Getting a little fruity

It's been a busy few weeks (months?) here at our house... Luke has been studying for his architecture exams to get licensed (he passed the first one in January, but there are 6 more), I've been working on making 200 wedding invitations for Luke's cousin and his fiancee (which need to be done by mid-April), we started P90X last week (which is an hour-plus time commitment each night after work), and we finally got around to installing the landscaping drip line for our sprinkler system (but I didn't get any good pictures of the drip line, so I didn't bother blogging about it).

Oh yeah, and we also have an entire basement to finish, starting with the bathroom. Which still has a ginormous hole in the floor. We also have plans to add a sidewalk to the west side of our house in the backyard (not a brick sidewalk this time; a regular concrete one). An update on all that good stuff later.

However, in spite of the aforementioned goings-on, my post today is about... fruit. Yes, fruit. And a money-saving tip for all you penny pinchers like me out there. The fruit pictured below (3 lbs. strawberries, 6 lbs. grapes, 1 bag of gala apples, and 8 bananas) cost us only $11 total.  I don't know about you, but that seems like a pretty good deal to me! All that fruit would easily cost at least twice that much at a "regular" grocery store. So where did we get it?

We've recently "rediscovered" ALDI grocery stores and gotten some majorly good deals there --- mostly on fresh fruit lately. One of their recent weekly sales also included pineapples for only 99 cents. 99 cents, people!! (And the quality of the fruit is good too, in case you were wondering.) We dehydrated a couple of the pineapples last time, which tasted great but they don't last long that way... I could eat an entire dehydrated pineapple in one sitting. But we've also been using some fruit in the protein shakes we've been making after our P90X workouts. Yummy!

If there's an ALDI near you and you haven't visited lately (or ever), I would recommend checking it out! Just be prepared for a few things you might not be used to: you have to "rent" the carts for a quarter, there's usually a limit to how many sale items you can buy, and you bag your own groceries. But overall, it's totally worth the trip for the savings you get on certain foods.

I'd also like to mention that it's that time of year for the farmer's market to start up again!  Woot!  Another great place to score some delicious locally-grown and homemade foods at a good price.

And for those of you that thought today's post was uber-boring, well, I don't blame you. I'll try to catch you all up to speed on the nitty gritty house-related projects soon!