What’s up with all the free lettuce lately? To bad you can’t freeze the stuff, or I’d have a years supply of iceberg by now. Luckily, between our chickens, and Girly Girls Chickens, not a bit of it goes to waste.
If there is one thing the chickens love {besides corn}, it’s iceberg lettuce, it must be because of the crunchy texture. Before we were getting free “chicken scraps” from the produce guy our chickens would pretty much eat anything. But over these last 5+ months of getting fresh fruit and vegetables non stop, they have become total foodies. Before you know it they’ll start to demand we serve their beloved “scraps” on dinner plates and serve them with white gloves.
Chickens in suburbia, dang, they’ve got it rough.
Here is what The Girl and I were able to salvage from the 4 boxes of scraps. Plenty of cantaloupe, pineapple and honey dew for breakfast, iceberg lettuce for tacos and lettuce wraps, and half of a papaya and a boatload of strawberries. Hmmm. Looks like another week of smoothies for breakfast. Yee-Haw!
Peace Out Girl Scouts, have a great day. Now go forth and eat trash!
~Mavis
Would you like to see what else we have brought home over the past 5 months?
Head on over HERE to read all the past stories and to see all the pictures.
500 Smoothies & Juices is packed with 500 refreshing recipes, all of them clear and easy to follow. Filled with tips on how to select the right ingredients for your smoothies and juices and then how to make them taste absolutely perfect, this is the only book of smoothies and juices you will ever need. Amazon currently has the book in stock and ready to ship.
Lisa says
That’s a huge amount of strawberries…lucky you!!
Melissa says
I am so pumped about my free produce….the salad a I had for lunch (and the 5 bags of lettuce still in the fridge), the 4lbs of green beans I snapped and froze last night, the pot of collards currently simmering on my stove, I even got a head of hydroponic lettuce this week, etc!….but that fruit makes me drool!! 🙂
When I saw all those bananas you got last week, I picked up a few of the dollar bags from our grocery store so I could make some more of this amazing ice cream
http://www.thekitchn.com/stepbystep-instructions-for-on-97170
I’ve made it with strawberries by themselves and strawberries mixed into the bananas, both are delicious. Thought I’d share just in case you need a break from the smoothies 😉
Carrie says
Talking about Kale – put that stuff in your shakes – my 5 year old tells everyone that he doesn’t eat spinach but he drinks it!!!!
Lissa says
Yay! I got another great week in the land of reclaimed food (I will send you a pic later 🙂
13 ears corn
2 romaine lettuce
1 green lettuce
1 cucumber
1 bunch broccolini
1 orange bell pepper
3 unidentified green peppers
4 tomatoes
handful of yellow string beans
~2lbs broccoli
1 orange
1.5lbs strawberries
9 peaches
AND 9 pomegranates!!!
I am incredibly excited about the (ORGANIC) pomegranates. This is a first for my reclaimed food boxes. The only reason I can see that they were tossed is that they are not super big….maybe just a touch too small for the ($4?) that they wanted to sell them for? I don’t care!
Helen in Meridian says
I like pomegranate seeds with walnuts and honey poured on top. Very rich, eat just a little.
Penelope says
I have 2 weeks to catch you up on. Last week my ‘puter was down so I couldn’t share. I got so much stuff I couldn’t actually take care of all of it. I might send a pic, and a neighbor also shared tons of stuff on the same day so I was swamped. Reclaimed was 4.5 dozen cucumbers, 11 large heads of cauliflower, 8 heads of lettuce, something like a dozen zukes, and I can’t remember what else. I ended up making pickles, serving cucumbers to the kids for school and blanching and freezing the cauliflower. I could only use half the zukes but we added it to the zukes I already had and made zucchini jam and fake apple pie.
Today, lots of green peppers, a few ears of corn, some cucumbers, a head of cauliflower and a couple broken carrots. Composted the other half I brought home.
This has been amazing for me. I have not grown enough food this year to feed my family, but after adding this in, I’ll be ok. My freezers are almost full. I have approx 2 shelves left to put stuff on, which means I’ll have to pull all the tomatoes and bottle them so I can have room for the pumpkin and other reclaimed food.
THANKS!
Nat says
OK so maybe you have this somewhere posted. BUT my inlaws have chickens and F.Meyer or Safway would not sell them any scrapes. They both said it was illegal. So how does this work?
Mavis says
I don’t buy my scraps. The store just gives them too me. I would just ask around at a few stores and see what happens.
Tessa says
Hi Mavis,
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I’ve asked the produce managers at several stores including F Myers, Albies and Safeway and they all say they can’t for one reason or another. Is there a certain way you word it when you ask? Do you ask the produce managers or just anyone in produce?Are you going to chain type stores like I mentioned? Do you just walk in to the produce area and walk out the front door with a huge box of “Ck scraps”.(or do you use a back door?) How do you get to be “Buddy’s with these produce guys, do you first bring them treats…ie jams, zuch breads, etc? I need more information so I can be successful! PLEASE HELP!!!