Frugal Friday | It's Strawberry Season!

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1| Those Who Pick Together, Stay Together?!

This past weekend Ben and I picked 25lbs of strawberries from a local PYO farm. Both of our mom's accompanied us for a fun morning activity. It took us about an hour to pick about 55 pounds total. We combined our purchase to get the bulk special price of 15% off the $2.95/lb price, so we ended up paying $2.53/lb.

Now yes, I regularly am able to get fresh strawberries for $1/lb at Papa's Produce, but we like supporting local, and you can't beat fresh off the vine!

(Last week I featured the Strawberry-Top Simple Syrup in my Frugal Friday post, but I thought the strawberries deserved their own highlight).
25lbs of Strawberries, Let the Hulling Begin!

2| I Canned A Lot of Jam

The majority of the strawberries we picked made their way into preserves. This year I did two types of strawberry jam, one with pectin, one without, strawberry rhubarb jam, strawberry syrup.

I also preserved 6 half-pints of cherry jam from cherries that I picked up on sale, and more rhubarb sauce from the rhubarb we received from a neighbor.
(5) 1.5 Pints of Strawberry Syrup from The Ball Complete Book of Canning and Preserving
You can also see the garden in the background.

3| Lunches for the Freezer

I like to keep a few lunches for Ben in the freezer in case meal plans don't go to plan for some reason. Over the past few weeks we've used up the ones that were there, so this week I chose a lunch recipe that I knew would freeze and reheat well (rice based meals are my go-to) . I chose a new recipe for instant pot Cajun Chicken and Rice, divided it into 5 portions, and tucked two of them into the freezer.

I use Rubbermaid square containers to freeze in. When we need one, I just toss it into the lunch box frozen.

Cooking double of a recipe and freezing half is a great way to stock up your freezer with meals without doing a dedicated freezer meal cooking sessions. Since it's just the two of us, a recipe that feeds 6-8 works well. 
Two of the Cajun Chicken & Rice Ready for the Freezer


4| Shutterfly Bags and Notebooks

During the Shaw's Monopoly Ticket promotion that ran earlier this spring, I collected quite a few free coupons for 5x8 notebooks and reusable bags. I ordered 3 notebooks and 6 bags, paying only shipping, about $3 per item. Did we need them? No probably not, but the quality is great and the bags (they roll up small) are very strong.

5| Goodwill Score

I stopped into our local Goodwill after dropping off a bunch of items for donation. I found a bag of 4 balls of cotton dishcloth yarn for $1 and two cross stitch Christmas ornaments for $1 each. I love the little kits and they will make cute gifts for Christmas time.

Frugality takes on forms big and small. The purpose of five frugal things is to highlight the little day to day frugal choices or opportunities that we are presented with, along with the occasional big one.

Feel free to share your five frugal thing!

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