New Food Finds and More Supplements

Trying to find Gluten Free, Casein Free, Sugars Free, and Trans/Hydrogenated Fats Free Foods can be a challenge anywhere, especially for an affordable price. I have found this to particularly be the case here in West Texas. Lubbock does not have a Whole Foods store, and while we do have a few health food stores that do make life easier when it comes to finding GF, CF, organic, etc. options, they tend to be a bit pricey.
To try and find the best prices and see exactly what Lubbock has to offer, I have been comparison shopping. In doing so, I have found that Vitamins Plus (close to Slide and 82nd, inside of Drug Emporium) has pretty good prices. For example, they have two brands of almond flour, one that is made from blanched almonds (Bob's Red Mill) and one that is not (WOW (I think)). The Bob's Red Mill was slightly more expensive (about 7 cents per ounce more), but it was significantly less expensive there than at the other health food stores in Lubbock, such as Alternative Food Company, Natural Health Market, or Well Body where it was typically at least $10 if not $11 or more. They also have sales (for instance, Almond Breeze is currently only $1.69 for a carton (and if you have the coupon for a dollar off that was in the Sunday paper a few weeks back, you can get it for 69 cents! that is two dollars cheaper than United Supermarkets' prices). They also get organic produce each Thursday, although it's pretty expensive. The only downsides to Vitamins Plus are that they don't have student discounts and they don't have everything that I'm looking for.
Both meat and nut flour tend to be expensive everywhere, though. Casein free margarine has also been pretty expensive everywhere, especially the stick kind (yes I finally found it, Well Body carries Earth Balance brand stick margarine, which I'm thankful for when it comes to baking). One pound of margarine was over $5, ouch! United Supermarkets has a brand (I think it's fairly new) called Full Circle that has natural, no antibiotics/hormones, vegetarian fed chicken and natural, freshly caught fish. At the moment, some of it is the cheapest I've found (the only fish I've found, not surprising since we live in the middle of the desert). The free range stuff, which is my preference, is still expensive, some just as expensive as the stuff at other stores, but I think for the most part it is cheaper. I'm still investigating.

Tips and Tricks
Pharmacies such as Walgreens and CVS tend to have vitamin sales from time to time, when this happens, it can be good to stock up. This week for example, Walgreens had some of their brands of vitamins on sale buy one, get one free. With this sale I got 150 tablets of 2000IUs of D3 for essentially $6 (it was $11.99 for one bottle of 150 tablets). Since you only take D3 once a day, that is 150 days worth, which is really great in my opinion.

I plan to try either banana muffins (not quinoa this time) or banana raisin bread this weekend, so I will let you know how that turns out.

Namaste,
Mel G.