically clarified butter. It's butter that's been warmed gently and allowed the milk solids to be removed. It's wonderful to cook with,
it's very rich in nutrients, and it has a very high smoke point. You can heat ghee up to 450 degrees fahrenheit
without damaging it. Can you make ghee homemade? Definitely, and my friend Jackie over at Little Country Cabin
has a wonderful tutorial, which I'll definitely link
to in the pin comment. So if that's something that
you want to make at home you can definitely do this. However if you don't get
around to making it homemade or you run out of time,
you're just very busy, this is a terrific buy. These two jars were a total of $19.99. And each jar is almost
two pounds of ghee each, 22.5 fluid ounces, so
this was a terrific buy. Basically $10 for a jar this large. And if you've priced ghee, you know ghee can be very expensive, so I was very happy to find this. Plus this just isn't any ghee, this is from cattle or
from the cream from cattle that have been grass-fed. So you have to keep in mind that when cattle are grass-fed
their milk, their cream that we skim off the milk to make butter and to make ghee is very rich in omega-3, very similar to what salmon is rich in. Plus what's really nice
about this Tin Star brand where they say grass-fed, you know sometimes that term
can be a little loosey-goosey, were they grass-fed for one
day, a week, two weeks, a month, the cattle, whatever the case may be? But this says, "Pasture grazed 365 days," so this is really a high-quality ghee. So if you see this at your Costco definitely add this to your
traditional foods kitchen. Alrighty, let's talk about flour, specifically all-purpose flour and even more specific
organic all-purpose flour. My Costco is a great resource
for organic all-purpose flour, and I can often find it in 25 pound bags. And when I get home what I do is simply transfer it to my
five gallon food safe buckets, these, with my nice twist on Gamma lids that makes life very easy. I put some bay leaves down on
the bottom to discourage bugs. And then whenever I need
my all-purpose flour I've got it all handy and ready. It's great for making sourdough bread, feeding my sourdough started, and a whole host of purposes in the traditional foods kitchen. Yes, I love my ancient grains,
I love my whole grains, but all-purpose flour or bread flour if you can find that as well, definitely is very helpful, especially for making sourdough breads. Now let's talk about some of the things that are on the sweeter side. Costco has a terrific selection of jams and jellies,
maple syrup, also honey, as well as other sweeteners. Now when it comes to jams and jellies I really like to make mine homemade, and I have playlist where I show you how to make a lot of different
jams, low sugar, no sugar, how to water bath can them, and I'll be sure to link to that playlist. However every once in a while when I come across a
really good buy on a jam where the first ingredient is the fruit, I do like to buy some. And this especially caught my eye because it was organic and
it's seedless raspberry, and seedless raspberry is probably one of my husband's favorites. Plus this is also organic and it was originally 4.99 but they were running a
special with a $1.50 off, so you can't beat that. I can't make that for this price. And this one pound 12 ounces, so this is a hefty jar. And this is definitely going
to last us a good long while. And what was especially
nice about this brand as I said, I always look for
ones that put fruit first, and this definitely does have
organic seedless raspberries as the first ingredient, and it's also a low
sugar jam, 33% less sugar than traditional raspberry jams. So organic, low sugar,
fruit first, $1.50 off, I couldn't beat that. Now when it comes to sweeteners Costco always seems to have a large selection, at least at the one that we go to, and these I actually
bought on a previous trip, not our most recent trip there. But whenever I see maple syrup there I always try to pick up a container because we do go through
this pretty quickly. I use this every morning on our oatmeal, and so I'm always happy
when I can find it. Now this organic, which is terrific and it's from Canada. It is grade A amber, I
generally like to find, they don't so much say
anymore grade A and grade, they used to say grade A and grade B, now they'll just say grade
A amber and grade A dark. I tend to prefer when I can find the dark because it is a little more nutrient rich. However if what they're
carrying at the time is amber I'll usually just pick that up. And now with the honey
you may also see this in your area, a lot of variation. Being that we're in Texas they have Texas raw unfiltered honey, so I picked up some of this. I always like to have honey on hand. And this is a nice pourable honey. And it, you know as it
says, "Raw and unfiltered," which is wonderful, but
I really like the fact that it's Texas honey. And sometimes they even have
the honey on the honeycomb and I love to get that as well. Also with sweeteners Costco
will sell a really large bag of organic white sugar,
I don't buy a lot of that but I do like to keep some on hand if I think I am going to be
making homemade jams and jellies. Also something that I don't buy there but that I have seen
there from time to time is that Costco will have
alternative sweeteners. I've seen stevia there,
I've seen monk fruit, and different other, you know zero calorie or alternative sweeteners that
you may prefer to purchase rather than some of these calorie rich or calorie dense sweeteners. But I do like to have maple
syrup and honey on hand because they are nutrient rich. The next thing I want to share with you are the condiments that
I like to buy at Costco. This is something that we've
been finding recently there, they're garlic and
jalapeno stuffed olives. These are so delicious, and I actually bought
these on our previous trip, and I've got a couple of jars
of this in our refrigerator, one's open and I've got a couple in the back refrigerator to store because when we saw them, I think we bought four jars at one time because we just go through these. They're absolutely delicious. So that, so if you see
these at your Costco and you like garlic and
jalapeno, give these a try. And when it comes to olives
I just want to mention that you know if you've been to Costco you've seen they often have
a big selection of olive oil. Now I don't buy my olive oil there, you know being that I live in Texas and we have olive ranches
in the area out here in the Hill Country where I live, I can buy olive oil locally. And when I don't buy it locally I often will find a nice Italian olive oil that I like at my grocery store. Also they always have a large
selection of herbs and spices. Now I like to grow a lot of
my own herbs and dry them, and if you're interested
in learning how to do that I have a playlist about my herb garden and all of that, and I'll
be sure to link to that. But if you like to buy a
lot of your herbs and spices already dried for you, they
have a great selection. And if you like to then use those herbs and those spices to make
your own salad dressings or your own herb mixes, I also have a lot of videos where I show you how to
do those things as well, and I'll be sure to link to that. But the one thing that I
really like to buy at Costco are the black peppercorns. I just think that this
is a terrific amount. I like to buy, I definitely
like to buy peppercorns in bulk because I use a lot of them, I throw them into my bone broth. I pretty much use them in
every area of my cooking. Whenever I'm doing
something with turmeric, which is wonderful
anti-inflammatory spice, adding black pepper to it
helps the body absorb it and really let the turmeric do its job at tamping down inflammation, so I always like to make sure that I have a big supply
of peppercorns on hand. And this is a much smarter way to buy them then the tiny little jars
at the grocery store. Yes, we love our coffee. (laughs) As you've noticed, if
you can see behind there, I have two coffee pots. My husband likes decaf,
that's what I've got here, and I like caffeinated. And I actually got both of
these on a previous trip to Costco, not our most recent one, but I like to pick up this, I think it's pronounced Ruta Maya coffee. We like this brand, it's very flavorful, and being able to buy it, especially when they've
got it in these large bags it's quite a good savings compared to what it would
cost us at the grocery store. And we're also happy
when the carry the decaf, that way we're all covered, we have the caffeinated and the decaf. And they have a large variety of coffee. This is especially nice
because it is organic but if it doesn't matter to you whether the coffee is organic or not they do have a big selection, and I think that the
prices are always better than what you can find
at the grocery store. Now this bag, this big bag is
about two and a quarter pounds and these are the whole beans. I like to buy the whole beans, and then just grind them at home. You know it just stays fresher longer. Especially if you're ever storing any of this in your prepper pantry. And the price is going to
fluctuate, coffee fluctuates, so it may be a big bag like
this for the caffeinated could run maybe around $18, but again depending on you know where, how the price is fluctuating it may be a little more expensive, may be a little less expensive. But that's going to come
in, you know at maybe under, maybe a little under $9 a pound for organic shade grown coffee beans, which is pretty good price. Now this is something new
I've been seeing at my Costco and I just love it. These are organic
chickpeas, they're dried, and the bag is double sealed. This bag on the outside,
you know feels loose, but then this is sealed really tight like a nice hard brick where all the oxygen has been removed. So this can really stay
fresh for a long time. This is a great prepper pantry option. But what I love about this is chickpeas are so versatile,
you can do so much with them. You soak these, and cook them up, and you can toss them with
olive oil and vinegar. They make a wonderful topping
for a salad or a side dish. You can whirl them up and
make your own homemade hummus. You can use them in soups. And there's just, there's
just unlimited possibilities I feel when it comes to chickpeas. And they're also nutritious, they're a wonderful source of, a vegetarian form of protein. And what I really was pleased
about was this was $9.99. And this is seven pounds, seven pounds, and I just think that's fantastic. Seven pounds for 9.99
for organic chickpeas and what was even better was they were running a promotion
with $2 off, so this was 7.99. And something that's nice about this brand is they're not only offering chickpeas they were also selling
different types of lentils and you know what are called the dal, is it D-A-H-L or D-A-L? The Indian dal. And so that is a wonderful
thing to buy also, especially if you like
to make, is it kitchari? I think I'm pronouncing it correctly. That wonderful Indian dal that's so soothing to
the digestive system. And I have a video where I made that, and gosh, I just think it's terrific. But I had bought a bag of that as well. So this definitely something to look for if you like chickpeas. But I just want to, (speaks
in foreign language) as my Italian mother always calls them. You may also know them as garbanzo beans. But speaking of garbanzo
beans, speaking of beans, Costco is a wonderful source for beans. And at least here in Texas you can find 25 pounds
bags of pinto beans, 25 pound bags of black beans, so if you're a home canner
that's a wonderful resource and they're very reasonably priced, especially since you're buying
them in such large bulk. And even just buying them in that bulk and then packaging up, packaging
them up the way you want whether in mylar bags or however you like to store your food, that can be wonderful
for the prepper pantry. And I have a video where
I go over all the details of how to store these things that you buy in bulk, and then want to break up and
store in smaller portions, and I'll be sure to link to that video 'cause that can be very helpful. And no discussion about
beans wouldn't be complete unless we also talked about rice. Costco is also a wonderful
place to buy rice. They have very large bags of rice. They sell white rice and brown rice. They have regular rice,
they have organic rice. Usually at our Costco they
have big selection of rice. And even if your family
doesn't like brown rice or you don't like brown rice and you want to buy white rice, I'm fine with that for a
traditional foods kitchen because white rice can be a
wonderful vehicle so to speak, to add additional
nutrition into your meals. Because you can cook your white rice in bone broth instead of water, and so it's a really great
way to incorporate bone broth into your diet with a food like white rice that you might really like. And again because they sell the rice in such large quantities the price is really brought down significantly. And then when you get home, again like with the beans
you can break it up, and you can store it mylar
bags with oxygen absorbers, and really extend the shelf life. So not only are you stocking your traditional foods
kitchen, you're stocking your traditional foods
prepper pantry as well. Your backup pantry for your working pantry as well as your prepper pantry serves you know for those times when you have emergencies, whether it's bad weather,
or illness, or job loss. You know having that backup food and buying it little by little so that you don't bust the budget, and you're not like
just clearing the shelf or waiting till the last minute. Just when you go shopping to Costco just buy one at a time. Break it up, stock your
pantry, your working pantry, stock your prepper pantry, and you'll find that you're
never running out of food. And if you want some ideas for how to stock your
traditional foods pantry both your working pantry, and your extended, or your prepper pantry I have a very detailed pantry list and it's free, and I think
it's like 30 some odd pages, and you can easily head over to my website and download that. I'll be sure to put the link
in the description below. Just open the description
under this video, and click on the link, it'll take you right over
there, you can download that, you can print it out, or you can just keep it on your phone, so you've got it handy when
you're going grocery shopping. And not only do, I don't leave you sort of high and dry so to speak, not only do I give you
the list of the things that you may want to think about for incorporating into your
traditional foods kitchen, I have lots of links in there to videos where I show
you how to use these foods to, how to prepare them properly, and how to incorporate them into meals, and I also have the printable recipes, so you'll be all set. Now this I thought was
such a terrific buy. This was about $7 and
change, I think it was 7.99. I had also bought this, I don't have that, this specifically on my
price list over here, on my receipt from checkout because this I had bought on
our previous trip to Costco, but when I saw this I
thought this was terrific. These are sprouted oats, now as we've talked about
in many of my videos often if you can sprout your grains you may find that you
can digest them better and that you can assimilate
the nutrients better from them. If you make sourdough bread you don't need to so much worry
about soaking and sprouting because you're souring, and that also makes the
grains more digestible. But if you've got something like oatmeal you often want to like soak it overnight especially if you're just
using the oat groats. And I have a video where I
show you how to make oatmeal just from the oat groat, which is like the actual whole grain. But what if you want to
bake some oatmeal cookies and you don't really
want to get into soaking and sprouting and all of that, but you want to make sure that you're going to extract
the maximum amount of nutrition from that oatmeal that you're putting into those oatmeal cookies. Because maybe you're making
oatmeal cookies homemade because you want to provide something more nutritious for you or your family. And that's why when I saw these I thought these were such a great idea because they're gluten-free, they're already sprouted for you, so these are rolled oats but they're already sprouted
and they're organic. How can you go wrong? Look at this big bag. This is, this is five pounds. This is five pounds of organic rolled oats that have already been sprouted for you, so you don't need to worry about
going through that process, which can be kind of difficult with oats because in order to sprout
oats the way they have here where they're sprouted and flaked for you or otherwise known as rolled oats you would have to soak
and sprout your oat groat, your whole oat, your whole oat berry, they're called oat groats. And I have a video where I show you how to soak and sprout grain. It's not really hard to do, you are not doing so much of the work as the grain is. You're going to soak it, and then you're going to allow to sprout, and then you're going to dry it, and then you're going
to have sprouted grain. And you can either grind that into a flour or what they've done here is after soaking, and sprouting,
and drying the oat groat, they're flaking it, but in order to flake a grain you need a special type of machine. Now you can buy this but I think they might be
kind of the expensive side, and I'm not really, it's
not something that I do, so I'm not sure how involved
or not involved it is. But for a little over $7 for five pounds of rolled oats, flaked oats that have already been sprouted for you, I think this is a great deal. You can not only use this in baking, you could use this to
make regular oatmeal. You don't have to worry
about soaking it overnight because it's already been
soaked and sprouted for you. And you could also
grind this in a blender, you don't even need a high-speed blender, just any old blender and make oat flower, and then you've got a gluten-free flour. This is multipurpose, so if you see this at
your Costco snatch this up because this is such a traditional food and perfect for the
traditional foods kitchen. Now I want to talk about
some nuts and some seeds, and also something that
I had not seen before, this was new to me, but
I wanted to pick this up, and I'll tell you why in a second. But first what I want to do
is while we're on the topic of talking about sprouting, I want to talk about these pumpkin seeds that I have found very frequently. I've been buying this for
quite a while now at Costco. These are sprouted organic
pumpkin seeds with sea salt. Now can you soak and sprout
your own pumpkin seeds? Definitely. However this is very convenient. That's definitely the case, you know if you're running a busy
household convenience can really make things
easier for you when you are, especially when you're
making the transition from a processed foods kitchen to a traditional foods kitchen, and you're trying to figure out how to get all of your systems in place. How to make your bone broth,
how to culture your dairy, are you making yogurt,
are you making kefir. How to prepare your sort of whole foods meals like roast chickens, how to make your ferments,
how to time that out, how to soak your nuts, how to soak and sprout your grains, how to maybe soak and sprout your seeds. And so sometimes in the beginning when you are making that transition and you're incorporating
these various tasks into your daily kitchen
life little by little taking a few shortcuts just to
kind of give you a jumpstart can be very helpful. And even if you're all the
ways over your continuum in a flow-blown traditional foods kitchen, sometimes depending on how busy you are having a few shortcuts is a huge help. Now this 22 ounces, now it is organic, organic is always a little more expensive, but this was 8.99. But this is a very good source of protein, especially if you lean towards
a more vegetarian type diet, this is going to give you
eight grams of protein, and seeds are very rich
in vitamins and minerals. And pumpkin seeds are especially
important for men's health, so gentlemen if you're watching this, pumpkin seeds are something you definitely want to incorporate into your diet. And ladies if you're feeding men this is definitely something that you want to add into their diet. So for those days or times
when you need a shortcut, yes, this is a little
more on the pricey side than if you just buy the raw pumpkin seeds and soak and sprout them yourself, but definitely something
that I think can work well if it works in your
budget to keep on hand. Next I want to talk about nuts. Now what I've got here are pecans, and I will soak these
overnight in salted water and then I will dry them and make what Sally Fallon, the author
of "Nourishing Traditions" calls crispy nuts. And the reason that we do that is a lot of what I was talking about here with soaking and sprouting seeds, nuts if you soak them
overnight in salted water and then just, and then
dry them very simply in a very low oven or in a dehydrator, it keeps them alive, it
keeps them a living food but it makes them more digestible. Because nuts and seeds, different
foods like this contain, there are things that help protect them when they're out in nature but those same protections
can be anti-nutrients to those of us who are consuming them. So that in order to be able
to digest them more easily and absorb the nutrients that these wonderful nuts
have to offer for us, soaking them can help deactivate some of those anti-nutrients. Now by soaking them and drying them do you deactivate all
of the anti-nutrients? No, but that's okay because these anti-nutrients
also have a good side to them. They're also antioxidants, and if you're familiar
with the term antioxidants, antioxidant, it means that it helps fight oxidation in the body, things that would otherwise
maybe damage your body. So there's two sides to anti-nutrients, it's not the end of the world,
so don't worry about it. And some people may find
that they digest nuts just fine without soaking them, so if you don't want to go
through that process don't worry. But if you've ever found that you have some trouble digesting nuts you may find soaking them
in salted water overnight and then drying them will
make them more digestible. Now these are over one pound of pecans, this is 1.7 pounds of pecans, so that's a good amount of
pecans, and it was $7.49. They're also organic, and even though we grow a lot of pecans here in Texas that was a very good buy. So that's why I picked these up. And I also picked up some Brazil nuts, and I'll do the same thing to them that I'll to do to the pecans, I'll soak them overnight in salted water and then I'll dry them the
next day in my dehydrator to get them nice and crisp. Now the reason that I
like to buy brazil nuts is they're very high in a
mineral called selenium, and that's something
that as humans we need but unfortunately modern diets
are often very deficient in. But by incorporating some Brazil nuts into our diet we can
meet our selenium needs. Now these were 12.49, they were more expensive than the pecans, and this is one and a half pounds, so it's a good amount
one and a half pounds, you know it is over $12, it's
a little on the pricey side but again, getting selenium
into the diet can be difficult, so I feel that it's well worth it. And since you've got
about 22 servings in here assuming that you're, on
the back they're saying, "That you're eating nine
Brazil nuts in one setting." We'll probably eat a little less, so I'll probably get a pretty, a fairly good amount
of serving out of this. Usually what I'll do is add
Brazil nuts chopped up to salads and also to our morning oatmeal, so on a regular basis I'm
incorporating a little bit of Brazil nuts for the most part into our diet every day. Now these are dry roasted macadamia nuts, these are a real treat. And my husband is often found of saying, "Oh, something just fell
in the cart." (laughs) We don't normally buy these because they are a little expensive. These were $19.49 for a pound and a half. However the reason that
they fell into the cart was because Costco was running
a special giving $4 off. Now they're still expensive
but they are a treat and we just sort of parcel them out and eat just a few at a time. But with the $4 off it created a nice
incentive for us to buy it. And we will eat these just as is, I'm not going to soak these overnight or try to dry them or anything like because they already
have been dry roasted. And that's a tip that I
want to share with you if you're not interested
in buying raw nuts and you're not interested in soaking them in salted water and drying them to make them more digestible and whatnot, often your next best bet is to just look for nuts
that have been dry roasted. Usually when they are dry roasted that process helps make
them more digestible. Now this is something I had
never seen at Costco before and it really did pull me in. This organic sweet cacao nibs
sweetened with coconut sugar. And so cacao nibs are like
your original natural form of the darkest dark chocolate there is. I'll read to you what
they say on the back, "Darker than dark
chocolate, our cacao nibs are nature's original chocolate
chip, organic, dairy free, and straight from the tree." "Called the food of the
gods by the ancient Aztecs, cacao nibs is loved for its
unique photochemical profile and enhancing effects." "These heirloom cacao beans are fermented and dried
in a painstaking process that yields rich flavor
and exceptional purity." "Taste the difference when ancient wisdom
meets modern nutrition." So I thought that was very cute. But the suggested uses, so
how would you use cacao nibs? It says, "Try our nibs
in trail mixes, desserts, smoothies, and baked goods for a crunchy, chocolatey indulgence." And cacao nibs are very high in magnesium, and magnesium is very good
for relaxing our arteries, and making our blood flow easier, and thereby benefiting our heart making life a little easier on our heart. So I do like the idea of incorporating cacao nibs into our diet, and without the white sugar that often accompanies
even dark chocolate. Now these are sweetened but that's kind of what attracted me because if you've ever
had plain cacao nibs they're a little on the bitter side. And I did have a little trouble incorporating them into my recipes, and it definitely wasn't
something that I found particularly palatable to enjoy, it was more like a medicinal type taste. And say, well, I'll eat
it for medicinal purposes if it's good for my heart being high in magnesium and whatnot, but wasn't something I really enjoyed. But what drew me into this was that they're sweetened
with coconut sugar. Something I learned from all
of you about coconut sugar is that you shared with me that it has a very mild effect in terms of insulin and
glucose on the body. And so incorporating
things when they're sweet that are made with coconut sugar are certainly going to be better than anything that's been
sweetened with white sugar. Now this is a little more than a pound and it was $12.49, so
it is an expensive item but it's a nutrient dense item. And they're saying, "That
there are 18 servings in here if you use three tablespoons per serving." Which I think you could
probably stretch that out even a little farther than that to make it last a little longer. But given its high magnesium count along with all the other
vitamins and minerals that are in cacao, I think this is definitely
worth something to think about adding into your traditional foods kitchen as your grocery budget allows. Now if you would like to learn more about how to stock your pantry, your traditional foods pantry whether your working pantry or
your extended prepper pantry, be sure to click on this video over here where I have a playlist that I walk you through
step by step by step how to incorporate traditional
foods into your pantry and into your meals. And I'll ya over there in my
Texas Hill Country kitchen. Love and god bless.
