Produce is WAY to Expensive!

What you see in this picture cost me less then $50 and it doesn't include all the produce I bought!. Read the list to see exactly what is above.

• 3 large pineapples - 8.97
• 3 2.5lb bags of red cherries - $14
• 3.88 lbs of peaches (10) - $3.84
• 5 mangos - $5 (high estimate) 
• 5 lbs of bananas (well note quite, we ate some) - $2.96
• 2 garlic cloves - $1
• 1 yellow onion - $1
• 4 lbs of strawberries - $6 (high estimate)

Missing from the photo are 16 ears of sweet corn ($.33 an ear), 1 head of romaine lettuce ($1) and 1 bag of potatoes ($1.99) -  ~ $8

So, for every food I just listed above, I paid $50 for. That isn't expensive. These will be snacks and contribute to dinners for my family for darn near a month! We get paid once a month so fresh fruit at the beginning of the month and dehyrated after that is the way we do it. 

When I went into the store, I had no idea what fruit I'd be buying other then bananas because we always get bananas. I grabbed an ad as we went in and on the front page (we shop at City Market and Costco) were several of the fruits and veggies that were on sale. 

At Costco, I learned that they typically have their fruit for a good price. At City Market we pay 3-4 (depending on if it is on sale) for a pineapple about half the size of the ones in the pictures. Buy shopping at Costco for the pineapple we get MUCH more for the same amount (or less if it isn't on sale!). The same is true for the strawberries (usually 3-5 dollars at city market but less then $2 at Costco) and the mangos which happened to be out and less then $2/lb as well. 

The cherries were a nice surprise because I love cherries and last time we bought them they were FIVE a lb which makes one bag about ten bucks! Crazy right? We were able to buy THREE large bags of cherries for just 15 bucks because they were on sale for $2.99 a lb. 

The peaches were on sale for $.99 a lb. 

The onion was on sale for $.99 a lb. 

Corn was .33 an ear, lettuce was .99 a head and the 5 lb bag of potatoes were just $1.99. 

The common theme in what I just wrote is rather then going in set on getting apples, oranges and bananas, we get what they have on sale during that shopping trip. Fruit can be VERY expensive so get what is on season or what is on sale to help with the expense. This is the first time we have bought peaches since we mvoed and I cannot wait to dehydrate them! Which is my second tip. 

Buy the on sale fruit in bulk, invest in a $40 dehydrator at wal-mart and you'll have fresh(ish) fruit to eat right away and dried fruit to eat as a snack later or bake with. That's actually why we bought so many cherries. In the picture you can see a container behind the bananas... that's one bag's worth of dehydrated cherries. Took a good 16 hours to do, but darn do they taste so good! 

Now... let's put this in perspective. At this shopping trip, we spent less then $50 on fresh produce. Not buying milk, eggs or hardly any meat (we did get bacon and sausage that was on sale) we spent an additional $100 and it doesn't take up near the amount of room on my counter nor is it all as healthy. (We bought a lot of cooking spices/wines/vinegars which can rack up the bill.) 

Eating healthy CAN be expensive (particularly if you do buy organic which we don't at the time... not because we don't want to but because we are skeptical of what the label actually means) but if you shop sales, buy from the sales in bulk and preserve your food in healthy ways (food saver bags or dehyrating or even canning) you'll save a ton of money in the long run!

A few more things we buy in bulk (from Costco... I do recommend a membership, it is worth the money for these particular items) include: 

• organic coconut oil - 78 oz - $23 
• extra virgin olive oil - 101 oz - $20 

I'm not even kidding. Coconut oil and olive oil are EXPENSIVE in stores. With what I save on just these two products damn near pays for the membership LOL And for my family of four, the coconut oil lasts 4-5 months and the olive oil will probably last a year haha Other items I feel justify the membership cost are toilet paper (lasts my family of four several months and is $15), wipes (big box lasts us about 3 months and is $20), dog food (large bag lasts about 3 months and is $30), eggs (last an entire month and is $10) or egg whites (also a month's worth and about $10).

We get some not so healthy things at Costco too but I won't go into them as they aren't the point :p 

So yeah. Buying in bulk and preserving your food for later and shopping sales is where its at. Do this and you WILL save money. And sometimes you might want to hold off on a meal or even just wait a week to check the next weeks sales (we went without bell peppers this time which means no fajitas for us). 

In total, I saved over $30 dollars at City Market. So, my $150 bill would have actually be $180+ and those savings don't include the discount in gas I earned AND I only used TWO coupons on the entire purchase. Sales are really where it is at, particularly if you have coupons with the sale items.

I hope this helps you gain an idea of how to eat healthy as far as fruit and veggies go when working with a budget. My family gets paid just once a month and our food budget is typically just $400 a month. This month we did spend a bit more then that because we had some bulk items we had to catch up on but next month, we won't spend a penny over $400 in food for the entire month and that will be with fruits and veggies, not chips, snack cakes or any other processed snack.

Eating Healthy on a Budget

This is long - bear with me - look for enlarged words to get the jist of what will be covered in that section so you can skip some parts if you'd like. 

Myths & Reality 

I stumbled upon a post on a mom website that I frequent. The lady was asking, what I feel, was a genuine question. Her claim was that fresh foods are expensive which makes eaty healthy expensive and her question was how anyone on a budget does it. The reason I think this is a fair question is because I grew up being told we didn't eat healthy because it was to expensive. I grew up believing that.

Here are a few examples of things I was taught growing up and whether I find them to be true or false.

• Buying apples is more expensive then buying chips. - True AND False!
• Buying all the stuff to make a salad is more expensive then buying a can of beans. - True AND False! 
• Fruit goes bad before it gets eaten so it ends up being a waste of money. - True AND False! 

Bullet 1 - You pay more but get less. 

I could go on and on with examples but there isn't really a need to. You all have most likely heard the same things. Now, before you go dismissing me, let me explain why I think these things are both true and false. 

The last time we bought chips was last month (before then it had been a REALLY long time). We bought them because they were on sale for $1.76 if you bought three. That meant we would get THREE bags of Doritos for barely over $5. That bag of apples I just weighed only had five or six apples and was about the same price. So you hold them right next to eachother and one is clearly bigger then the other so you get the bigger one. 

Now, let me let you in on a little secret. Those bags of chips didn't last the month. We went from never buying chips to devouring them. Why? Chemicals but I won't go to much in to that... just know there is a reason you crave them! :p 

Now that I've agreed, the chips do tend to be cheaper, let me explain why they actually aren't. The way food settles in our stomach, these artificial foods don't take up much room. Think about it... take that large looking chip and crumble it up. It practically disappears. Try doing the same with the apple. Unless you dehydrate it, you'll have the same amount of substance in your hand. In other words... you will have to eat MORE of those chips then the apple to get the same "full" feeling.

Bullet 2 - Processed food is cheaper then fresh food.

Next is that a salad is expensive. Okay, I'll give it to you a little. By the time you pay that DOLLAR for the lettuce... the DOLLAR (or less) for the tomato)... the DOLLAR for the entire bag of baby carrots (or whole carrots, whatever floats your boat)... and the DOLLAR for the cucumber... you've got an entire salad that will feed 4-6 people for 4-6 bucks (just in case your salad stuff costs most do to different areas). The expensive part of a salad is all the extras you want in it. 

Bacon - $4 for a jar

Dressing - $2-3
Cheese - $3 - 6 (I always try to give a range for various costs of living)

I'm sure you get the idea of what I'm trying to say. A basic salad isn't expensive, feeds a lot of people and will fill your stomach a LOT more with a lot LESS calories. It's science. It's true. 

Bullet 3 - Fruit goes bad and that's money wasted.

Finally, we arrive at that last bullet point. Fruit and veggies go bad. This is true. This is 100% true, actually. Some people love fruit it never goes bad. I'll be the first to admit I've wasted my fair share of expensive ass produce. Then I stopped. How you ask? By investing.

We have a FoodSaver (my in-laws gifted me) and we replace the bags as needed. That thing has literally saved me HUNDREDS in meat and produce. No lie.

We also have a food dehydrator that we got at wal-mart for around $40. We dehydrate a ton of fruit every month because then it won't go bad. We've all but stopped throwing out fruit that has gotten to ripe or straight up gotten forgotten. And the dehydrated fruit makes a perfect snack. So now, the $20 dollars worth of fruit we just bought will last for a while! We get some fresh and some dried. The nutritional value stays the same as does the calorie count... just be careful because they don't take up as much room without the water so you can rack up some healthy calories pretty quickly on these... but they are amazing for baking and on the go snacks! 

Now for the best part. Check out my next post to learn  just how I buy fresh produce for a reasonable price! You can find it HERE.