One bad apple spoils the whole bunch, right?

What do you think, does all this food look like trash to you?

Now I’m all for reclaiming free food, but there were multiple moldy strawberries in this 1 pound container of berries, and picking out the one or two good strawberries just wasn’t worth it to me. Mold on food is a bad thing, {unless we’re talking about cheese, which we’re not}  and I certainly don’t want to get anyone in my family sick. So I decided to toss all the free strawberries this week on to the compost heap rather than picking through them.

But tossing one tomato to save 3 others, well, that seemed totally acceptable to me.

I’m not sure if there are rules within grocery stores prohibiting them from removing damaged produce from packaged items and reselling them by the pound, {rather than by the container} but I’m guessing there is.

I can totally understand how doing so would mess with inventory controls, but still, tossing out 3 good tomatoes just because one of them is bad, seems like such a waste.

And the bigger crime?

Tossing out perfectly good food that is one date past its so called “expiration date.”

Food waste in America totally stinks. So if you get the change to save just a little bit of it, go for it.

~Mavis

Would you like to see what else we have brought home over the past year?

Head on over HERE to read all the past stories and to see all the pictures.

If you have just stumbled upon this series and are wondering how I got all this food for free, you’ll want to read this story first.

This week when we picked up the “chicken scrap” boxes from Mr. Produce Guy, there were quite a few watermelons. And The Girl and I were VERY excited. We LOVE watermelon. And so do our pet chickens.

Back in April of 2012 when I asked our local produce guy if we could collect extra scraps for our chickens, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But now I do. Although the food is different every week, it’s still pretty exciting to see what we can salvage from the boxes of discarded produce.

If I had to guess, most people don’t want to bother with sorting through damaged fruits and vegetables to find a few gems. But we don’t mind.

After all, free food is free food, and not knowing what we are going to get each week, is just part of the adventure.

Life is good! 🙂

~Mavis

Would you like to see what else we have brought home over the past year?

Head on over HERE to read all the past stories and to see all the pictures.

If you have just stumbled upon this series and are wondering how I got all this food for free, you’ll want to read this story first.

This past week The Girl and I picked 5 boxes of chicken scraps from Mr. Produce Guy. At first glance it really looked like quite a haul of fresh fruits and vegetables. But we soon discovered otherwise as we started to unload the boxes.

We were able to reclaim 2 bunches of fresh cilantro which will totally come in handy for fresh salsa.

But this box of fresh fruit was a total no go. Had the fruit still been left in it’s original containers I think we would have had ourselves a tropical feast. But since the fruit was just tossed into a box, I was a little uneasy about feeding it to my family.

The chickens however, had no problem eating all fruit and lettuce scraps.

And a few ears of corn as well.

This weeks fresh produce freebies:

5 ears of corn
3 bunches spinach
2 bunches of cilantro, and
4 heads of broccoli

What can I say? Some weeks are better than others, but you know what? I’ll take what I can get.

After all, free is free. Thanks you Mr. Produce Guy,

~Mavis 🙂

Would you like to see what else we have brought home over the past year?

Head on over HERE to read all the past stories and to see all the pictures.

If you have just stumbled upon this series and are wondering how I got all this food for free, you’ll want to read this story first.

This week we received 4 boxes of “chicken scraps” from Mr. Produce Guy.

Picking up produce that has been deemed “unsaleable” each week has been quite the adventure. Mostly because it’s totally hit and miss. Some weeks we find ourselves swimming in strawberries and other weeks all the reclaimed produce nearly all goes to the chickens. You just never know what you are going to get. And I think that’s what makes it so much fun.

So this week when I saw the boxes I immediately knew the chickens would be getting oodles of lettuce. But I wasn’t expecting them to get nearly a case of corn.

What? A case of corn? How can that be? Well, under the husks we found:

Moldy Corn.

Dried corn.

Mutant corn.

But hey, it wasn’t all bad. Check out all this fruitalicious goodness! Free bananas, free avocados, free tomatoes, free apples and yes, even a few ears of free corn. Life it good when you are eating scraps!

I’m thinking this is about $20 worth of free produce. Not to shabby if you ask me.

~Mavis

Would you like to see what else we have brought home over the past year?

Head on over HERE to read all the past stories and to see all the pictures.

If you have just stumbled upon this series and are wondering how I got all this food for free, you’ll want to read this story first.