food prep: produce

Does this ever happen to anyone else? EW. #embarrassing

You walk through the grocery store and tell yourself you are going to get the healthy stuff. The GREEN stuff. The veggies and fresh produce. You are going to eat the hell out of it. Beautiful romaine for lettuce wraps, spinach and bell pepper for your daily omelette. And maybe a couple naked juices for fun.

You'll be cheesin' it up for everyone to see you with your salad, perfect skin and a cup of coffee. Because who doesn't love coffee with their salad?!

And then a week later your lettuce is laughing in your face because you forgot all about it...or you ate a little bit on taco night...and a little bit on a salad....but you just couldn't eat it all before it went bad. Well my friends, this is my life. And it's awful. Not only am I wasting money, but I am wasting all this food.

So I went to the internets to try and solve this problem. My goals were to save money on produce, and be able to make the food last longer.

Also, it really sucks that you never get coupons for fresh produce. LAME.

Anyway, as usual, Google delivered. Many a blogs and links offering ways to pinch pennies and make food last longer. However, most were designed for families of 4-6. Buy in bulk, have "Meatless Mondays", and other ways to eat more veggies.

Still not good enough for me. Then I remembered these green bags my mother in law bragged about. And I thought I had a few of them lying around somewhere.

Ah here they are:

These bags are cool and everything. And it would allow the fruits and veggies to last longer. But it really didn't help with saving money. I wanted to try and buy in bulk to save money.

So I eventually stumbled upon the idea of vacuum sealing. You need a handheld vacuum sealer, a wide mouth attachment, and wide mouth mason jars.

I got both the vacuum sealer and attachment for $15 on Amazon.

Vacuum Sealer:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002FWIVCA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Attachment:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005TN7H/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Then you start chopping veggies, placing them in the jars, put the lid on the jar, then the attachment, then the vacuum sealer itself. Add the little mason jar rim things and boom. Fresh produce for days.

YAY FOR SAVING MONEY. I will keep sharing our journey as a one-income family. The goal is for me to be able to stay home, have more babies {someday}, and treat this like homesteading. That means a garden, DIY projects, couponing, and more.

Thanks for following along,
xoxo
Megan