Grocery Spending/Menu Plan | I am in blueberries.
It wasn't an official grocery shopping week, but I did buy 40 pounds of blueberries.
They're not organic (though the farm uses less pesticide than most larger farms do), but they're fairly local (from New Jersey), come in recyclable cardboard boxes, and they're delicious.
And at $1.75/pound, they're cheaper than what I can typically buy at the store. Even when they're on a really good sale at Aldi, they're a little less than $2/pint (I think they were more like $2.50 recently).
We're eating them by the handful, of course, and I'll also freeze quite a few of them for smoothies and make jam out of some.
For breakfast, we'll be eating blueberry muffins, blueberry buttermilk pancakes, yogurt topped with blueberries, and cereal topped with blueberries.
(are you sensing a theme?)
Lunches will be comprised of sandwiches made with whole wheat bread, homemade yogurt, yogurt smoothies, cottage cheese, fruit, raw veggies, nuts, cheese, and leftovers as necessary. Of course, we don't eat all of that every single day...it's just a list of the things we choose from for lunch each day. And Mr. FG eats leftovers for lunch pretty much every day.
This is the dinner plan:
Saturday
- things are a little bit up in the air as to what we're doing tonight. I'm currently discussing it with Mr. FG. 😉
Sunday
- We're getting together with Mr. FG's parents, and I'm responsible for dessert. I think we're going to do ice cream, some bars, and some frosted oatmeal cookies.
Monday
- Meatball Subs
- green salad
Tuesday
- Lemon Sage Chicken (this keeps getting bumped, but I'm really going to try to make it this week!!)
- Whole Wheat Rolls
- green beans
Wednesday
- Beef Enchiladas (a new recipe, and I'm using beef instead of turkey because I have tons of beef and no turkey)
- fruit salad
- chips and salsa
Thursday
- Chicken, Tomato and Basil Panini sandwiches (how to make panini)
- green salad
Friday
- Takeout date night for Mr. FG and me, something easy for the kids
Have a fabulous Saturday, dear readers! I don't normally post on Sundays, but I have a little picture post to share with you tomorrow, so do stop back in.
wow those berries look so darn good,, we are a long way off from blueberries yet,, (northern ontario canada) here,, but will soon have them by the carfuls,, being sold by pickers all along the transcanada highway.Wild berries, they are so good.You are the smartest young woman,, i love your blog and wish I had had half your knowledge of saving 20 years ago when my kids were teenager s all at home,, take care and have a wonderful date night with that hubby.
I agree, Kristen is a fantastic example! We're probably getting blueberries around here too, but I've hardly seen them at the Farmer's Market, and U-pick farms are really far away :-(.
Myhusband and I have been trying to eat local meat and produce without increasing our budget. The produce is pretty easy when you find the right produce stands (ususally better price than Farmer's Markets), but the meat has challenged us to eat more vegetarian meals and stretch our meat even further than we were already doing!
Unless I'm missing something aren't a pint and a pound the same thing? That would be $.25 less per pound than buying them in individual pints. Still a good buy, but not huge.
I don't think so...from what I can tell, a pint is only 3/4 of a pound.
Plus, the blueberries in the box are so much tastier, I'd buy them even if they were the same price. 🙂 Not to mention that I just have two cardboard boxes to recycle instead of 40 plastic clamshell containers. Yay!
I agree. I dislike strongly the plastic clamshells. I prefered the days when strawberries, cherries, and blueberries were displayed loose and the shopper picked his own. Another advantage to that is that the store could remove bad strawberries individually rather than having to toss the whole box.
Come to think of it, I'd actually have over 50 clamshells for 40 pounds of blueberries.
Also, when Mr. FG and I were first married, our grocery store did stock an open bin of strawberries. I really liked that I could pick out the berries I most wanted.
A pint of water weighs a pound, but fresh blueberries are lighter than water because of all the air space between them. I think a pint of fruit is approximately 12oz, but it varies a lot.
That is a fabulous buy on blueberries! U-Pick costs $3/lb around here!
Great price on the blueberries! But what I want to know is why dessert for tomorrow isn't blueberry pie, or blueberry bars, or some other blueberry dessert. 😉
Oh, and I attempted to make blueberry freezer jam last week. Total fail. It was way to sugary and grainy. However I will still use it up (no food waste here!) as a topping for waffles, pancakes and ice cream. And we'll throw it into our homemade yogurt for some added sweetness.
Happy Saturday!
That's so weird...I wonder why! I've never had a problem with my freezer jam being grainy.
If I may make a suggestion for using a few of those blueberries, Mark Bittman has a carrot and blueberry salad recipe that is SO GOOD. This is the entire recipe: "Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds, and toss with blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper" (from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/dining/22mlist.html )
There are some other interesting salad ideas on that list too, but if you've got carrots around (I usually do), this one's a winner.
i had a salad recently that had blueberries in it. it was really good and so different than anything i'd ever had before. your berries look really, really good.
Math isn't my strong point but I learned a 'pint's a pound the world around".
That's odd...I would think the weight of a pint would vary depending on what's in the pint because a pint is volume, not weight.
A pint of marshmallows would weigh a lot less than a pint of marbles, you know?
From what I could gather online, a pint of blueberries weighs 3/4 of a pound. I might have a pint container in my recycling bin, in which case I could weigh it out for myself to make sure.
"A pint's a pound the world around" applies to water. Other substances vary. For example, a pint of lead would weigh about 12 lbs.
We went a few weeks ago. I love our local farm. $1.50 a pound ( which last year was only $1 a pound but they went up a little this year) and they don't use ANY sprays or pesticides. AT ALL. We can eat as we pick. SO fun. Enjoy all the berries. They are so yummy in smoothies. 🙂
Yummy- I can't wait for ours to ripen!
YUM! You have no idea how envious I am of your blueberry bounty! Though, even with canning and freezing and eating, I don't think my family of 3 could handle that many, even though my 2-year-old devours blueberries by the handful.
I found a local farm which sells you-pick blueberries for $2.05/lb, and they only spray their berries in extreme emergencies (which hasn't happened in years). We're planning to go pick a bunch of berries soon. The berries we like to buy at our farmers' market are $8 a QUART!
New Jersey is fairly local for you? It is for me too, I suppose. I'm in CT. Where do you live? I love blueberries! So many anti-oxidants!
Oh, I'm on the other side of New Jersey from you! I'm in the DelMarVa area, so I think of NJ as being sort of local...more local than a lot of the food at the grocery store, at least.
Those are the best fruit for you.
Ohhh, jealous of the blueberry bounty! Enjoy! But must second reader who suggested blueberry dessert tomorrow night -- mostly cuz it sounds so lovely ! My mom used to make a fresh summer fruit pie with blueberries, strawberries, peaches, etc., mounded in a prepared graham cracker crust with half reconstituted jello poured over as a glaze. It was so beautiful and fresh and easy, with whipped cream of course. I think she used a "red" flavor jello, or maybe lemon, to glaze. There were NEVER leftovers! Even jello- resistant snobs such as her daughter (ahem) were powerless over this lusciousness. I don't think she sugared the fruit, trusting the jello to be sweet enough . . . YUM!
Of course, a homemade frosted oatmeal cookie is never amiss :)! Cheers!
With this bounty of blueberries at your disposal, let me recommend a recipe: Blueberry French Toast found at Taste of Home. It's actually a little more like a glorified bread pudding than French toast, and I always adjust the recipe to my taste (more bread and less custard mixture), but it's truly delicious.
I live in New Jersey, and I haven't seen blueberries that cheap anywhere! Where did you get those?
I love blueberries as well. Too bad I cant find this deal on Raspberries, I can eat hundreds of those a day! MMM.
Fifi @ fififrugality.blogspot.com
Would you be willing to tell us who you bought the blueberries from and how to contact them? I'd love to order some too! 🙂
Ha!
I know I'm so late, but my family and I picked 25 gallons of blueberries this weekend for.......$25.00!!!!!!!!
The u pick farm had a special....5 dollars all you can fit into a five gallon bucket.
I'm going back today for some veggies.
$1.75/lb for already picked blueberries is great! Near me it's $2.05 for you pick. I managed to picked 8 lbs last week and going back for more this week! I love stocking up on berries during the summer. This year it's my goal to stock up on enough to last for a year...hoping it can me done! Such a huge amount of money up front, but I know I'm saving money during the winter.