Money Saving Mom®

Guest post from Jacqueline Smith

In a perfect world, eating lots of produce would be easy, economical, and fun for the whole family. But let’s face it: we all struggle with eating fresh fruits and vegetables for one reason or another.

The good news is, the more organized we are, the more we save on produce. Here are five tips to help you save money on produce:

1. Start your meal plan before you shop…but don’t limit yourself to it.

Meal planning is an essential part of making sure that you use up all of your produce, but you don’t want to handcuff yourself to buying just what’s on your meal plan as you shop.

The solution? Complete about 50% of your week’s meal plan before you head out the door. Once you have a chance to see what’s on sale and what looks freshest at your supermarket, buy those items, too, and finish up your meal plan when you get home.

2. Buy in-season produce. Skip the (expensive) rest.

We all know not to buy watermelon in February, but what about the fruits that are available year-round like apples (or vegetables made available year-round like sweet potatoes)? You may not notice because it inches up slowly, but the price of apples can go up as much as 50 cents per pound when they’re out of season.

The solution? Skip apples in the spring and summer. Buy berries and melons and other spring/summer fruits instead. Before you know it, fall will swing around again, and apples will come back down in price. This interactive map from Epicurious can help you know what’s in season in your region.

3. Involve the whole family.

Make sure you keep your grocery list and meal-planning sheets somewhere in the house where the whole family can see them. Encourage everyone to add to the lists whenever they have a request or meal idea. This ensures that you’ll buy produce your family will be excited to eat.

4. Have a worst-case scenario soup and smoothie plan.

Some weeks, we all just get so busy that much of the produce we buy doesn’t get eaten by the end of the week.

The solution? Simply keep some soup stock on hand and make a soup with all of the leftover veggies from the week. Likewise, throw overripe fruit in your blender and make smoothies either with ice or frozen bananas. No wasted produce = no wasted money!

5. Celebrate your team work.

In order to keep your family eating lots of produce over the long run, take time at the the dinner table to celebrate how you all worked together to eat the most perishable food before it spoiled. A little praise goes a long way!

How do you save money on produce? 

Jacqueline Smith loves to help families save big on produce using simple tools that simply work. You can read more about her at JacquelineSmith.com.

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Guest post from Anita

On Sunday night, I opened my chest freezer and found a new Eat from the Pantry Challenge unexpectedly waiting for me this week. In other words, all the food had thawed out, and everything had to be thrown away except one loaf of bread, one package of hot dogs, and the kids’ Freezies.

Instead of feeling sick to my stomach for all that wasted food (and money!), I decided right away to be grateful for this situation. The first and obvious thankful part was that an already-thawed freezer is super easy to clean!

But after a few more days of reflection, here’s what I have decided:

1. I realized what I truly valued in my freezer.

Some of the food I was a little upset to lose like the roasts, Ham and Cheese Pockets, and Brown Bag Burritos. But there were a few items in there that I really didn’t mind throwing away. I’m going to use this to more carefully inform my grocery shopping choices, especially when it comes to sales and “stocking up.”

2. I realized how much food we had accumulated.

I was grateful that I hadn’t yet divided up and frozen the 10lbs of chicken I had just purchased. But once I also took a few minutes to inventory the dry goods in the pantry, I came up with a list of 10 meals without having to purchase a single thing!

While I will still try to purchase a little extra over the coming weeks to rebuild our freezer supply — especially meat — I think I’m going to buy less at a time. This should help cut our grocery budget down even more.

3. I realized (again) how much of my security was wrapped up in having extra food on hand.

This is a thought that’s been developing for me over the past few months, and something that is probably rooted in an economically-challenged childhood in a single-parent home. I feel more secure when I have a full freezer and pantry. But knowing that’s why I sometimes buy more than I need, allows me to stop and choose not to do it. There’s freedom in truth.

4. I realized how grateful I am for my Emergency Fund!

Once we determined that the freezer was just unplugged instead of broken, I was glad that we wouldn’t need to replace it. However, I also realized that if we had needed to do so, or really needed to purchase extra food for this week, we could have used part of our small emergency fund to do so.

A few years ago, a kaput appliance would have meant using a whole paycheck and playing catch-up with our regular bills for months.

5. I realized how much progress we’ve made in the last couple years!

The fact that I had food in the freezer, hadn’t paid full price for any of it, know how I’m going to replace it, can eat this week in the meantime, and have an Emergency Fund in case the situation had been worse, are all significant benchmarks to me of how much I have learned and developed new financial habits over the last four years.

While I know there’s still work to do, I’m grateful for this “test” and the encouragement of seeing just how far I have come already.

In a couple weeks, I’m going down to part-time work so I can spend more time teaching my children at home. While we’ll be saving some money on childcare, I still need to trim my household budget a little more to make our new arrangement work. Thanks to my freezer incident, I know exactly how I can do just that!

Anita works full-time {soon to be part-time} and homeschools her kindergartner in the evenings after the toddler goes to bed. She and her husband are rebuilding their credit and relearning financial habits after a bankruptcy, loss of a small business, and unemployment.

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