If you only shop once a week...

[AngelDog]

...how do you manage with things like fruit which go off quickly?

I am trying to reduce the number of times I go shopping. At the moment I do one supermarket shop and two market shops a week. We get all our fruit & veg from the market (can't afford to get it from the supermarket even if I wanted to).

I find it really difficult to store a week's worth of fruit. It either runs out part-way through the week or (if I buy more), goes off before the end of the week.

We are only 2 adults and a 2 year old. DS and I already eat quite a bit of tinned fruit as well as fresh. DS eats a lot of fruit.

Due to MIL not being able to left alone (and the latest complication of a three week old kitten who has to be bottlefed what feels like every ten minutes) I am currently only going to the supermarket twice a month in a flat out mega dash that resembles one of those supermarket "grab all you can in three minutes" competition wins.

Soft fruit gets eaten first or hurled in the freezer with a bit of sugar post washing. Or just bought frozen in the first place. Picard (freezer shop) is my fiend. Mango, pineapple and other such exotic fruits are lovely straight from the freezer if professionally frozen. Nicer than lollies.

I buy bog standard fruit like apples, pears, apricots, plums as hard and under ripe as I can get them and keep them in the fridge. Bananas ditto, if the go soft I slice them and bung them in the freezer for smoothie use.

There is a watermelon living in my bath. I just let put the warmed up water when I remember and add new cold. Once it is cut it will fit in the fridge and they'll have to eat the thing asap.

You could also make stewed apples and pear etc. and freeze for a "sorbet-ish" sort of thing. Frozen individual grapes are yummy too.

I no longer send DH to the greengrocer on a fruit run in between shopping mad dashes. The greengrocer is a master salesman and DH is a fabulous mark. He came back having speant 22 fecking euros on just a few posh perfect shaped (but utterly flavourless) pears.

Keep all but bananas in the fridge. Lasts ages!

I shop once a week, for a very long time. What do you mean fruit goes off? Obviously things like strawberries won't last a week. But I still have plums on my window sill that is from last saturday's delivery. They are still fine.

The staple fruit we have are bananas, citrus, apples/pears. They always last a week at least. Citrus and apples can last two weeks, and I often take advantage of the buy 2 offers. They are stored in a fruit bowl in the kitchen. I also buy more seasonal fruits in summer. Atm, it's berries and melons and stone fruit. They generally don't last as long. But we tend to finish with them by monday or tuesday (with a saturday morning delivery).

HTH

Grapes will last a week too easily in the fridge btw.