Sometimes buying the prepacked fruits and veggies is tempting. It’s just so stinkin easy to have someone else do what you know you can do for yourself. And I think there is a time and a place for that, but it will cost you. If you take the time to prepare fruits and veggies yourself, you’ll save big time.
Take the pineapple above for example. Costco had them on sale for $2.99 the other day. So I bought one, lugged it home and took a few minutes {5 tops} to cut and chop my way to some delicious pineapple. I put it in my own reusable container and plopped it in the fridge.
Now take a look at the pricing above. For that very same amount of pineapple it would have cost me $7.99. WHAT? Seriously! For 5 minutes of my time I’m saving 62%. Now that’s my kind of savings for putting in a little elbow grease.
Do you buy prepacked fruits and veggies for the convenience? Do you think it’s worth the price?
~ Mavis
Susan says
I never buy prepackaged cut fruits or vegetables. They are always at LEAST 50% more in price.
Plus I always wash my larger fruits/vegetables in dishsoap and water before cutting- to eliminate surface e-coli, etc -especially watermelon and other melons.
Rosaleen says
Like Mavis, I generally avoid pre-cut and pre-packaged fruits and vegetables, for the most part. The few times I’ve needed to make the splurge for the time and place utility, the food seemed to deteriorate (go bad!) too quickly. That makes the expense a double-whammy…
Martha says
Think! You just paid yourself $60/hour! 5 min for 5$ savings= $1/minute! I have taught all my kids and many others to cut up chicken, cut up stew meat, slice up a roast or ham into sandwich meat, cook dry beans, and how to use leftovers. So many skills lost.Thanks for teaching through your blog!
Jessica S says
NOPE! I can tell when I am eating salad from a bag.. I am very sensitive to the preservative wash they put on it . The other day I was at a local discount store fairly soon after opening. I checked out the markdown produce rack and snagged 2 pineapples for $1/each. I threw away less than 1 spear from them combined. Filled a large container with chunks and a sheet pan with diced. Flash froze the pan and bagged for smoothies!
Practical Parsimony says
No way! The only time I ever eat fresh pineapple is when they are $1 at Aldis and I price-match them at Walmart. Whatever fruit is on sale is whatever fruit is on sale is what I eat.
Since a bad hand injury, I can no longer grate cabbage, so I do buy the slaw shredded.
Cheryl says
Normally no, but I seem unable to cut up a pineapple before it goes bad…for me, it would make more sense to buy it already cut up. But I am not paying 6.99 for that to happen…so I do without.
Gardenpat says
I took this idea to the next step for our food storage. A month ago, whole pineapples were on sale for 97 cents each, so I bought 12!
I had already checked online to see how to clean & cut up a pineapple (i had never done it before! There was even a free Youtube tutorial showing how!).
I cut it into chunks and waterbath canned them into mason jars, adding only a little boiling water to the jars. 15 minutes of processing and voila!!! I had almost 3 dozen jars on my pantry shelves that I knew exactly what the ingredients were while saving a bunch of money and keeping the convenience of having them ready!
Mavis says
I love this. Way to go big!
Carrie says
When pineapples go on sale at my grocery store the cored ones are the same price as the whole fruit. I have been really disappointed when buying the whole fruit only to find that it isn’t ripe when I get home. Buying the already cored pineapple (which is the same price!) I get to see if it’s ripe and only need to slice it. I don’t know if its because I am on the east coast but I have never seen pineapple go below $2.50. Pineapple is my favorite and when I lived in Hawaii one summer I ate it all the time!!!
PEggy K says
Many times the stores here have specials where the cored pineapple is the same price as the whole. that’s when I buy it – when it’s on sale. And like an earlier poster noted – you can see what you are getting.
Gardenpat says
What I learned is that to test a whole pineapple to check for ripeness, you give a little tug to one of the center green leaves from the top. If it pulls out easily, it’s ripe! If not, it’s not!