Guest post from Ruth
One thing that I typically hear a lot is, “You can’t find coupons for produce.” The ironic thing is, the majority of the coupons that I use are for fresh produce and other perishable items.
My children and I eat a minimally processed, gluten free, dairy free, and vegetarian diet (my husband is also vegetarian, but not dairy or gluten free). We also try to use mostly natural or organic type cleaners and body products. As you can imagine, that can require some creativity to keep the costs down!
I started couponing and I quickly narrowed down the sources which produced the best coupons for me. The weekly newspaper coupons, not surprisingly, didn’t help me much in my goal to save money. I knew that if I was going to save money, I had to try other ways.
Now I have a routine for which coupons I use and it’s become a lot of fun to take advantage of all the coupons for healthy foods that I never even knew about or used before!
Mperks Digital Coupons
We are blessed to live in an area with a Meijer store and I chose to sign up with their digital coupon program — Mperks. Each week, I scroll through and select which coupons or rewards I want to do for that week and then print a list and take it to the store. The savings are deducted off my total after I put in my information at check out.
The great thing about Mperks is that every week, there are a lot of great store coupons for produce!
One of the best things is when we have a store produce coupon for an item that is already on sale with one of Meijer’s 10 for 10 and 11th item free sales. This has scored me some tremendously cheap produce, like a 4 pack of baby cucumbers for 50 cents and a bag of onions for 75 cents.
Also, Mperks offers rewards. One of my most recent ones was an $8 off coupon for a future purchase when I purchased $50 of produce. That was a pretty sweet deal and helped to reduce the cost of some of our organic produce!
Driscoll Advisory Panel
I’ve joined Driscoll’s advisory panel and have been filling out surveys for each package of berries I buy. They start by giving you a 50 cent coupon for each survey, then after 5 surveys, they bump that value up to 75 cents.
After 16 surveys you get a $1 off Driscoll’s coupon for each survey. My store has great prices on fresh raspberries fairly often, so with the addition of those coupons, we’ve been able to enjoy lots of fresh berries.
Earthbound Organic Farm
I’ve also been getting Earthbound Organic Farm coupons. If you sign up for their email list, they will send you their promotional offers. I find that on average, I get a new coupon from them around once a week.
In addition, I regularly find coupons for other perishable items that our family uses such as non-dairy butter or organic unsweetened soymilk. I will print these out or clip them digitally ahead of time along with my coupons for fresh produce and plan my shopping trips out to maximize my savings.
Having the type of diet that we have has certainly made couponing more challenging, but I’ve been pleased to find that there are lots of offers for the products that we buy–if we take the time to look for them.
What are your best resources for whole foods coupons?
Ruth is a stay-at-home homeschooling mom to 3 kids. In her spare time, she teaches classes on vegetarian nutrition.
photo source
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Carissa from Pretty Hungry emailed in the following:
I recently had a unexpected overnight visit from my father and aunt who had to come to town suddenly to care for my sick grandmother. I was delighted to have them stay with us, but I was slightly unprepared food-wise. I had already done our grocery shopping for the week a few days earlier, and unfortunately it had not involved a very extensive spread of breakfast options suitable for company.
We had one box of off-brand cocoa puffs, some eggs, some turkey bacon, a few small slices of Swiss cheese, and some vegetable odds & ends in the crisper. I could definitely see the makings of a decent quiche… except for one problem. I didn’t have any butter to make a pastry crust!
But did I give up and go back to the grocery store? No! Because I remembered something I did have that just might be the perfect substitute for butter… Frozen, reserved sausage fat!
I had been saving reserved fat from breakfast sausage for months in ice cube trays because it’s wonderful to have on hand for sautéing vegetables and making gravy. I have found that saving fat like this really helps me save money because I don’t pull out the expensive bottle of olive oil nearly as often.
I had never tried substituting it for butter in pie crust before, but I had a hunch that frozen sausage fat would taste amazing in a quiche crust and would work just as well as butter. And I was right!
The resulting crust was perfectly flaky with a wonderful savory taste. It was lovely!
Single Pastry Pie Crust
Here is the recipe I created:
Ingredients:
- 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup frozen, cubed sausage fat
- 4-5 Tablespoon ice cold water
Directions:
In a mini food processor, pulse the flour and salt to combine. Add in the frozen, cubed sausage fat and pulse until incorporated. (Mixture will look like coarse crumbs.)
Add in the water gradually, pulsing until the mixture comes together in a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour.
Roll out to fit the pan of your choice. Transfer to the pan, taking care not to stretch dough. Trim edges and crimp as desired, and bake according to individual recipe directions.
Makes a single pastry crust.
I hope this inspires you to think outside the box before resorting to going over-budget! I LOVE the way reducing our budget has made me more resourceful, more grateful, and more financially aware. And so far, there have been no complaints from my family. 
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