marketside

Though I love the Walmart 100% freshness guarantee, I’ve been mostly underwhelmed with the availability of organic produce until now — and I’ve been very vocal about this when I’ve had the opportunity to visit the Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. So when I opened the refrigerator in my hotel room on a recent trip and found it stocked with new Marketside organic juice, carrots, cauliflower and more, I actually squealed in delight!

Not only does the Marketside organic line have a new look (a purple label featuring the USDA Organic seal), they’ve also expanded the line to about 50 products currently. Look for avocados, apples, packaged salads, carrots, broccoli, onions, kale, rainbow chard, juice, grapes, potatoes, strawberries and more — all at Walmart’s everyday low prices, of course!

And in addition to rebranding the line, in 2,300 stores, you’ll find the organic produce in a segregated section. I haven’t seen this change implemented in my local store yet, but I’m hoping that it’s included in those 2,300 stores! I definitely make it through the produce section faster at stores with this type of layout.

But I did find produce bearing the new Marketside labels on my most recent trip, so I picked up some baby carrots, salad mix, and a couple of bottles of the juice. The carrots and salad mix were fresh and delicious, and if you haven’t tried the juice blends, I highly recommend you get out and purchase a few bottles.

So far I’ve tried the Mango Mix, Island Greens, and the Berry Blue. The Mango Mix is my favorite of the three, but that may change once I try the Banana Berry — I’m a sucker for a banana-berry pairing.

The new Marketside organic produce line is the perfect complement to the Wild Oats Organics line that was introduced last April. Oh, and speaking of Wild Oats, I noticed that many of the Wild Oats products are available for purchase online now!

Will you be looking for the new Marketside organic products on your next Walmart shopping trip?

Between holiday plans and sports, getting dinner on the table each weeknight has been difficult at best. I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve been eating out far too much, which can put quite a dent in our budget. As you can imagine, dinner out for a family of 7 often adds up to about a $70 tab, including tax and tip, and honestly, even a fast food meal comes in around $35.

So when Walmart challenged me to shop their Marketside products to put together a quick and easy weeknight meal for under $25, I hesitated before accepting, wondering if I really could pull that off for our large family. But I’m pleased to say, our meal did clock in under the $25 limit. And you know what else? We had plenty of food leftover!

So first let me show you just a few of the Marketside options you’ll find in stores…

You’re probably already familiar with Marketside pizzas and rotisserie chicken and even their delicious fresh-baked breads, but did you know they carry twice-baked potatoes?

Or how about soups? We picked up the Loaded Baked Potato Soup for dinner tonight, and it was fantastic. I can’t wait to try the Chicken Tortilla Soup next!

Each container holds about two small servings of soup, so two containers was plenty for us since not all of my kids are as enthusiastic about soup as I am.

The Marketside Salad Kits are amazing too. My favorite is the Asian Chopped Salad, filled with crunchy cabbage and green onions, fried wontons, almonds, and topped with a yummy sesame ginger dressing! My kids wanted to try the Bacon Caesar Salad, so we picked up that kit as well. Judging by the way they devoured it, it must have been pretty good, as well.

We haven’t tried this Cheesy Broccoli and Pasta yet, but it’s also on our list for the future. I think it would be great paired with a salad and some of the Marketside fresh-baked bread.

We rounded out our meal with a couple of these sub sandwiches. I thought the price for the value was excellent. The sandwiches are very large and heavy on the meat and cheese, unlike the subs we picked up from a certain sub shop recently. There were several varieties to choose from, so you should be able to find something that appeals to everyone in your family!

As I mentioned previously, we did come in under $25 for our entire meal — $23.94 to be exact. I apologize for the poor iPhone photo, but we were hungry! We purchased two of the sub sandwiches, a Caesar salad kit, an Asian salad kit, and two containers of the loaded baked potato soup. Even with generous servings, we still had half a sub and portions of both salads leftover.

I definitely need to get on the ball and cook at home more again, but in a pinch, Marketside from Walmart has a broad assortment of meal ideas that are a great alternative and much more budget-friendly than a meal out!