As a middle aged woman, I have ways to reduce my food bill. Not everybody can, and I think about paying full price and I shudder!
Every Tuesday bananas at my favorite store are on sale, and since I decided to shop today I bought a fair amount! And, because I have apples from my own tree I decided to make fruit salad tonight and so I bought a bag of little oranges: 3 pounds for $4! And, the peels were thick which means that the oranges were really quite SMALL!
The dish was affordable because I had the apples from the tree and the bananas were on sale: it would have been terribly expensive otherwise!
Speaking of apples, while I only put the best-looking apples in the fridge there is no guarentee that there will not be worms. in them: not every worm hole shows! Home raised apples are best sliced before eating! Of course that is no problem if making fruit salad as the apples are sliced anyways! But, that was not a problem today as the three apples that I cut up used showed no sign of having anything in them excepting good, healthy apple.
An apple still warm from the sun tastes far better than supermarket apples! Though, if you look at the BOTTOM of the supermarket apples they will soon reveal which are fresh and which are not! If the tendrils at the bottom, where the core is, are still green then the apple is VERY fresh! It will be juicy and aromatic! If, however, the tendrils are brown then it will be just another dull supermarket apple, possibly soft and mealy, and in my opinion better for cooking than for eating fresh!!!!!!!
I still have better than 5 pounds of apples from my tree: the fridge will keep them good for months but they will be eaten before too long. Last year I did not have apples on the trees because of a late frost, and so I bought a LOT! of apples from the supermarket at 88 cents pound. I was lucky: some of those apples had totally green tendrils at the bottom of the core so I knew they had just been picked! I bought those, and they lasted us well into February. They were soft, of course, by then instead of crackling and juicy. They were still excellent for cooking, though! If properly stored apples will last for a very long time..
I bought about ten pounds of apples at $.98/lb. But, I got them for $.93/lb because it was Wednesday and 5% off for seniors. I did check for the green ends, but there is one more thing the produce manager told me for checking the goodness of apples. I was complaining about mushy/mellow/not crispy apples. If the blossom end is open at all, the apple has been stored in cold storage (even on fresh apples) and has been off storage. Then, the apple will be mellow--not crisp.
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