Loading Your Grocery Cart with Color

By Valerie Driscoll, Lead Coach and Coaching Program Developer for Apollo Health

My Mom was a school nurse for 25 years, both beloved and feared for her devotion to her students. She also loved to talk about almost anything — to almost anyone. This is why I hate to cook.

This seems like a non-sequitur, so let me explain:

For the four years that I commuted with my Mom and my brother from work to home, there was no comment that unleashed a response more desperate and pleading from her children than the dreaded words, “I just have to stop in the store for a minute to get something for dinner.” She always said the words so calmly, as though the ensuing whining, crying, and begging from her children to please take us home first were a surprise. Looking back now, I have no idea how my Mom did all she did, but as seven and ten-year-olds who did not know much yet, we knew this for certain: “A minute” was code for 90 minutes, for as my mother strolled the aisles of our small-town supermarket, she would run into no fewer than eight parents of her beloved students and have a long conversation with each one about their kid(s).

This regular experience as a kid instilled in me a deep loathing of the grocery store, which likely factors into my deep loathing of cooking. And yet, I have become both a cook and a shopper because, on this Bredesen gig, you must do both.

I was always a stealth shopper: get in and get out, no strolling, perusing, or considering. Grab the things you need and flee. My basket (cart? Not a chance.) usually contained the same six items because that is how the stealthy must roll.

As you must expect, going “Bredesen” blew my stealth to shreds, and now, amazingly, I am a happy pusher of carts. My meager plastic basket has transformed from its sad state into an Amazing Technicolor Dream Cart!

As I often say, “If I can do this, anyone can.” I have also learned, as someone who only sometimes cooks from recipes, that an amazing cart will lead to amazing meals. I now make delicious meals on the regular that even non-Bredesen guests eat with gusto.

So, if you are not yet doing it, how can you build an amazing technicolor dream cart?

It is really easy when you use the KetoFLEX 12/3 Grocery Guide (available to members), which you can print out or download and take to the grocery store. Another newer guide, of which you are getting a sneak preview, is Eat the Rainbow PDF, which is downloadable here.

If I am rushed and shopping mindlessly, my cart will be overly green, as these are all of my favorite veggies, so I make some easy switches: yellow pepper for green, maybe radicchio for one head of lettuce, and purple olives. Then I add colors I don’t have: mushrooms for brown, raspberries for some red (and yummy in a salad), a lovely purple cabbage (truly the gift that just keeps giving), and cauliflower for white.

After these minimal changes, I look down onto a stunning cart that is filled with color and phytonutrients. It even makes cooking much more fun as I build a meal the same way I build a cart, but that is a story for another day.

If you are a planner rather than a wing-it shopper, sit down with the two guides and plan your shopping list around color, having one or two choices from each section of the Eat the Rainbow guide, downloadable here. No matter how you do it, wheeling around a cart of many colors can be foundational to your KetoFLEX 12/3 success. It has also led me to several wonderful conversations with fellow shoppers. When I grab something a little more unusual, someone asks me how to prepare it. A friendly chat in the store? My Mom would be delighted to know that her apple (red, green, or yellow) really did not fall far from the tree after all.