Buying fruit in the winter...

Today I headed to town for a little grocery shopping.

Okay, that's a lie.  I needed hair color, and while out I decided I should buy some food as well.  My main goal was the hair color.

Anywho, I've always read that it's more cost effective to buy frozen fruit in the winter because fresh fruit isn't in season.  Well, I learned today that isn't always the case!

I am a bargain hunter.  And I have hoarding tendencies.  If salad dressing is on sale for $.10, I'll buy 100 of them.  When I moved in with Jeff, he helped me move out of my apartment.  Not kidding, I had over 100 packets of single serve salad dressing.  It was on sale.  And 14 jars of pineapple mango salsa.  It was on sale too.

I'm off track....

I needed fruits and veggies, I'm trying to drink 2 smoothies a day.  1 in the morning, and one in the early afternoon after I work out.  So, I needed crap to put in these smoothies.  Don't ask me for a recipe, you know I don't have one!  Spinach, tomatoes, celery, carrots, banana, yogurt, protein powder, mango, frozen mixed fruit, broccoli... really whatever I have on hand.

So I headed to the frozen section of my store.  After a quick calculation I realized that frozen fruit was almost $4 per pound!  The good stuff like raspberries, blackberries, mango, etc. was even higher!  I went quick-like over to the fresh section (I have to go quick, because I have a short memory and didn't want to forget the prices I was trying to compare!) and saw that fresh strawberries were $2.99/lb, pears $1.29/lb, mango $1.29/each (get the big ones!  Reach up high where the old ladies can't reach!), bananas ... cheap.  I don't know the price of bananas, they are always cheap.  Fresh pineapples were $2 each, and starting tomorrow blackberries are on sale for $1/dry pint!  HOLY COW!!!

So, I stocked up on kale, spinach, strawberries, pears, bananas, radishes, mango, pineapple, frozen mixed fruit (it was about $2.30/lb), Cuties, etc. etc.  Enough produce for a ton of smoothies and salads all for about $20.

So, long story short, it may take a few seconds longer, but check those prices!  Here in KS fresh fruit is still quite reasonable!  And this isn't at a Wal-Mart, it was at my small-town local store.  I did go to Wal-Mart and checked their prices, they had poor selection and what they did have was priced higher.  *Note* I don't typically shop at Wal-Mart, I like to support individually owned businesses, but I did get hair color there because there are no other options in town.