At the beginning of January, I received the GOOP newsletter put out by celebrity Gwyneth Paltrow. It offered recipes and details for a 3-day “winter detox.”

While I don’t necessary buy into the theory of “detoxing,” per se, I was intrigued by this post for a couple of reasons:

1) I had been struggling with an awful cold I picked up during our road trip that I just couldn’t shake. It started as a cold and then became an ear infection and bronchitis. I had been sick for over a month and while I was slowly recovering, I just wanted to get rid of this virus once and for all. I had already been through antibiotics with my doctor and thought I would give this detox a try.

2) Many people seem to be so dismissive of the GOOP plans. There seems to be an automatic assumption that they are too hard or only for rich people with private chefs and personal assistants. When I read the GOOP posts, I always imagine some fashionable person in Paris, New York or Los Angeles doing them but I wanted to know for myself if it really was achievable for “ordinary people”– like say a mom living in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

My first step was to read through the recipes and make a shopping list. I have tried recipes before that used non-dairy substitutes like almond milk so that part of the shopping list was not so odd for me. There were quite a few things on this grocery list that I had never heard of before. Most of these ingredients I had eaten in restaurants at some point but had never purchased myself. I have to confess that I did roll my eyes a bit when I came across “mint flavored liquid chlorophyll” as an ingredient. “OK, where in the world am I going to find that?” I wondered, but I wrote it down anyway.

In the end, I went to 4 different stores to pick up all the supplies for this project. My poor children were dragged along with me. I might have been able to cut down the stops a bit but was trying to keep the cost of this project down as much as possible. So, I bought as many ingredients as I could at Wal-Mart where the costs are usually cheapest, as well as a large bag of organic quinoa at Costco because quinoa is one of my favorites. (Note that you can buy quinoa just about everywhere these days, including at Wal-Mart.) I knew many of the exotic ingredients would have to come from Fredericksburg’s high-end grocery store, Wegman’s, and there was one supplement that I purchased from The Vitamin Shoppe.

I was surprised at how many of the ingredients Wal-Mart had, including anchovy filets, shallots and parsnips. Wegman’s with its extensive health food section came through for us on the various alternative “milks” and coconut-derived products as well as lemongrass, almond butter, the exotic vinegars, and organic non-GMO miso paste. Wegman’s even had “mint flavored liquid chlorophyll” in their vitamin/supplement section! The only supplement I couldn’t find at Wegman’s was spirulina powder (even though it was supposedly somewhere on their supplement aisle). The Vitamin Shoppe had several jars to choose from and the employee knew right where it was.

There were a few items that were unattainable, however. Fredericksburg grocery stores do not seem to carry “kabocha squash,” which I keep seeing as an ingredient in various celebrity recipes on the web. We substituted acorn squash instead.

“Rooibos chai tea (easy to find)” was anything but. Wegman’s has an enormous section of tea with hundreds of different varieties. I could find rooibos tea and chai tea made from green, white or black tea but no rooibos chai. I settled for Celestial Seasoning’s Rooibos Pomegranate Tea. I also picked up Yogi’s “Breathe Deep” tea as extra herbal therapy for the detox. You will be drinking a lot of herbal tea so you might as well pick up a variety that sounds tasty or helpful.

“Smoked Pimentón” was another mystery ingredient. “Do you mean pimento?” a fellow shopper asked. “I have no idea,” I said. “That sounds too gourmet for me,” she said. I even inquired at the gourmet foods counter at Wegman’s. The employees looked similarly perplexed. “Doesn’t that have cheese in it?” I knew this was a dairy-free diet so I didn’t think that sounded right. I later learned from reading Gwyneth’s It’s All Good cookbook I received as a Christmas present, that pimentón is smoked paprika. I should have been looking in the spice section, not the olives!

After an exhausting shopping trip, I located all but 3 of the ingredients and found substitutes for what I didn’t have.

All in all, the total came to around $171.

Many of these ingredients (like the exotic vinegars) are more like supplements to your pantry staples and can be used again for future recipes. If you already have a gourmet pantry, your costs will be far less. Also, you could probably omit a few of the ingredients if you wanted to. I am not sure why “pink Himalayan sea salt” is better than regular salt. You could probably get away with choosing one of red or yellow miso paste and you could just drink the rooibos tea instead of buying a separate herbal tea but for about $20, these were indulgences we agreed to try. On the other hand, if you purchase all of the optional ingredients: protein powder, chocolate-flavored protein powder, and bone marrow broth, you might spend a little more.

While $171 is more than what we usually spend for 3 days of meals, I found that in the end there was about a week’s worth of food here. For our family, $171 a week on groceries is pretty good. Most of the recipes serve 4 people so the cost per meal per person is roughly $6.32, very close to the cost of a fast food meal.

Did you try the GOOP Winter Detox? Do you have tricks for gourmet grocery shopping? Please share in the comments.

In my next post, cooking the GOOP Winter Detox recipes.

*I am not affiliated with GOOP or any store or product mentioned in this post.