(This post is sponsored by Sprouts! Thank you so so much for reading and supporting the brands that I love!)
As some of you might know if you follow me on Instagram, last month I went to Arizona for an incredible trip with Sprouts! If you aren’t familiar with Sprouts, it’s a grocery store that focuses on healthy living at an affordable price. I absolutely love the store, and they recently opened one up in my hometown in March!
Since then, I’ve been a regular, (it’s not hard to be when you go to the grocery store at least once a day š), so I was thrilled when they asked me to be a guest on this trip!
I absolutely love Arizona and have some great memories there even though I’ve only been a couple times!
Sprouts headquarters is in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is where we stayed as well. The resort was gorgeous, and it was so nice to be out of the Maryland humidity.
The theme of the trip was “Plant Based Getaway” and many of the other influencers and bloggers there were plant based eaters, some vegan, some dairy free, and some not. Like me!
I don’t follow any one “type” of eating, but I definitely include TONS of plants in my diet. Most of the time, I’d say I eat around 80% plants and 20% meat. I just feel my best when I fuel my body that way. Sometimes it changes depending on whats going on in my life, but I always do my best to consume as many plants as I can per day!
We learned a ton about Sprouts initiatives with sustainability, making healthier eating more approachable and affordable, and we got to taste test several new products that are launching later this summer!
What really stood out to me is how much Sprouts cares about their mission and their employees. We learned they believe that “Healthy living is a journey and every meal is a choice, and they love to inspire, educate, and empower every person to eat healthier and live a better life.”
They even have a big sign of those very words in their headquarters (it’s actually their mission statement!)
This really resonated with me because I, too, am super passionate about healthy eating and living a balanced life. I eat really well most of the time because it makes me feel my best, but the other 20%, I love to indulge in the things that I love, go out to eat and order whatever the heck I want, and just live my life. Balance is key, and it’s also a constant journey!
Sometimes I might lean 80:20, more 60:40, or heck, even 50:50. I feel like as long as I do my best in the season of life I’m in, it’s all OK!
For me, making sure I’m living my best life includes eating lots and lots of plants. And I’m so happy that Sprouts shares this same passion, because I think it can change so many people’s lives.
Aside from learning about Sprouts initiatives, we also got to do lots of fun challenges, one being similar to a “Chopped” challenge, if you’ve ever watched that show on Food Network.
All of us received a basket with mystery ingredients (we actually worked in pairs), and had to create the best plant based sandwich we could with what was in our basket and the extra supplies they had stocked in the kitchen.
Because I can’t help but add avocado to nearly everything I eat, I decided on an avocado, baby kale, radish, and cucumber sandwich with a plant based herb cheese on the bread, and I also seasoned it with some sea salt and pepper, since it was such a simple sandwich. And my team won! It was super fun and I thoroughly enjoyed having to think outside the box. Ha. No pun intended!
Another favorite part of the trip for me was the dinner we had with Melissa’s Produce and Leftie Wines at Sur La Table. It was SO much fun, and the menu was focused around jackfruit and tropical fruit.
I had never had jackfruit before, but I’ve always been intrigued by the claims that say it’s a great sub for pulled pork. We didn’t have it in pulled pork form, but we tried it raw, in a salsa on crepes, we had the roasted seeds (that were actually my favorite part!), and in fruit salad!
I really liked it, and thought it tasted tropical, kind of a mix between a mango and banana. It was super fun!
And we got to make our own fruit salad and stuff it inside coconuts! I used a mixture of dragonfruit, prickly pear, pomegranate, and pineapple! It was absolutely delish.
Especially when I got a little bit of coconut meat in every bite!
Last but certainly not least, one of my favorite parts of the trip was trying some of the products that Sprouts carries, as well as several Sprouts brand products that haven’t been released yet. I couldn’t take any photos of those unfortunately, but they’ll be released at the end of the summer! There were so many good things I wanted to take home.
We got to taste test the products, and even write a little romance copy for the packaging, which was super fun! I was actually one of the winners for the romance copy challenge (which if you don’t know, it’s the fun language that gets printed on the packaging describing the product) and I got chosen to be filmed for a fun video where I talked about the products I tried!
I will definitely share that with you guys once it goes live later this summer.
Thank you SO MUCH to Sprouts for such a wonderful trip and experience at the Plant Based Getaway.
I’ll be sharing more about the trip over the next couple months! <3
Sounds like a great trip! Congrats on winning a couple of the challenges, too! Does that mean your copy will be on the product packaging?
Thanks so much Elizabeth! I’m not sure if it will be actually – they didn’t say. The prize for winning that challenge was to be in the promo video. But I hope so..that would be so cool!!