Wowie Zowie it was a great week in the free food department! Lot’s of peaches, apricots and pears for our spoiled chickens and oodles of bananas for us. I’m not sure what to make of all the bananas we’ve been getting in the produce boxes lately, but we’ll take them, that’s for sure.

Do you think people purchase fewer bananas in the summer because there is a better selection of fruit to choose from? Do spotted bananas just not sell? Even if marked down? Inquiring minds want to know.

Poor little broccoli head. He was tossed because one of his florets got smashed. 🙁 But you know what they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

This white nectarine was deemed unfit for sale because it had a small nick near it’s stem.

And these banana chips? Who knows why they were tossed, but I’ll take them!

Here is all the food we were able to reclaim from the boxes of “scrap produce” we picked up this week from Mr. Produce Guy. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been collecting these scrap boxes for over almost a year and a half now and without fail, each week we are able to not only pull fruits and veggies for our family to eat, but plenty more for our flock of backyard chickens.

Free, nutritious food is out there, you just have to look {and ask} for it. Pretty stinkin’ cool if you ask me.

Peace Out Girl Scouts, have a great day.

~Mavis

 

Amazon has the Hultzer Banana Slicer back in stock! Please, I’m begging you, go read the reviews on the Banana Slicer. It will make your day! 🙂

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 there were quite a few strawberries, melons and grapes to sort through. Unfortunately, the melons were a little past their prime to feed to my family but our flock of backyard chickens sure loved them.

Out of the 3 boxes of produce scraps Mr. Produce Guy gave us, this is what we kept. If I had to guess this is probably a weeks worth of fruit for most families. Lucky for us, we didn’t have to pay a dime for it.

In case you are wondering what we did with all the produce, I took all the apples and made 2 batches of dehydrated apple chips. With the reclaimed stuff from the grocery department and the produce we have growing in the backyard I thought it would be nice to make a few batches and tuck them away for my kids lunches this fall. And when I say tuck them away I mean HIDE them. 😉 Shhh. Don’t tell my teens or they’ll go looking for them.

The strawberries were washed, trimmed and tossed into the freezer to use later in the year in smoothies.

And the grapes? Well most of them went in a glass refrigerator container for easy snacking, but I did put a few in zip baggies for the HH’s lunch.

And last but not least, I chopped up the broccoli, red pepper and lone carrot for an easy stir fry dinner.

Waste not, want not.

I thought it was a great week for free produce, don’t you?

Have you tried talking to your local grocery, CSA or favorite farmer yet about getting a deal or possibly picking up FREE discarded produce yet? Well you should. After all, the worst someone can do is tell you know.

Peace Out Girl Scouts, I’m off to go water the garden.

~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.

Wowie Zowie!  Take a look at all that free food! As you would imagine, summer is one of the best times of year to score free produce because there is such an abundance of food flowing into grocery stores.

Before I could take my final picture, The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird snagged 2 avocados and whipped up a batch of guacamole and had herself a little fiesta!

Fresh strawberries? Have you been to the stores lately? Deals on berries are everywhere!

Fresh corn? Heck ya, I’ll take it. The way I see it, I’d rather be able to take all this corn and turn it into side dishes like corn and black bean salad, roasted corn with bacon {yum!} or summer corn with zucchini and onions than see it go throw in the dumpster to rot.

This Earthbound Farm organic salad was thrown out because the expiration date stamped on the front. According the the package, it was one day past it’s prime. Remember when food never even came with an expiration date? Am I getting old? Geez.

Here is a picture of all the food we kept {the rest was either composted or given to our flock of pet chickens}. Does this food still look edible to you? Would you have thrown it away? Or would you have bought this right off the shelf and fed your family with it?

Mavis wants to know!

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.

Well it was another awesome possum week in the reclaimed food department. We were able to pick up 4 boxes for fruits and vegetables from Mr. Produce Guy. All of which was headed for the dumpster.

Spotted bananas, heck yeah I’ll take those. I can turn them in to Banana Bread, Banana Fudgesicles, Banana Cake, or Banana Pudding, thank you very much! 😉

Free carrots? Yup, we’ll eat those too. Do you think people really choose The Biggest Loser carrots over different brands?

Asparagus with wilted, slimy tops? No thanks, but the chickens like to peck at them.

Hmmm. Peppers with a wee be of decay on the bottom, what do you think?

I’m keeping them! Why? Because I have this handy thing called a knife and I know how to cut out the bad parts! Weeeeeee, snagging reclaimed food to stretch my grocery dollars is fun!

So what do you think? Am I crazy, or would you have thrown all this away too?

Mavis wants to know!

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.