Cheap Eats — a Convergence of Cheap Produce
by Katy on March 27, 2025 · 38 comments
I stopped into Fred Meyer (Kroger) this afternoon while walking back from the library. I was shopping for bananas and bananas only, as I’m trying to avoid corporations that scheme to “Eliminate competition and raise grocery prices for millions of Americans, while harming tens of thousands of workers.” However . . . like Target boycotters who continue to pick up the odd package of diapers, I’m still willing to buy a thing or two.
I always make a loop past Fred Meyer’s $1-a-bag produce clearance shelf to scope out the bargains and today I hit the jackpot and brought home peppers, zucchini and eggplant.
Then my friend Lise texted to ask if I wanted some random produce, as her family was leaving town and she didn’t want it to go to waste.
So for the low low price of $4, my fridge is now stocked with lots of lovely cheap produce. If only they had a clearance shelf for eggs!
Click HERE to read about how “Cheap Food is Still Out There!”
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
But….but….but….You had FOUR DOZEN EGGS just the other day! Have you been eating souffles morning, noon and night?
Dunno about Katy, but my son eats four eggs every morning. Then we had French toast the other evening. However, he did find a carton of 18 of $7 the other day.
So … he finds and pays for his own eggs. As it should be.
Yes but I have to cook them for him, eyeroll. I don’t mind much because over easy eggs take like what, 3 minutes? Hopefully he is moving out this autumn.
We ate two frittatas while my niece visited, plus my husband eats two soft boiled eggs every morning. I eat a couple eggs with sautéed veggies every few days.
At the grocery store we frequent, we do actually rarely find eggs on clearance! My husband stocks up when he does.
I went to Costco yesterday and eggs were a completely normal price — $6.40-ish for 18.
I bought mostly ingredients and condiments. I was looking for bulk sesame seeds, peanuts, and a few other items (8-10 lb bag of oranges) but decided I didn’t like what was offered, or how far some of the produce had traveled (I do not need a hard, green nectarine from Chile in March. I can get them perfectly ripe in June.) I didn’t like the small size of the oranges. So I shall continue my procurement elsewhere (roadside stands, dollar store, etc.)
Safeway still has the best price for gallon or half gallon milk up here. And also for canned cat food, if you buy 20, which we do once a month. Fussy cats means I can’t buy too many of the same flavor, so Costco doesn’t work for cat food.
I never buy fresh produce at Costco, as their prices are pretty high.
I was at the “dented vegetable” store a few days ago and found a flat of 5 dozen eggs on clearance for $6.88. There were only two. I took one and the woman right behind me took the other. So that was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I also found on that same shopping trip a two pound bag of shredded cheddar for 99 cents. The store happens to be on my way to my regular grocer so it is no inconvenience to check there first.
Wow, those are some amazing bargains!
Awesome deal on the eggs, Sandra!
Do you re-use net produce bags? Make them into dish scrubbers? Have not tried that myself. Sew them into a sort of pouf.
I don’t, as I feel that holding on disposable plastic items with a “surely I can reuse this” is a slippery slope.
Heidi Louise, I do have a use for net produce bags that even Katy might approve of, given her love of cast iron cookware: I use them to dry-scrub any sticky bits out of my cast iron pans. This avoids the need for soap and water in most cases.
I have a friend who uses them to mend the bird and bunny netting over her garden beds.
Wow Katy ! Great score on the produce, so many possibilities to make so many dishes.
I just fed and used most of my sourdough starter and then put the remainder “to bed” for a while.
Used the cheap milk and made yogurt, I will have to buy fresh starter next week as I only like to “string starter” 3 times.
Found a nickel at the DG parking lot.
Took my carload of recyclables to the depot, I always look around to see if anything needs picked up because I don’t want to lose the depot because of others carelessness. In looking around someone had dumped a 4ft by 4ft wooden dog ear gate and I brought it home for my garden….happy ! happy!
Making a loaf of bread now and have a 3# beef roast going, it will become at least 5 meals as I am not a big meat eater. But it needed used, lingering in the freezer is not a bargain.
JC
I will be adopting “lingering in the freezer is not a bargain” into my vocabulary!
@JC have you tried buying your starter (aka plain yogurt) and partitioning it into starter-sized packages and freezing, then seeing if that works for a new starter? Would likely be a worthwhile experiment, if you want to avoid stringing starter but don’t need the whole caboodle when you do purchase ‘new’.
I only have to buy fresh starter once in a while, like every 3 months or so because I store it in the fridge upside down as I do cottage cheese. I make yogurt every week, a gallon of whole milk here is 2.19-2,50.
I have portioned it and frozen it before if I was not going to be making yogurt any time soon. It works fine out of the freezer if you let it come to room temp.
JC
Wow, you’re on top of things, I’m very impressed!
Congrats on the nickel!
As someone who purposefully hits king Soopers at 10:30 am for the best marked down produce, that is a stellar haul.
“Stellar haul,” I love it!
Kudos to Katy on the amazing produce deals!
And an update on my jury duty call: I survived the first cut of jurors, but I was bounced out on the second cut, to my great relief. I did mention my previous employment as a copyeditor for a publisher specializing in mental health texts for mental health professionals, including two editions of a book titled Psychological Evaluations for the Courts. In addition, when the attorney for the plaintiff (it was a medical malpractice case) and the court clerk were joking with each other as we filed out for lunch break, I contributed a remark in passing–and it turns out that jurors aren’t supposed to talk to attorneys except during the voir dire phase. So, one way and another, the gift of gab I inherited from my blessed mother has come through for me. 🙂
Good score on the produce. With regard to eggs, yesterday in CT, an 18 count carton of regular eggs was $20,88 The store was stocked full of eggs by the way…crazy
oops…that should have read $20.88
I too hit the grocery store early today. I got a discounted salad kit for $1.67 and it made for a great lunch. Also grapes were $1.49/lb so I got a big bag. Somewhere mangos were supposed to be $1 but I couldn’t find them so I did not get any. I found a 5 lb bag of grapefruit for $3.99 and despite the season being basically over they looked really good. We will see how they taste tomorrow
1. As I am leaving on Tuesday, on my trip to Turkey (land of “The biggest protests in more than a decade” according to the New York Times), I have been restraining my urge to shop for vegetables as if it were the end of the world. The challenge is huge, people!
2. I have, however, managed to create meals out of many of the items hiding in my crispers, and have a few more nights before I go. A couple of weeks ago #2 son asked me if we could cook together on Sunday; that should allow me to help HIM meal prep and help ME empty the fridge of perishables before I leave.
3. He is willing to deal with the eggs, as my hen friends are producing over a dozen a day. He has a friend at University who is willing to take (buy) over 4 dozen a week for her family, and I will connect him with my two regular clients.
He gets to let the hens out and lock them up every day, as well as a lot of other ‘keep the home fires burning’ chores, however I think he loves me enough to not resent me too much.
4. I spent some of today under rainish weather planting spring bulbs and corms into pots. I had purchased more for this spring as an indulgence about which I feel no guilt; then I realized I actually had dug and stored some bulbs and corms last fall. I have a LOT of pots filled.
My gardening buddy friend will come a couple of times a week to ensure that things stay moist – she comes by anyway to dump her compost in my bins, and to feed the chickens with pre-compost veggie peels and such, so it isn’t really too much out of the way.
She will also give the dog a bit of loving.
5. Wonder James came by and put down the concrete we need before the Great Greenhouse Recovering event on Saturday – he had figured we needed 2 bags, and so I bought 4. He needed 3 bags, so I got to tease him a bit about how clever I am. The last bag will go into the barn, as we always have other ‘need concrete’ projects.
The missing screws for the Greenhouse project are apparently at the store, I will pick them up tomorrow when I am in town on two other errands. No, wait, maybe three other errands? The list is around here somewhere.
6. I am struggling with my general angst and unsettledness.
Are you aware that Canada is in the middle of a Federal Election? 5 weeks of weirdness – and we can thank the US President for scaring the Canadian public so much that there might NOT be the expected-until-January huge electoral swing to the right.
The Conservative candidate has spent the last few years focussing on hating Trudeau (who stepped down and suddenly became a respected statesman in his dealings with the threats coming at us from the south).
The Conservative candidate also has spent the last few years aligning himself with Mr Pumpkin head, which was winning him converts until suddenly its not – and he is having a hellatime changing course.
As the very first thing he did once being sworn in, our new Prime Minister (Carney, for those who are still following this) cancelled a carbon tax that had become too hot politically to keep – however the Conservative’s other big talking point had all been about how HE would cancel the tax.
So two big areas of focus are gone, and one big mess has arrived from the south, and boy-howdy watching that man try to find something new to whip up anger around is entertaining. Except it is not really funny, and this is my country making a 4 or so year electoral commitment.
Go Katy! Congrats on all the great produce scores.
I accepted a bag of green beans from a neighbor. They were a couple of days beyond the best by date. They were fine. No food waste there.
Thank you to whoever mentioned 5calls.org. it’s now on my list of morning chores. So far on various voice mails (unexpectedly high call volume)I have discussed the Constitution and social security. I don’t give a flying fig for Sec. Lutnick’s mother-in-law, I assure you I will miss my check.
Today I have Sec. Hegseth in my sights, he is in for a vigorous scolding. Lock him up!
End of political rant, please resume your frugal activities.
Of course you’ll miss your check! And it’s your money. You are entitled to it.
Candy, I love what you’re doing! And do Lutnick’s remarks re only the fraudsters would complain about their checks going missing remind anybody else of the Puritans’ approach: throw her in the water, and if she drowns, guess we were wrong, she wasn’t a witch after all?
Katy, your cheap veggies are lovely!
There’s a fancy and ridiculously expensive grocery store in our neighborhood that does unadvertised specials on produce like that. It also marks down bread for clearance, which the much more moderately priced store a few blocks away does not do. It’s quite a juggling act to suss out the best deals all the time.
My local Giant food store does actually have marked-down eggs! They sell partial packages for a reduced price; I’m assuming they’re packages that have had a broken egg or two in them.
So, you have to do some math to figure out if it’s a good deal or not by calculating the price per egg and comparing it to the normal price for a dozen.
I’ve seen Fred Meyer do that, but only a time or two.
Nice haul and all healthy stuff!
I have been following this site for a while and gotten so many great ideas! I wanted to share a site I found that (while not about frugality) seems like many of your followers might like and hopefully use. It’s called 5 Calls.org.,it lists all the senators and reps. in your area,how to reach them, and issues you may want to call about. We have so little power in this country right now but I am using whatever I do have! It is part of my morning routine now….right after the morning dog walk!!!
Thanks for the 5Calls info – signed up for the newsletter and plan on making calls a part of my morning routine too!
That 99 cent produce bin is my favorite! I shop at Winco mostly but stop in at Kroger just for that bin,weekly.I buy up apples and make applesauce in the crockpot and keep it frozen at all times in my freezer.Jarred applesauce is up to $4.00 a jar now! I like the texture of my homemade.
LOVE those red pepeprs and eggplant.I’d be making eggplant parmesan and pepeprs and eggs..Italian yummies.Have fun with all that produce!!