Today's Frugal Produce Shopping Trip

After yesterday's post about my shopping trip, I have to say that despite my reassurance that we do have produce at home and we will manage in that department, I was feeling guilty about the lack of fruit and variety of produce, and I'm sure some people reading the post were thinking that it didn't seem like enough produce...

So today there was a local sale that often had good prices for produce, so I went to check them out.
I spent $14.80 and got all this, which, to be honest, is not as much produce as I'd get for the amount in the open air market, but I'm working with my limitations here and this is much less than I would have paid for the same produce at the cheap grocery store that I shopped at yesterday.

When I was at the sale, I simply set myself an upper limit per pond for produce. Fruit nothing more than 65 cents a pound, and veggies nothing more than 39 cents a pound.

Apples are great and one of my kids' favorite fruit to snack on, but they were 90 cents a pound so I decided to skip them. Instead of apples, I got pears which can be eaten similarly and last a similar length of time in the fridge (one of the reasons I like to buy apples, because I don't have to worry about them spoiling quickly and then being wasted) and cost only 65 cents a pound. I also got nectarines and plums for 65 cents a pound. Altogether I got 14 lbs of those fruit. At my local cheap grocery store these same fruit were being sold for 90 cents a pound or more, so I'm happy with the price I paid.

Grapes were being sold for $1.04 per pound, so I wasn't going to get any, until I saw that they had set some aside to be sold at reduced prices- only 39 cents a pound. Yes, there were some gross grapes there, but I found some great looking grapes and got a large bag full. I would have gotten more but grapes do spoil fast so it wasn't worth getting too many.

I also saw pumpkin and zucchini for 39 cents a pound so got that too. The zucchini, pumpkin, and grapes altogether weighed 14.5 lbs. At the grocery store I shopped at yesterday, the zucchini and pumpkin were being sold for 2.5 times that amount.

So in the end 28.5 lbs of produce for $14.80, averaging at 52 cents a pound. I'll take it.

The problem with buying so much fruit in one go is my kids can devour fruit and eat nothing but that, turning down meals, because they ate too much fruit, so I'm just taking out a bit of fruit at a time for the kids so that we'll be able to have this last until next week, when I'll shop at this weekly sale once again. For now I showed my kids the grapes and a few of the plums and nectarines; when those are finished I'll take out the rest of the plums and nectarines, and after that the pears. That will make sure nothing spoils and will also help pace it.

Have you gotten any good deals on produce recently? How much produce does your family go through a week?