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One Hundred Dollars a Month

I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Ask and You Shall Receive – Reader Mika Sends in Her Free Produce Pictures

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By on · 26 Comments

Yesterday I showed you a re-cap of most of the food The Girl and I have been ale to recover from our local produce market.  Reader Mika left this comment:

 “So my husband and I went this morning. I’m almost in tears at the bounty we brought home. 5 5-gallon buckets immediately went to the chickens..the rest is spread over my ENTIRE kitchen waiting for me to process.”

I asked her to send in her pictures and she did. Yay!

Zucchini, cucumber, grapes (in the freezer), 15 lbs.-ish of tomatoes (already in sauce), yellow squash, red onions, broccoli, sweet potatoes, asparagus, corn.

Small deli containers of various cut fruit and veggies (17 total, some have been eaten already, some went into the spag. sauce), large containers of cut fruit and veggies (a couple had already been sent to my parents and his work, retail on the bigger ones is around $30!!!!), in the bowl was a batch of your chocolate brownie cookies..omg so good, bundles of spinach, romaine, kale, and a couple of bunches of radishes underneath.

Banana box FULL (halfway through these..some frozen whole for smoothies, others mashed for recipes), over 2 dozen bags of spinach and romaine hearts, 2 bags of red potatoes, 9 heads of lettuce.

Not pictured: a bushel of green beans (Yes, a full bushel), half a watermelon, 18 packages of mushrooms, 2 heads of cabbage, 9 bags of regular carrots, 10 bags of shredded carrots (TOTALLY making your carrot cake jam as soon as I buy some more sugar!), 3 bags of apple slices, 2 containers of salsa that weren’t even expired???, and…I think that’s it lol.  Thanks for letting me share!!!

Wahooo!  Way to go Mika.

Thanks for sending in your pictures.

Just remember, the worst thing anyone can ever do is tell you no.  So if this type of thing appeals to you, go for it.  You’ll never know unless you try.

Stay Frugal,

Mavis

 

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Comments

  4. I’m completely overwhelmed thinking about the fact that this (throwing away large quantities of edible food) is going on in nearly even grocery store across the country, every day.

    Reply

  6. This is great, I am so happy that people are making the most of ‘garbage’. I wish we were also allowed here to take them. Good for you Mika!

    Reply

  7. It is so heartening to hear that the grocery store let Mika and her family have this food, and so great that she is putting it to good use. Personally, I haven’t talked to my local grocery stores yet – still getting up my nerve.

    Thanks, Mavis and Mika, for sharing your wonderful bounty.

    Reply

  9. Wow! Awesome goodies!

    I wish I knew where to go to do this. I don’t think we can do this here in Portland, Or. I saw someone post that it goes to the Ore Food Bank a while back.

    Sometimes I can get stuff at discounted prices at one of the farms here in town but I have to get there early to get the goods. I work in the mornings so sometimes I can’t get there.

    Reply

    • I think Portland is one of the most forward thinking cities out there. Here they can’t give it to charities because they said they’ll get sued. So ridiculous.

      Reply

      • Safeway here used to have that policy. I’ll have to check tomorrow.

        But some of the restaurants in town give their extra food to the food bank.

        Reply

      • Back in the 90’s they passed a law (kind of like the Good Samaritan Act for first responders) that protects retailers and farmers from being sued when they give their leftover foods to charities. I think it was one of the few things that those on the Right and Left side of the political spectrum agreed upon. It’s amazing that so many stores still use “we’ll get sued” as an excuse. Totally awesome though that it worked out for you and your family to get all of this food!

        Reply

  10. Thanks for the photos! It really brings into perspective how much food this is.

    I admire both of you for being such good stewards of these resources. It takes time and energy to process all those goodies- but is so worth it!!

    LOVE reading these posts. Keep up the good work! 🙂

    Reply

    • I told the produce manager I have chickens (which I do) and was curious what they did with their expired produce, as I’d love to have it to help our feed bill. He said they couldn’t give it away because of Health Code reasons, but he thought that was a ridiculous policy so he made sure that all items were carefully set outside by the dumpster so he was “throwing it away” like he was supposed to, but if I were to come by and pick it up, no one would say a word. We chit chatted for a few minutes and that was that. He was VERY nice and I found I really shouldn’t have been as nervous as I was! LOL!

      Reply

  13. Seeing all those bananas, have you tried banana cake? Not bread, but cake. I love doing that, mostly because it makes use of the brown mushy bananas.

    Less waste on the counter, more waist on me (sorry, really bad pun).

    Reply

  14. I have a cousin who works in the office of a local grocery store. After reading this post about Minka and her free produce, I got up the guts to ask my cousin what their store does with the expired produce because I buy produce for my rabbit, tortoise and guinea pig each week. I was surprised when she said that they do give away some to customers who have birds, so she asked the produce guy for me and he said I can come in tomorrow morning and he’ll give me some and see what I prefer to get IN THE FUTURE! YES!!

    Reply

  15. I am curious if people are getting this produce from local small grocery stores or big box stores like Raleys? I live in an area where there aren’t any really small grocery stores, just mostly the big places. Has anyone tried those and had any success?

    Reply

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Mavis Butterfield Etsy