I've mentioned before that Kroger has a policy where they reduce some produce items and put them in a special spot for sale. Anything in the red mesh bag will be 99 cents. These items might be a bunch of oranges that are a tiny bit soft, brownish bananas, eggplants with one wrinkle, or a sealed pint of cherry tomatoes with one cherry tomato gone moldy. Normally the items are still at near-fresh capacity. Or at least they seem good enough to me. If I can buy a $4 cauliflower for 99 cents by shaving away one pinpoint of brown spot, you better believe I'm going to do it.
I learned about thrifting in the 1990s. I'd bought into the 1980s culture of 'more is better' and 'greed is good' rhetoric. Well maybe not the greed part but the prevailing position of Americans that upward mobility is a given and that accumulating more is always better.
One thing that attitude did for me was instill a hard work ethic and a savings mentality. My husband and I bought a house with 18% down, at age 24. In those days putting 20% down was expected, none of these loans with no percent down. We filled our brand new three-bedroom raised ranch with furniture, stereo equipment, large screen TV, and golf clubs, and two cars in the garage of course, one new and one used, and felt we were living the American Dream. And that was the dream, then.
The husband left a few years later, seeking another, better, American Dream, as Ecclesiastes says we vainly do. I was left paying the mortgage in a beginning teacher's salary.
Uh-oh.
It was a struggle. A life that had seemed shiny and new and appropriate was now a millstone, a burden, and a terror. The first of the month with the mortgage payment was enough to give nightmares. I took on a second job, then a third, then a roommate. A mini-economic downturn happened and the real estate crashed. I was stuck with a house that wouldn't sell, tired of working 7 days a week, and wondering if this was what life was all about.
Eventually I sold the house for what I'd bought for it, barely, and decided to pursue another mind-set. Frugality. I'd tracked on the American Dream of husband, house, career with no thought, because that is what you did, after college. Now I was older and wiser and decided to make more thoughtful decisions about my lifestyle, sans pressure from society.
That's where frugality entered.
From 1990 to 1996 A Maine woman named Amy Dacyczyn (pronounced like decision) wrote and published a little newsletter called The Tightwad Gazette. The sub-hed to the newsletter was: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle.
This was news to me. You mean accumulating stuff was not part of an upwardly mobile lifestyle? Buying - or not buying - into the spendthrift economy was a choice? Living with what you have, and making do was a real thing?
Her newsletter was revolutionary, literally. I was living in Maine and so was she and her family, the proximity made me curious, the useful tips hooked me.
Being thrifty was good. Being frugal left me open to spending what I wanted to spend on, not having to spend on a credit card debt and not paying a mortgage, but travel, books, and this new thing called the internet.
Here is the Amazon link to Amy Dacyczyn's Gazette and she also wrote three other books.
So anyway, what a long introduction to my dish about tomatoes!
I look for marked down produce and the other day I found these pints of tomatoes. Normally $4, $3 if on sale, these were marked down to 50 cents each!
The commitment one makes if buying these items, is to actually use them (thus NOT denying another person their opportunity for a favored fresh vegetable) and to use them right away so they don't go bad. So I halved all of them.
I was going to roast them which would have been great, but I didn't feel like turning on the oven. I use it for storing cookie sheets, muffin tins, griddle, huge saute pan, and three baking dishes, and I just didn't feel like hauling them all out of the oven. I chose to grab a large stock pot and do the cherry tomatoes on top of the stove instead.
Vegetable oil, salt, and pepper and we are good to go. I let them cook, covered, for a while till the tomatoes were soft and there was a lot of juice. I added some mushrooms I had on hand, also a frugal buy.
At the end I threw in some fresh basil, also a frugal buy, and now I have a large stock pot of tomatoes and mushrooms in sauce. If I ate pasta, I'd have boiled some penne and used it for a sauce. Also can toast a baguette hard and put some on top with a bit of cheese. But instead gluten-free me made some quinoa and used the tomatoes as a side dish. Can also add rice, or any other grain you like. Or simply have with a bit of cheese for a side dish sans grain, veggie only.
Were there any bad tomatoes in the 4 pints I bought? Yes. But only 1 or so in each pint. This was the waste:
Not a bad deal at all! I've eaten this dish every day this week. I had it with fish, with shrimp, with cheese, and with quinoa. And all for $1.98. Thanks, Amy Dacyczyn!
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