I buy my carrots at Smart Foodservice/Cash & Carry. When bought in 10 lb bags, whole carrots are $4.49 or 45 cents/lb. The largest bag of baby carrots at Cash & Carry is the 5-lb one, and it sells for $4.29 or 86 cents/lb. So at Cash & Carry, I pay 20 cents more to get 5 extra pounds of carrots when buying them whole/
Here's how I buy carrots -- 10 lb bags of whole carrots at Smart Food Service/Cash & Carry (a wholesaler open to the public with prices similar to club warehouses).
I enjoy the ease of baby carrots. However, the cost (at almost twice the price of whole carrots) is beyond a small budget. Granted, there is some waste when peeling and trimming the ends from whole carrots. I give a generous estimate to the waste at about 1/10th to 1/15th of the weight of a whole carrot; still not enough to justify the purchase of baby carrots for me.
So, what do I do to make whole carrots more accessible for all of our family members and without a large time investment on my part? I take about a dozen carrots at a time and peel and trim, then place them in a plastic bag in the fridge. Family members are then free to cut into sticks, chunks, slices, or eat whole. (We've all been sporting the Bugs Bunny look in recent weeks, chomping on whole carrots.) If I had small children who were not adept at using sharp knives, obviously I'd cut carrots into sticks for them.
I have to say, this is really working for me. When I see that the bag of ready-carrots is near empty, I take about 5 or so minutes to peel and trim a dozen. There are about 3 to 4 dozen carrots in a 10-lb bag. In total, I spend about 20 to 30 minutes peeling and trimming a full bag of carrots. I save about $3.70 to $3.80 per 10-lb bag of carrots when I peel and trim them myself (this includes the waste of the peels and ends). That's a savings of $3.70 to $3.80 for 30 minutes of hands-on time, or an "hourly wage" of $7.40 to $7.60.
There's an added financial bonus to making our whole carrots more user friendly -- members of our household are much more likely to grab a carrot (which is an inexpensive veggie) than some frozen peas or green beans (which are at least double the cost of carrots) for their lunches.
This concept of buying carrots in a basic and whole state, then transforming them into something more user-friendly offers substantial savings for other commonly-bought vegetables. Compare the price of whole potatoes to frozen French fries. Whole potatoes can be made into oven fries fairly easily and replace the commercially-prepared frozen French fries at a fraction of the cost. Bagged whole potatoes are currently selling for about $2 per 10-lb bag in my area. Frozen French fries sell for about $1.99/32-oz bag at Fred Meyer. Including oil, salt, and electricity for the oven, oven fries made from whole potatoes cost no more than 30 cents per pound. That's less than 1/3 the cost of the prepared potato product.
Look at the cost of bagged lettuce. An average head of Romaine lettuce weighs between 21 and 22 ounces. At Fred Meyer this week, a plain, unpackaged full head of Romaine lettuce is selling for $1.79. So, what about the waste when washing and trimming a whole head of Romaine lettuce? I would give a guess at about 1 ounce per head. (BTW, I use a good portion of the core when making salads, by slicing thin and cutting into matchsticks, as I described in this post.) So, after the loss of 1 ounce, a head of Romaine costs between $1.36 and $1.43 per pound. This week, the Kroger brand of bagged leafy Romaine lettuce is selling for $2.79 for a 10-oz bag, and the Dole brand of bagged, chopped Romaine is marked at $4.99 for a 32-oz bag. The Kroger bagged lettuce is $4.46 per pound and the Dole bagged Romaine is $2.49 per pound. The Kroger lettuce is about 3 times the cost per pound of a basic head of Romaine! While the Dole bagged Romaine, while much cheaper than the Kroger, is still almost twice the cost per pound of the basic, unprepared head of Romaine.
I do sometimes find bagged salad on markdown. However, the 10-oz bagged Kroger Romaine lettuce would need to be marked down to 85 to 89 cents to break even with the full head price, and the bagged Dole Romaine marked down to about $2.72 to $2.86 per 32-oz bag. So far, the lowest price I have ever seen short-dated Kroger 10-oz bags is 99 cents. Even after markdown, a full head of lettuce is still less expensive per pound than the bagged.
Washing a head of lettuce probably takes about 10 minutes of hands-on time. I can fill my large sink with water, peel the Romaine leaves off one at a time and add to the water, swish them all around gently, then drain well. When I wash lettuce to store in the fridge, I wrap the washed leaves in a large, but very thin, cotton dish towel, then I place the bundle in a plastic bag. Lettuce stored this way will keep in the fridge for 7 to 10 days. Pre-chopping the lettuce will shorten the storage life, so I generally leave the chopping to the last minute. It's the washing and drying that seems to take time.
There is definitely a place and time for convenience produce items. They can save money if the alternative is a restaurant or even an inexpensive take-out meal. The time-savings could be more valuable than the financial savings in some circumstances. But for my small grocery budget, I can buy more wholesome, quality foods for my family by doing the prep work myself.
