What We Bought This Week: Lots of Treasures and $30 Under Budget

It’s been a bit since we have shared our shopping trips! We have all these pictures and then we run out of time and don’t get a chance to share! But we love to share our coupon shopping trips and especially our main weekly purchases – the produce!

With the introduction of our new homepage, we have many things we will be sharing, including much more on how we coupon, shop and cook to meet our budget and our family’s needs.  We are so excited to be finally sharing all of this stuff we have been doing for so long and love to just keep those things growing and sharing more and more each week.

So with all of that, our shopping was quite fun as we love to get those produce items for cheap and take them home to use up in our eating and snacking!

First, we picked up a basket of produce from our community produce co-op called Bountiful Baskets today. We paid $15 for a conventional basket of produce, and like we have mentioned, you never know what you will get! But we were pleased with the findings in this week’s basket for $15 and it is all things we love and use regularly!

So here’s what was in that basket!

• 1 5 lb bag of grapefruit
• 5 bananas
• 10 apricots
• pile of red potatoes (probably about 2.5 – 3 lbs. worth)
• 2 mangoes
• 1 bunch of spinach
• 1 bunch of lettuce
• 4 tomatoes
• 3 avocados
• 7 green apples
• 1 pint blackberries

Then today, after having some Mother’s Day celebrations and time as a family and with extended family, we hit the local Kroger store on our way home! We needed some milk and a few more produce items (the above basket does not last our family a week until the next pick-up!).

Well, we were super excited that they had a ton of markdowns, and markdowns on our favorite items – the fresh items!

Here’s what we bought at Kroger:

 

• 2 2lb. packages of strawberries (we love strawberry season!) for $2.99 each = $5.98
• 1 red onion for .42
• 2 bags of coleslaw for $1.39 each = $2.78
• 2 gallons of milk on markdown for $2.00 each = $4.00
• 1 bag of sauerkraut sale for $1.99
• 1 Litehouse Cilantro dressing on markdown for $2.49 (normally $4.99)
• 1 Litehouse Coleslaw dressing on markdown for $2.49 (normally $5.99)
• 1 head of living lettuce on markdown for $1.69 (normally $3.19)
• 4.56 lbs. of bananas on sale for .55 lb. = $2.51

Then they had this cart chock full of produce for $1.00 a bag.  It was packaged there in the store and kind of a grab bag style, but we didn’t mind and found some excellent deals (the pictured bags of produce in the middle of the picture were only $1):

• 3 bags of oranges for $1 each = $3
• 1 bag of 2 eggplants for $1 = $1
• 1 bag with 4 orange and yellow peppers = $1
• 1 bag of green apples = $1

Summary: At Kroger, we spent $30.35 on all of the above pictured items.  We don’t know how much we saved as they don’t show savings on markdowns, but we think that the cost would be at least double, so we roughly saved 50% on perishables!

Then we spent $15 on the basket from our co-op for a total of $45.35 – well within our $75 weekly grocery budget (we often come under as you can see from our previous shopping trips HERE).

And yes, the above items is all we need to have a well balanced diet including a diet filled with protein! All of the details on how we function in the kitchen and for feeding our family as just one part of our thrifty budget and lives (while doing it healthily as well!) will continue to be shared here on our site!

We really wish we had unlimited time to just write and share all of it at once.  But since we have 5 young kids that we homeschool and run several family businesses, it comes in steps and is shared in steps to save our sanity and meet our family’s needs We know you can’t wait!! And now that we have contributors to help with the all of the 20+ deals each day, the two of us get to spend more of our time focusing on the content found on our new homepage and get this information out faster!

BUT… we did want to share with you some resources to help you save on produce:

First, don’t miss our article on 30 Ways to Save Money on Produce.

Second, we have also posted this information before, but we wanted to keep posting it in these posts so that everyone reading can have some ideas on how to get involved with a produce coop:

First, our specific co-op is Bountiful Baskets and they are available in many states across the nation (mostly Western states). You can find information about Bountiful Baskets and if they are available in your area.

Second, there are many produce co-ops and grocery co op groups and it’s various forms across the nation that you can join and be a part of.  A good place to start looking is at a the site localharvest.org (which is going to help you get organic local food) or coopdirectory.org (I am not sure how updated this site is as our area’s listings were old and many not listed, but at least worth a shot!) or search produce co-op your state under google and see what listings come up.

For more fun and informative frugal reads, don’t miss these posts:

• How to cut and freeze Pineapple
• Can You Freeze Eggs? Yes you can and here’s how!
• 35 Ways to Reuse, Re-purpose and Recycle Dryer Sheets with Printable Download
• More Of Our Other Shopping Trip Results

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