Challenge Recipe: Santana Food

I live about a block away from Santana Foods located on the corner of 6th and University so I thought I would try this location for my challenge recipe. Here's a picture:

Before I went to Santana, I looked up the USDA guidelines.  I visited http://www.choosemyplate.gov/. The website was not very helpful about explaining nutritional guidelines so I was a little unclear on how to proceed. I based this challenge recipe on the myplate graphic located on the home screen. According to the graphic, fruits and vegetables should constitute 1/2 of your dinner plate (with vegetables serving as a slightly bigger chunk). The other 1/2 of the plate is comprised of grains and protein. The graphic also shows a glass of dairy.

My plan was to visit Santana to see what items the store sold and then plan a meal based on the graphic mentioned above. I started by looking for a source of protein. I knew the store probably didn't sell traditional meat sources such as chicken breasts or steaks. The only sources of protein I could find were beans and bacon. I decided to make a breakfast meal since I could use the bacon and eggs quiet easily. I decided to make omelettes with bacon. I found an onion, tomato, and avocado to put in the omelette--these served as my vegetables. Santana sold oranges, apples, and bananas. I chose a giant orange to serve as my fruit. I also found mozzarella cheese, which I could put in the omelette for my dairy requirement. (Santana sold whole grain English Muffins, but we had some at home so I didn't purchase them). The English Muffin served as my grain. 

Here's a picture of the ingredients I found: (minus the whole wheat English muffins)

Here's the bacon, which was beef bacon not pork bacon:

Here's my final product:

Overall, the food was good. I cooked for me and my roommate. The second plate turned more into scrambled eggs rather than an omelette. Surprisingly, this challenge recipe wasn't as hard as I first thought. Maybe Santana is just a better corner store than most. I will say that it would be hard to consistently rely on Santana to cook meals that meet the USDA recommendations due to the lack of protein sources. Vegetables were also pretty scarce. I think my plate is close to the graphic. The proportions are not exactly as described, but they are close. I think the bacon was my favorite part!