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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.

How to Get Free Food Week # 15 – Reclaimed Food Show and Tell

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Blech.

When The Girl and I went to pick up the produce boxes a few days ago all I could see were heaps of lettuce trimmings.  The good thing was, chickens love lettuce.  The not so good thing, I really have no use for 4 boxes of lettuce leaves.

This week we were able to salvage:

  • 1 apple to snack on
  • carrots, broccoli, bok choy and 1 piece of cauliflower for stir fry
  • 5 ears of corn
  • 8 beets

Oh well, some weeks are better than others I suppose.  Every week can’t be filled with boxes and boxes of strawberries and melons.  Beggars can be choosers. LOL

Last night we had grilled salmon, roasted beets and rice.

So hey, life is good.

So how have YOU been scoring on your reclaimed food boxes lately? Have you been hitting home runs?  Or striking out?

~Mavis

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

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

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

How to Get Free Food Week # 13 – Reclaimed Food Show and Tell

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Each week, The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird and I head to our local market to collect boxes of discarded produce.  All of the produce you see above was sitting on the grocers shelf less than an hour or two before we came to pick it up.  The produce we bring home has either been deemed damaged, past it’s due date or was bruised.

About four months ago, I walked into our local market and asked if they gave away their produce “scraps”.  I told them we had a coop full of chickens, and that I was willing to come every week at a designated time to pick up whatever they had from that mornings shelf pull.  At first they were a little hesitant saying they had had people ask before, but that the people would pick up the produce for a week or two and then they would stop coming. Leaving the produce department with boxes of rotting produce.

So they stopped giving it away.

Obviously I convinced them otherwise.

Each week the produce we bring home varies, sometimes we will get a ton of greens, other times we will score a bunch of tropical fruit, but most weeks there is a nice assorment.

The Girl and I simply sort through the boxes, and divide it up.  Chickens, People, Compost.

The cool thing about getting 4-5 boxes of free fruit and veggies each week, {that would have otherwise been thrown away} is that we get to feast on items like pineapples, melons and corn.  Which are all things we normally can’t or don’t have the space {corn} to grow.

After sorting through all 4 boxes, this is the produce we decided to keep for ourselves.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.  I’m not sure what the retail vaule on the loot was, but I’ll take free scraps any day of the week.

Have YOU tried this?

Too embarrassed to ask?

Well, I learned a long, long time ago, that the worst thing anyone can ever do is tell you no.  So why not?  Go ahead.  Be brave, and get yourself some free produce.

To see what else I’ve brought home over the past few months? Check out the stories below.

Keep fruits and veggies fresh longer with the Progressive International Lettuce Keeper.  Amazon currently has it on sale for $13.98.

See more Fruit and Vegetable Keepers

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

How to Get Free Food Week # 12 – Reclaimed Food Show and Tell

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I sent The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird to fetch the free produce from the market this past week. When she walked through the front door with her loot she announced, “There were only 3 boxes.”

She looked defeated.

Here we are, living in high maintenance suburbia, without a want in the world, and my daughter was totally bummed because she was down a box of free produce.  She was totally boo hooing about not being able to rummage through the bruised and discarded fruit to look for more vitamin C fortified gems than she could eat.

It struck me as a little odd.

“It seems like every week we are getting less and less good stuff.” She quipped. So I quickly reminded her that something was better than nothing, and that maybe this week was just an off week.  Maybe the store had sold most of the fruit, and that was a GOOD thing.

 

Here is what we were able to salvage

  • 1 dehydrator full of strawberries + 2 more pounds {out of view}
  • 4 bundles of spinach {do you have any ideas?}
  • 3 heads of lettuce {Caesar salad}
  • 2 red peppers {I used them for strawberry salsa}
  • 2 apples
  • 1 Roma tomato

So even though the “chicken scraps” were slim this time around, the hens made out like bandits. They were able to feast on watermelon, greens, grapes, berries and corn.

Life is good.  Not matter how you slice it.

To see what else I’ve brought home over the past few months? Check out the stories below.

Food Face Plate $12.21 ~ Amazon

If you are having a hard time trying to get you kids to ea their veggies, try the Food Face plate.  My neighbor has one and her kids love it!

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

How to Get Free Food Week # 11 – Reclaimed Food Show and Tell

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This week was absolutely crazy in the reclaimed food department.  ABSOLUTELY CRAZY.  I was so caught up in trying to figure out how I was going to use/distribute 15 watermelon halves that I forgot to take a picture of everything we salvaged.

In the end The Girl and I were able to save –

  • 15 watermelon halves
  • 5 papaya halves
  • 3 honey dew halves
  • 2 cantaloupe halves
  • 2 pineapple halves
  • a boatload of strawberries
  • 3 green peppers
  • 2 pears
  • a whole lot of chicken scraps

It seems like my neighbor Girly Girl, is always entertaining on the weekends, so I gave her a ring.

“Hey Girly Girl, I have a bunch of free melon, do you want some?”

“Do I want to know where it came from?”

“No.”

“Alright, leave it on the porch and I’ll have Chino grab it as soon as we get home.  We are at Costco right now buying food for the Little Man’s birthday party.”

“What?  Well whatever you do, don’t buy any fruit.”

So then The Girl and I packed up 2 banana boxes, and drove over to Girly Girls house.  We dropped off a box of fruit on her porch, and then went around back and fed her chickens the contents of the second box.

When we got back home, we stuffed our refrigerator with melon, and brought all the extra fruit down to our chickens.

And then proceeded to steal their eggs.

Life is good.  Free melon and fresh eggs.  Does it get any better than this?

To see what else I’ve brought home over the past few months? Check out the stories below.

Elizabeth Karmel’s 13-inch Porcelain Egg Crate, 12-Egg Capacity ~ $14.99 Amazon

 

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

Mavis Butterfield Etsy