A Plethora of Produce

I bought all of this at Sunflower Farmer's Market. It is mostly organic and mostly locally grown. I spent $21.28 cents on the whole lot. This was an excellent find and a great value. My second frugal food lifetyle tip for you is:

Learn to make produce a vital part of your daily diet.

Here are 5 No More Grocery Shopping tips for stretching your grocery budget, keeping you out of the grocery store, and placing produce in your Best Frugal Foods category:

1. Buy produce that's in season, on sale and build your menu around that - Duh. This is a no brainer. All of this was on sale, that's why I got so much of it.
2. Determine your most acceptable price per pound/item and never pay more than that - For instance, if the best price you've paid this year for apples is $0.77/pound, but a good deal is still to be had at $0.87/pound, then always look for the best deal price, but never pay more than $0.87/pound for apples. Most produce is much cheaper than meat, consider your pound for pound costs when designing your menu. This concept can be carried over to all grocery purchases and is key to stretching your grocery budget.
3. When you find your best deal of the year buy a bunch and learn to preserve it - You can freeze or dry most produce items. I'll do a tutorial later on how to best do that, just know you can and stock up when the price is right.
4. Learn to properly store your produce - Again, Ill follow up with a tutorial someday. Just know that repackaging certain produce when you get it home will preserve it's freshness longer. For instance, leafy veggies last longer when you put a paper towel in with them. This keeps the moisture off the leaves and they last longer. Some people swear by Lettuce Keeperslike the ones in this link.
5. Plant a garden - "What?" you ask. Winter is coming on in the northern hemisphere, gardening season is over. Well take a look at what my favorite tree hugger up north is doing. She lives in Oregon, so the use of special (and not necessarily expensive) lights helps supplement their lack of sunshine, but where my climate is bright even in the cold, a sunny window will work just as well. Again, look for another tutorial to come.

Bonus Tip: Join a CSA - this is Community Supported Agriculture. It's good for your budget, it's in keeping with the No More Grocery Shopping Concept, it's usually organic, it supports the environment as well as your community and has many other benefits you might not be able to reap from your own little garden alone.

Food Storage Planner

Here's another cool tool I found online. Something to help you organize.

It's a food Storage Planner. It helps you track your inventory and gives you a clue of what you have and how quickly, or slowly you go trough it.

http://extension.usu.edu/files/publications/publication/FN_500.pdf

This is just a starting point. Look it over to inspire your own great ideas.

Handy Dandy Food Storage Calculator

I’ve had lots of questions on what to get and what I‘ve got. For online security purposes, and so if things ever get really bad I don’t have some guy backing up a u-haul to my front door to cart off all my food storage, I’m just going to tell you items we’ve gathered and keep quantities confidential. This way, if that guy ever does come knocking, I can just say, “What food storage? We ate it all. Didn’t you read my blog? I didn’t go to the store for a whole month.”

But, internet security aside, I will point you to your very own, very complete food storage calculator, here: http://lds.about.com/library/bl/faq/blcalculator.htm

There are others on the web, but this is the original Provident Living calculator, which has since been replaced by a slimmed-down version to meet the needs of food-storers world wide who may not be up on powdered fruit drink and peanut butter. And, just because it’s been replaced with a simpler, sleeker version, doesn’t make this one less true, just less universally applicable. So, sorry to my blog followers in distant lands where Jello isn’t as much a commodity as it is here. There’s still lots of good stuff on the list.

Expect my full inventory of food storage items (minus the amounts) in an upcoming post.