Forgive me while I brag about my thrifty meal prep. Somehow saving money made dinner that much sweeter.
A few weeks ago I stumbled on an unassuming shelf across the aisle from the produce department at Kroger. It was here they offer up the “ugly” fruit, the items they don’t think will sell at full price. There were only 2 bags of oranges on the shelf, but, at a time naval oranges were going for a dollar a piece, each bag had 6 slightly misshapen smaller oranges at 99 cents per bag. I took a chance and soon learned the taste, not the looks, were what counted. The next week I got 4 beautiful apples for 99 cents. Last week it was 3 gorgeous red peppers for 99 cents and yesterday 4 big oranges, again for the standard price.
So dinner was stuffed red peppers, also using ground beef from the manager’s special section. The pound of natural beef was ready to go out of date the next day, so I popped it in the freezer til I needed it. I paid $3.27 and used half for the stuffed peppers. The other half, after cooking it up with chopped onion, goes into pasta sauce for another meal. Instead of plain rice in the stuffed peppers, I prepared a pouch of Knorr side dish rice which was on sale a few weeks ago , buy 3, get one free. Since I only used 2 cups of the rice mix, I will use the rest of it to make fried rice for another meal. And finally, the croissants were on special if you had a Kroger customer card.
So, all in all, my meal was doubly delicious because it had good value along with good taste!
