Pineapples and Bananas!!

 

Pineapple and bananas were on sale this weekend when I went shopping.
Instead of giving a break down of my coupon shopping (which I haven't done hardly any of in months) I'll just tell you what I did with the oodles of bananas I got *FREE*!!

Albertsons had Pineapple on sale for $3.99 each. And when you bought a pineapple you got Free bananas up to 2 pounds.
We do use lots of bananas, but not quite 5 pounds before they turn brown and mushy and I have to do a lot of creative baking ;)

I bought 2 Pineapple, and got 4 bunches of bananas, each weighing a little over a pound.

Total I paid for 2 Pineapple and 5lbs bananas was $8.57. Not bad for that much fruit!!

 I pulled out the dehydrator and made dried banana chips with 2 of the 5 lbs of bananas. The rest we will enjoy fresh!

Love having my dehydrator. Great way to "stock up" on fresh fruits and veggies when I find a good price on them.

And this is my plan for the pineapple for tomorrow's barbecue....

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2012/06/pineapple-fruit-bowl/

(I also love Pioneer Woman!!)

This week's shopping (no coupons used)

Today I made a quick run to my local grocery store - that being the one 1.5 minutes from my house. The little, small town grocery store which usually has a poor selection and overpriced items. I shop here when I really need something, occasionally get fresh produce and dairy products and similar items that have a short shelf life.

They do occasionally have good sales. I pick up their ad when I buy the paper just to see if there is anything on sale at a decent price that I need or use.

This week they are having their case-lot sale. They do these 2-3 times a year. Last year (October) I stocked up on canned foods. I still have quite a bit of it left. I was planning on picking up a few things that I needed this week, but not whole cases of any of it.

My husband always picks out the Apple Cinnamon flavored Instant Oatmeal packets out of the variety pack box for his breakfast in the morning. During cold weather months we like a hot breakfast. We like to keep Instant oatmeal on had for backpacking trips, or in case of emergencies since they are a quick, easy, and lightweight food items that only requires water to make.
Since he likes the apple flavored oatmeal so much I decided to use a recently found recipe for Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal mix. That way we can save the instant stuff for camping or whatever.
So yesterday I dried 10 apples, diced up, with my dehydrator. (which was reduced down to exactly 1 glass quart canning jar of dried, diced apples - pretty cool)!
I made it today, and realized I didn't have enough quick-cooking oatmeal (though I had plenty of flavored instant oatmeal packets).
I remembered large cans of oatmeal were on sale this week. So I pulled out the ad to see what else was on sale.

All that to say, I did a quick shopping trip today, and saved over 30% without using any coupons!!

25lb bag Flour $9.99
Seasoning & Sauce mix packets $0.33 each
Saltines $1.50
Ketchup 24oz. $0.99
Oatmeal $1.99

Spent: $23.93
Saved: $12.16

*I plan on trying the Apple-Oatmeal mix in the morning. Will let you know how it turned out!

dehydrating

Earlier this year my very gracious mother in law loaned us her dehydrator. We were interested in making healthy, cheap backpacking foods and snacks. I have dehydrated a few different fruits and experimented in the past. Being an older model, it doesn't have an adjustable thermostat so I'm not sure what temperature it is at. Makes drying times difficult to figure out for someone not familiar with it.

I haven't used it in a while. Decided to pull it out and give Apple Chips and try. 

 I cored, sliced, and dipped in lemon water.

 And filled 5 of the 6 trays I had. Using 6 large apples!

I sprinkled 2 of the 5 trays with cinnamon. Decided to only use cinnamon on part of them in case I we preferred plain over cinnamon, and also to have options!

I did a little research to find out about how long apple chips should dry. I discovered 8-10 hours at 130 degrees was recommended. But, like I said, I have no clue what the temperature on this dehydrator is. So, I did like the manual to the dehydrator said, check after 4 hours. Were still very soft. I checked again at about 6-7 hours. The small ones were dry, the larger ones were still squishy in the middle. So I went and took a bubble bath! When that was finished it had been just shy of 9 hours.

Which was PERFECT!!!  They weren't chewy (like some prefer from my research), nor were they crisp and crunchy, (like others prefer). I wasn't sure which I preferred, so I'm really pleased they came out just right, dry enough to not be chewy, yet, not so dry they were crispy! I love the texture!

I plan to save these for our upcoming road trip to Okanogan, WA in about a week. My man is taking a LAV carbine course. Will be a long 13+ hour drive so, something to munch on in the car will be nice. Much better than stopping at conveniences stores on the way and paying wayy too much for junk food.
I am very excited about this upcoming trip, BTW!! :)

These are soo delish! I'm really pleased and encouraged that they turned out so well. Will be doing it again in the future. Apples should be coming into season here very soon. Hopefully will have an opportunity to stock up and preserve lots this way!

As I was looking through the dehydrator manual, I came across fruit leather instructions and recipes!
I remember my mother in law saying they tried the Crunchy Cantaloupe leather. Since I had a fresh cantaloupe I hadn't used yet and had all the other ingredients. I decided to give it a try since the dehydrator was already out!

Ingredients:
cantaloupe
apple sauce
flaked coconut
slivered almonds
cinnamon

Very strange combination of flavors, to me. But I had everything available, and figured I could at least experiment. I only made a small batch.

Pureed fruit with nuts spread on trays (lined with plastic wrap).

Crunchy Cantaloupe Fruit Leather!! Was a success! Tastes very good too!

So that's what I've done this week with the dehydrator. Plan to use it a lot more.