Having recently joined the legions of unemployed folks, in Northeast Ohio, I regularly peruse the reduced produce shelf in my local grocery store.
The other day I got a mixed bag of red, green, orange, yellow peppers for $1 and took three to an elderly neighbor and used three myself. Yesterday, I got a bag of five avocados for $1, pureed and froze 3 and gave two to my next door neighbor!
It's great fun to see what's available and to find creative uses for these products. I can still hear my Bohemian grandmother's voice praising the day old bread, the slightly bruised apple: "It's still good!"
I agree so much about buying reduced anything. I'm a mom to four young, but growing fast, children. They are 9, 7, 5, & 3 yrs. It's often that I will go to the stores early to try to get the best variety of reduced stuff. The way I see it, the stores wouldn't sell it for risk of a lawsuit if someone got sick, if it wasn't fine to eat. Just put it straight into the freezer & you'll be fine. I love this site! So many good people and great tips!
Not only is it nice to share. It's fun to see what interesting dishes can be put together. I combined two pears, two peaches, and three apples, added some sugar and cinnamon, and cooked the combination like applesauce. It was even better than straight apples.
Marked down veggies will also combine with marked down meat for some tasty dishes, too.
I think it's wonderful that you share with your elderly neighbor. It's amazing how some people freak out at seeing an expiration date. I have had milk last another 30 days past the expiration date. One key I read about some time ago is to purchase milk in cartons vs. plastic see through containers. Light exposure makes milk spoil faster. When I do purchase milk in plastic containers, I buy the one furthest away from the lighted racks in the store. Expiration dates are the law of the food police, not gospel.
When something was grown out of, or the garden produced well my mum used to say "someone will be glad of it". She died when I was 16-nearly 50 years ago, she taught us that everyone has something to give away. I wish I could tell her how proud we are of her.
I go to the store mid-week, because it's the best time to find "manager's specials." Besides the produce (I got 5 bananas last week for 60 cents!!) the meat department often has terrific mark-downs on meat that is just a day or so away from the "sell by" date. It's amazing the bargains that you can get. I rely heavily on food stamps ($12.50 a week), so every penny is precious. This makes shopping more of an expedition than a frustrating chore.
This week, whole turkey breast is on sale for 99 cents a pound, rather than $1.99. You can bet I'll be heading that way. I buy, cook, remove the whole breast halves from the bone, and freeze each one separately. Then, when I'm craving a big turkey dinner, I just thaw one of the breasts and use it up. By the way, if you do this, don't try to slice the turkey lengthwise, cut through it to get nice, whole pieces. Then I heat it up in the hot gravy (made from 3/$1 dry mix!) when it's hot but not boiling, while the veggies are steaming in the microwave. The turkey stays moist and won't over-cook in the nuker.
Not only do grocery stores mark down their produce, but they also mark down their meat. My hubby and I regularly shop at one of grocery stores around 9:30am and find some awesome deals on meats! My Mama worked in a meat market for 15 years and that's all we pretty much ate, she said there was nothing wrong with it but it was just they couldn't sell it after a certain length of time. We go home and stick it straight into the freezer and we keep our freezer pretty well stocked shopping this way. Alot of times I divide the family packs into freezer bags for smaller serving portions which makes it go even further. Also my local Walmart is good about having a bakery reduced rack and we stock up on all different kinds of breads and rolls, they freeze well too.
I always check out the marked down produce too. In my area, they mark down fine stuff that might have a slight blemish - no bruise. Such good bargains. Good luck finding a new job.
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