Joe's knows, food that is!

My entire life I have loved grocery stores! Growing up I always wanted to go with my mom, and that's where my love for food began. I had never been into, heard of, even knew Trader Joe's existed until I moved to Albuquerque. Michael and I thought we would check it out the first week we moved here and have been Trader Joe's fanatics ever since! For those of you not within a certain radius of a warehouse (That's why Texas doesn't have one)...I will give you some insight.

Trader Joe's is a small specialty grocery store full of high quality, good-for-you products at low prices. The stores are smaller than regular grocery stores (which I think makes a more pleasant shopping experience) and the staff is always positive and personable. Every time I go into Trader Joe's I come out with a fun fact, recipe idea, or at least a smile on my face because the people that work at my local TJ love their job! Here are some of my favorite Trader Joe's finds:

1. TJ Reduced-Guilt Woven Wheats (better than wheat thins!)
2. TJ Low-Fat Brie Cheese (sounds like an oxymoron, but it's heaven for a cheese lover like me!)
3. Old Moon Zinfandel (Great Wine for $5.99 and WAY better than the infamous "two buck chuck")
4. TJ Fat-Free Greek Style yogurt w/ honey (not cheap at $1.19/5.3 oz., but so worth it and way better for you than non-greek style yogurt)
5. Grape Tomatoes (tomatoes at TJ taste better year round and are cheaper than the regular store)
6. TJ Goat Cheese Crumbles (perfect for a spinach salad!)
7. Par baked Bread (finish it in your oven and it tastes like you made it!)
8. Kashi Autumn Wheat Cereal for $2.99!
9.TJ French Roast Coffee Beans (we've tried a few, this is our fave so far)
10. Flowers! Trader Joe's has great flowers, they're so cheap it doesn't have to be a special occasion...look what I found yesterday for $3.99!

If you have the opportunity to shop a a Trader Joe's...do it! You, your body, and you pocketbook will be glad you did!

Run for the Zoo!

Every year the Albuquerque Biopark Society has the "Run for the Zoo" to benefit the Zoo, Aquarium and Botanical Gardens. You can enter the 10K run, 5K run/walk, or 1 mile run/walk and you get FREE admission to the zoo on race day! I thought I would challenge myself and run the 10K, and Michael wanted to run the 10K as well. I only signed up for the race two weeks prior, and didn't have much time to train...but I did it! (I didn't even stop once!) After the race, we went to collect our Kentucky Derby winnings at the track (Thank you Calvin Borel!) grabbed some warmer clothes (because it was in the 50s!..in May!) and headed back to the zoo...for FREE! If you have never been to the ABQ Zoo, you may be thinking..."Cool Morgan, free admission into a Zoo that's probably not that great because Albuquerque is not that large and in the desert". Well prepare to be amazed! The Zoo in "the Q" has everything you could ever want to see at a Zoo (seals and sea lions, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, elephants, polar bears, giraffes, hippos, camels, tamarins, koalas, Mexican wolves aka "Lobos", mountain lions, monkeys, jaguars, zebras and rhinoceros...to name a few) plus gorgeous groundskeeping. Here are a few pics of what we saw today...