Wednesday, February 20, 2013

caveat emptor

Every Thursday we read through the flyer for our favourite grocery store and plan our week's meals & lunches based on sales or specials.

This week was "Buy One Get One", and we are huge dorks so every time that comes up we do a gleeful little "It's a BOGO!" dance. We stock up on items that we use often (canned tomatoes, bread & bagels for the freezer, that kind of thing) and pat ourselves on the back with obnoxious smugness because we are super-savers.

We have three young children. We take our entertainment where and when we can find it.

*ahem*

Anyway, this week there were several items we planned to stock up on - and then, in the produce section, navel oranges. Buy six, get six free.

Husband was excited. He loves citrus fruit. "Six free oranges!" he said. "We could get a dozen! It works out to 33 cents an orange!"

(See? Dorks.)

So I bought twelve oranges. I selected them carefully, making sure each one was unblemished and heavy for its size. And I made a mental note to wipe them all down when I got home.

Flashback time!

When I was in high school band, we conducted a citrus sale every fall, as a fundraiser. Oh, how I hated the citrus sale. Have you ever tried to sell a (quite expensive) crate of oranges or grapefruits, sight unseen, for delivery two months from now? It is not easy. Then, when the oranges finally arrived, they'd come on the back of a huge truck. The music room was on the second floor, so the truck would back up to the door and we band types would form a bucket chain up the stairs in order to move in all the 5 & 10 pound boxes.

We then had to open every box, sort through the oranges - removing any that had spoiled on the trip - and then wipe down all the remaining pieces of fruit individually. Mould spreads. It spreads particularly fast on citrus fruits. Oranges rot from the inside but mould from the outside, so wiping off the fruit helps it survive longer.

You know where this is going, right?

I forgot to wipe down the oranges when I got home. I was shopping late on Friday evening, and by the time I got home all I could do was have a cup of tea and crawl into bed while my husband put the groceries away. Since Saturday morning, for every orange that has been eaten, one has been tossed into the compost, mouldy and squishy, completely wasted.

So the BOGO oranges? Not really such a good deal, after all.

***

This week, the kids have suddenly decided they like ham & cheese sandwiches again, so it's back to those. California strawberries were on sale this week, and they have actually been a pleasant surprise - not as good as local, in-season berries of course, but quite tasty and properly ripe. I've been chopping those and mixing them with plain Greek yoghurt and a squeeze of honey. Cheesestrings, apples or bananas depending on the kid, dried cranberries, mangoes (also BOGO) and carrot & red pepper sticks have been rounding things out.

10 comments:

  1. Sometimes, when I read things mentioning fruit, I make my own bitter fun by crossing off all the kinds I can't eat. (pretty much all of them)

    Bill likes to stock up on lunch things at sales, too, forgetting that our children have whims of iron and that THEY HATE THINGS QUICKLY. Those yogurt granola bars in the cupboard? Fun for a day or two and now loathed. In conclusion, my kids are SPOILED.

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    1. We don't stock up on lunch things unless it's something we know they have loved for a good long while. Those Omega-3 chocolate chunk granola bars? Huge hit.

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    2. Trying this again because my comment got eaten the first time! grrr...

      Anyway, we rarely stock up on lunch things, and never perishables. Dried fruit and granola bars are about it.

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  2. Ha! My kids' school did that same fund-raiser. I bought those (over-priced) things. Once. Of course half of them rotted before we ate them because WHO CAN EAT THAT MANY GRAPEFRUIT??? (Even me, who loves 'em, and youngest daughter, who peels and eats them in segments like oranges). If our household can't get through them before they go green and squooshy, ain't nobody can.

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    1. RIGHT?? Stupidest fundraiser ever. I think we only kept doing it year after year because our music teacher was really lazy, and after you set it up once you literally only have to make two phone calls - one to get the order forms, and then one to place the order.

      Also, grapefruit is horrible. I hope we can still be friends.

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  3. For off season fruit, I buy Oxford or Dykeview frozen blueberries. YUMMM

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    1. Yes, I always have a big box of those in my freezer. I need to buy another box this weekend, actually. So good for baking & smoothies.

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  4. I have never heard of citrus sales! Out here it's all chocolate covered almonds fundraisers. Sorry about the oranges, that sucks!

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    1. I don't know if citrus sales are still a thing, to be honest. I hope not. They suck.

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  5. There are constant advertisements around here about some citrus barn sale. I probably won't partake. The last bag of oranges I bought didn't go over all that well. But clementines and mandarins fom Morocco are a big hit.

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