grapes and easy peel clementines, too!

Costco raspberries

the weird situation you find yourself in where you react to your kid wanting out of season berries the way you react to them whining for the newest hundred dollar toy

I am spending at least $5 a day supplying my children with strawberries in hopes that these memories will sustain them through a harsh winter of apples, grapes, and clementines.

My kid pulled the power play (I say this entirely tongue in cheek) of developing something like intestinal migraines/cyclic vomiting syndrome where she'll periodically get nauseous and not want to eat -- but if she doesn't eat that'll also make her throw up. There are very few foods she can bring

herself to eat when she feels that way. OF COURSE raspberries and strawberries are 2 of her safe foods. That makes it pretty much impossible to say no to buying them any time of year! Foiled again. She's an evil genius, I tell you.

OOF. At least her safe foods are delicious and nutritious!

In Oregon you just pick 'em as you need 'em.

My kids were on a hardcore smoothie kick for a couple months. I could have funded a small nation with the money spent on it. I was not unhappy when the started to chill on that. Now it’s only half a small nation.

My niece (recent college grad at the time) gave my kids (then in middle school) the following advice: eat as much fruit as you can while you still live at home because that shit is expensive and you won’t be able to afford it once you move out.

Do you have any U-Picks in your area? It's AYCE and a full day's activity rolled into one

My son - who has Down syndrome and severe autism and is highly dependent on strict routine - polishes off at least one container of raspberries and one container of blackberries every single day. That’s $10 CAD. Every. Single. Day. Sometimes more depending on the season.

Yeah, raspberries have been my teenager's fave since he was a baby — to this day we get 2-3 little boxes just for him every grocery trip 🫠

My parents had blueberry bushes for *years*. My kids still say that those were their favorites. Ah, memories!!

Pro tip: If they start getting mushy and its before any mold forms, toss them in the freezer for “smoothie mornings.”

Unbeknownst to her, this is also what happens with any leftover fruit in her lunch bag from school. I may make this part of my speech at her wedding if I’m invited.

Okay, this is genius

My kid has a stone fruit allergy. So their fruit intake is basically bananas and then every expensive berry known to man.

This is why I’m relishing nice peaches for $0.89 a pound at the Safeway. They’re just as happy with those instead.

wish they didn't like to play empty/fill with blueberries and shoes once they become mobile. i can't wash them enough to ever want to eat them after that.

Oddly enough this applies to my experience rehabbing opossums as well.

So true Hahhaha my youngest will eat a whole pint of black, rasp, or straw berries by himself and then look at me like I can produce more

Real talk!!!!

I don’t know why they only sell raspberries in those 6 oz containers because kids will just eat an entire container of raspberries no matter the size, Big Grocery could be making so much more $

Raspberries are very fragile, if they're ripe. The collective weight of many in one box would smash those on the bottom?

Yes, and unless sprayed with a lot of chemicals, raspberries seem to develop mold on them faster and more easily than other berries.

Great point

The berry and pouch budget is out of this world

Especially the crunch berries

We used to go as a family to those pick your own farms, eat as many fresh as we could and then my dad would freeze the rest for later. It was a lot of fun and far better than much in the store these days. Summer fun!

My 7yo has a cantaloupe a day habit.

Whatever you do, don’t let them try a Sumo tangerine. College fund out the window. 😂

I used to eat tons of cantaloupe at around that age, with black pepper, right out of the rind using a spoon, adding more pepper as I went. I had completely forgotten about this.

Wait till the prom season!

Considerable savings are achieved once it is understood that toddlers do not actually enjoy berry pies: they hate the pie, so I now just buy the berries in bulk - both children and wallet are happier. Joy also comes potted as balcony strawberries, and wild as my secret blackberry spot !

If you have enough yard, planting raspberries and/or blackberries the year you first have the kid should result in enough berries to mitigate the expense in about three years, which is about the age where they start demanding berries on their own, too!

As soon as a one year old walks, they seem to instinctively know they can pick strawberries and become the strawberries plot's apex predator.

The good news is, strawberries establish faster than raspberries!

good thing i don't have kids, my berry budget is already out of control

It’s how I discovered the life-changing magic of frozen berries.

Also, how difficult it is to buy the correct amount of berries for any given week. Too few? There’s “nothing to eat.” Too many? Might as well set money on fire. Good luck, parents…

Omg I feel seen

Plant them trees. Then, no pick, no eat.

If you haven’t already, do not fall for the pineberry. They aren’t sweet, nor taste like pineapple. Why did they cultivate a tasteless, colorless berry? There’s a joke in there for sure.

I recently had a friend feed an entire pint of strawberries to their 3yr old at the farmer's market while we stood and chatted for 15min.

So true! And those things don’t have much of a shelf life. I die a little inside when I see $15 of blackberries have molded

Cook them into something.

Not always an option and with 4 kids, usually not a ton of time. Birds love them in the feeder though

Yes and grapes! So expensive.

Oh, what I would pay for a good bunch of “Cotton Candy” grapes from South Africa right now. 🫣

Thought this was going to be one of the many yearly stress posts about Back To School lists.🤭 Before 2025, every year I would calmly wonder around Target giggling to myself that I no longer had to worry about B2S. College prep tho wasn't fun either. I can pack TF out of a sedan like fvcking Tetris🤣

Both my 3.5 year old and eight month old think a pint of strawberries is one serving.

When my youngest was a newborn, my oldest would wait until I was trapped under a sleeping baby to get out the strawberries and eat the entire one pound container.

Genius!

For whatever reason, I expected that to say "batteries." Still true.

bramble berries are easy to grow and if you do there are many varieties. I've grown simultaneously blackberries and red, golden, and black raspberries. The different varieties ripen at different times

I started multiple berry patches last year in preparation. Is this how it feels to have invested in Google in like 2000?

Or that your kid won't like or eat the same berries you do.

I took my daughter and her friends out for her friends’ birthday (twins) and after lunch at a nice pizza place ($60), shopping for presents ($60), dessert froyo $25) my daughter chimes in and asks if we could all go get boba tea. Some berries seems like you are getting off cheap. 😂 (I didn’t cave)

I'm only an auntie, so my stash is only spent on me. Blueberries or bust.

My five year old doesn’t want anything to do with berries or most fruit, but would eat asparagus, braised kale, and broccoli every day. 🤷‍♂️

Berries are pretty easy to grow...

The berry budget is real.

Its insane. And now matter how many you buy, within a day you just need more again.

You should have asked me.

Luckily around here all types Just grow wild in the city and nearby areas so you can just go pick a few

Omg. I would love it if my kid would eat a berry.

😂🤣😂

My baby is just starting solids and I already feel bad whenever I eat any fruit we have in our apartment 🙁

My youngest will inhale $20 of blackberries like it's a Coney Island contest

Do they grow wild in your area? When we moved to the coast we were surrounded by fresh fruit growing everywhere. For the first time in all of our lives. We all went a little berserk with fruit Our back yard had cherry, pear,plum, and apple trees, with blackberries everywhere.1/5

No one went more wild than Mom. She coerced me to pick both Evergreen and Himalaya blackberries every summer. We plucked gallons and gallons to eat, to make pies, juice, and freeze. Picking those darn blackberries was a sweaty, dusty, and painful task. 2/5

At first blush, it was pretty easy. BUT when the low hanging fruit was gone, their thorns exacted revenge. “I have a solution,” she said. “March back out there. Take this wood plank; lay it across the bush to protect your arm and use this rake to pull the branches down.You’ll be fine,” she said. 3/5

Fresh bear scat along the path or in the pasture? “No problem, young lady. Take this dinner bell to scare them away.” 4/5

She was a stern boss when it came to acquiring more fruit. “But there are so many huge flies and wasps out there, Mom. Please don’t make me!” Mom to me,”You’ll thank me later when we eat the fruit.” And I did. 5/5

Also, you will either buy too many or not nearly enough. Never an in between

Aaaaand they don't eat said berries... parental fruit conservation. It's a thing.

It's impossible for me to keep a single flat of blueberries or raspberries in my house for 24hours. I could lock them in a safe hidden in the pool and my four year old would still get them.

Rich people's problems.

$20 dollars a week just on a berries? No, surely not. *Sweating, checking the Costco receipt*

Counterpoint: Berry picking at a farm actually *is* fun for the whole family.

One of the funniest, best decisions we ever made was planting a lot (a lot, a lot) of berry bushes in our working garden, and watching our tykes nosh for dozens of minutes at a time.

Truth! I’ve mitigated this (slightly) by buying only rechargeable batteries. A lot of them.

We got a congrats from local Sainsbury’s for being the number one purchaser of grapes when my daughter was about 13. True story.

😂

One of our local grocers has has strawberries, blueberries, blackberries & raspberries on sale lately, as well as dark, sweet cherries. We have been reaping the bounty while it lasts 😆

Berries are so cheap at our Chicagoland Jewel grocery store. There are 99 cent sales that I take advantage of all the time.

Ours are not quite that cheap in the Metro KC area, but close, lol

I have no idea why our produce is so cheap in Chicago and the suburbs.

We went to a local farm last week and paid to pick our own. So worth it! Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and black raspberries

For my oldest, it was fresh figs, which you can’t even get most of the year, but when they were in season (Texas) he wanted every one he saw.

Such a short season! 😩

He went to Morocco on a school trip in high school and I heard about the roving fig vendors.

Do I have kids? No. Do I want kids? No. And yet, over the years I have watched/heard/read multiple anecdotes from parents about berries. Also about food in general, but when it gets specific, it's often berries. If I were them, I might have a chest freezer full.

Times I thought about berries more than usual: • when I worked in food service and prepped them • when people of my cohort started having babies and posting on social media about their eating habits

So many berries.

That is true but I read “berries” as “batteries” which is also very true

Yep. This. 😂

From ages 2-6 for my twins, my monthly berry budget exceeded trash/water/sewer.

Kids can consume any amount of raspberries

Trust me, it's worth planting raspberries, if you can. Within 3 years of planting them you will have a serious yield.

They are fruit bats that randomly switch which berry they like the most that week. Get a nutribullet and collect your favorite smoothie recipes to cut down on the waste…

These comments restore my faith in humanity! Helpful tips to avoid moldy berries!

I think @sranderson.bsky.social and @alanrozenshtein.com would agree, if I remember that episode of Rational Security right 😂

Berries, decade ago. It’s now apples. Lots & lots of #Apples #Silly

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life but my biggest regret is not enrolling in that “Driscolls berry points” thing at the very start. We’ve probably earned an above ground pool at this point.

Wait till they're 70... I spend an inordinate amount on berries

And the moment you find one they like is the very moment they begin to despise it.

when I show up at the grandkids' houses, I come carrying berries. every week, every season, they get berries and I don't care what it costs.

I take for granted that growing up in the PNW you can spend all day as a kid foraging ripe berries from June until Sept. It's not summer w/o scratches from getting that perfectly plump berry right out of reach.

And I never eat the berries so that there are enough berries for the kids. Feels extravagant to get adult berries.

In five or six months you’ll see a great Sheng Wang bit about this that will bring you some laughs. He’s touring new material for a Netflix special and there’s a solid joke about kids and berries.

I lucked out with a kid that’s not particularly into berries

Yeah. It’s not diapers—it’s raspberries.

Straw, blue, crunch...

Choco. Wait is that a thing? Maybe I just invented ChocoBerries!

Crunchberries were a real thing www.capncrunch.com/products/cap...

Also Count Chocula, who I think existed in the same breakfast cereal universe.

Indeed.

Funny thing is, they are long grown up and moved away, and yet I am still spending just as much on berries! Hmmm…..

As someone who buys my parents' groceries, I feel that the Demand For Berries has more to do with blissful ignorance of the grocery budget than age

And then one week “i dont like blackberries, i like raspberries” (this reverses the following week)

Ad infinitum...

Don’t let them near the fancy cheese

Omg this. My teenager loves berries, smoked salmon, fancy cheese, fancy olives, and so many other expensive things

That + a spouse who insists on organic = bye bye retirement

Costco and Aldi are your friends.

I’ve long thought that the entire pro-natal movement is the work of Big Berry.

There’s just not another explanation they come out yearning for the berries. It’s like they turn an age and suddenly it’s all they can subsist on.

Lol

That's a berry interesting theory 🤔

Having a berry kid in this economy is tough.

This is the conspiracy theory I can get behind!

look at the size of the berries on this gal and the dude calling out Big Berry... better be careful you don't get Boeinged! also, am I alone in reading Boeinged as...

Truth!!

True, but I'm kind of enjoying the guilt-free buying of berries 'for the kids'. Kids are not wrong about berries -- they really are very, very good for breakfast, snack, and dessert.

I do it too except my excuse, at age 73, is "I need them for the vitamins and fiber." Unabashedly consuming them year round, while I can find and afford them year round, that is.

Hubby and I are early 70’s. He is raspberries and strawberries and I am blackberries and blueberries. Year round when prices are right.

Have you tried the only-at-HEB Sweet Karoline blackberries? They were $1.98 for a couple of weeks, $3.98 now if they have any left. Absolutely the best blackberries I've ever eaten.

I have not—we don’t have a local HEB in Denton but we have made some runs to the store in Frisco. I hear we’re getting an HEB closer to us someday, so we’re looking forward to that. We fell in love with HEB during visits to McAllen to check on parents.

We finally have one close enough for routine shopping (it's in Mansfield & I'm in deep south Arlington). I actually get excited about my weekly shop now 😂

I believe Costco has a nice bag of frozen berries that contain all 4 of those berries. If you don’t have a membership, ask a friend to buy a bag for you - for emergencies.

They make great smoothies with their Greek yogurt too

Thanks—we don’t have a Costco close by but we are Sam’s Club members. Will see what they have.

Sams got a berry bag too

My kid is in this third year of private college and we might have just now surpassed what I spent on blueberries in 2008

Thus my presence at Costco on a weekly basis

Mannnnnnnn. That’s so true.

Nor does anyone warn you how little appreciation your kids will have for the money you spent on those berries, which will end up in places you didn't know existed

Absolutely worth it to instill a taste for quality fresh food

And Pokémon cards.

My 12 year old will eat a 2lb package of blueberries in one sitting if I let him and beg for another the next day

Me: Let's get a healthy snack Kid: Grabs an $8 pint of blueberries Me: Want some sour patch kids instead?

Only for half of them to be "too squishy" or "too hard" to eat 🤣

Pretty sure the giant fruit salad I make weekly costs $50.

Fucking berries

Or how much time you'll need to spend cutting up fruit to put into take out containers before going to a park, the beach, etc

Oregon grown Marion & Blueberries are a favorite.

When my friend’s kid was around 3yo, they loved blueberries so much sometimes kid didn’t chew them. During a bath, she finds the kid trying to eat a mysterious blueberry. Stops kid. And then she finds the 💩 Never thought she’d have to tell her kid not to eat poopy bathtub blueberries but 🤷‍♀️

There are so many rules you didn’t realize you had to make until you have children.

They always want them until you get them home.

He doesn’t have it out on video yet but I saw the comedian Sheng Wang recently and he did a fantastic bit about berries and kids.

The 6oz containers last one (1) meal. It’s a racket!

Flip side is I eat a lot more berries and as you know they’re incredible for you.

Berries are going to get crazy expensive soon man, prepare

So. Many. Berries.

We estimated what it would cost to build a greenhouse just for berries. The math didn't work out for us. Bought a freezer instead, all the baking/cooking berries get bought in season & frozen.

When each child is born, a pixie blows on them, bestowing them with their Preferred Berry. God help your bank account if it’s raspberries.

Easily 10% of my income.

We need CNBC to out out a fruit index. That is to me a sign of how suburban soccer mom’s will vote

Lol and over and over again

And you never know what will be the fruit of the week. I’m always fighting the last war and wind up with grapes nobody wants but they flew through them last time

🤣😂 💯 truth

One of the joys of being and empty-nester is buying the expensive fruit just for yourself. For years it was just entry level fruit, now I go wild in the produce section. Bonus is impressing the Grandchildren with my expansive fruit selection, because they only get entry level fruit at home.

Lord help you if the family ends up at a U-pick berry farm. Hope you needed 20 pounds of berries at $500 a pound!

I've always wondered about the u-pick scams

Truth!

One should start planting bushes and vines when has the first wisp of pregnancy.

all.the.berries.

That are either gone in 2.5 seconds, or turn moldy the next day. 😒

True

My nephew would cry for blueberries when he was a toddler.

You figure out which stores have good berries and how long they last real quick Also, I use my salad spinner almost exclusively for berries

DC Mayor Various Berries.

I looked into growing blueberries because of this…

hungry? 7 years old? try an entire 2 lb u-pick box of blueberries. you will surely not regret eating an entire 2 lb u-pick box of blueberries

We’ve now expanded to add frozen berries. These hippies need to get jobs already.

I am a big berry eater. We couldn't afford them much when I was growing up, but now they're a must-have gift to myself. At least they're good for you!

buy 10 dollars worth of berries .. gone. 20 dollars worth.. gone. My older kid (16) now just wants an entire cleaned up cantaloupe. Nobody else gets any

Haven’t seen this suggestion yet but berries in protein pancakes is a win in our house too. Bonus points for a few chocolate chips tossed in. (Protein packed pancakes because who has space for eggs and meat when you’ve binged on berries already.)

Then you throw them away because they go fuzzy 🤷🏼‍♀️

Berry Obama strikes again

Pray they don’t love raspberries!

And then some inevitably go bad before they are eaten

Mmmmmm

~ So I am not alone 🤣🤣

Moving near my parents has saved us countless money via free childcare and a not insubstantial amount from a backyard full of raspberries.

Preach!

Its the buying them and them not getting eaten that FRUSTRATES me.

Feel this deeply

I think this is why most parents i know becomes obsessed with farmers markets, slightly cheaper berries and veg adds up

if you've got kids i know a guy who can get you one really big blueberry for a price

Omg the berries. The berries and school supplies.

Christ yes

Today in the grocery store: "Daddy we can't check out yet." "Why not?" "I want strawberries!" "We already have strawberries at home." "..." "..." "I want blackberries!"

(yes of course we bought the blackberries)

We used to plan our trips to the grocery to include a second pass through the produce at the end because the girls would just eat all the berries we put in the cart initially. And in the winter? In Canada? Sigh.

I have successfully held the line that we can't eat food until we've paid for it. For now at least.

So. Many. Berries.

Our 10yo LOVES raspberries, so we always keep some in the fridge. His method is to put a raspberry on the tip of each finger like a thumb, then eat then one at a time.

I wish there was a berry ETF for my 401K.

Read berries as batteries at first, which also works

A friend and her 9 year old kid stayed with us (a childless couple) and the kid asked me "Uh, are you rich?" Me: "maybe? depends on how you define rich." Kid: "you have MULTIPLE things of raspberries in your fridge"

their being available year-round is so amazing. my pics are full of shots like this, when in canada or the states on holiday, basking in low prices for a pack of rasps

NZ has a lot of advantages, access to the global berry trade is not one of them

in the ~6 weeks per year they are available, we are the principal consumers of raspberries in new zealand (we meaning my own family). this constitutes a larger proportion of our family budget than mortgage payments.

sometimes my pics of grocery store berries are in the opposite direction, like this very much real pic of $12.99 blueberries (a tiny pack) at a normal, not-fancy grocery store

wow I just bougt them in Ca. and they were $3.99

My brother does NOT let me go grocery shopping while I'm there because I'll spend $1000 without even noticing

haha yep one really has to be careful w/ seasonal produce i'm exaggerating a bit about the budget thing ofc but berries are just "we are gonna accept spending a fortune on these bc tyranny of distance, life is short" on the other hand, stuff in season is real cheap; these kiwis on pricier end

they at $2/kg last week and a kilo is really a lot of kiwifruit lol

Here in Maine with Wyman's. and other operations, berries are generally cheap. What's surprising though, is how much lobstah, gets sky rocketed. Used to be my Pup would hit the lobstah jackpot, at the Yard (BIW American football pool) and it would last us a couple weeks.

It was 7.99lb at hannaford a couple weeks ago and now it’s 10.99lb, a much quicker change than years past!

This is all v. fascinating as my perception of NZ is that it’s a temperate paradise where anything can be grown. I feel like NZ is where our out of season berries come from?!

definitely not where berries come from. our big food exports are dairy (by orders of magnitude) and especially cream and butter, honey, lamb, kiwifruit, avocado

"Costco darling"

It’s fucking insane how many berries a toddler can inhale

Realizing the way that I really didn't eat fruits or vegetables in 2008

It’s Berry season so ya and face it , if you are self picking you are paying for that and if not you are paying for other kids that picked .use the Quarter jar

For a decade, we had a black raspberry bramble that produced gallons of berries every summer, to the point we gave them away. When it died & we paid $12 for 1 pint? Actual tears. The new canes just bore fruit this year. Thank goodness.

I'm growing fruit because my pockets can't keep up with both my boyfriend & child's fruit obsession

It goes up exponentially from toddlerhood to college age too

So. Many. Berries. So. Many. $.

Can confirm as a dad who just returned from the store

Our local Aldi is a family favorite because the little one asks for fruit every day. Now the fun new play is taking our various picks over to the scale to weigh them.

My immigrant parents didn't believe in berries. Too small and expensive so it was obviously a trap. Grapes were the smallest fruit they'd buy bc every bag was practically a branch with dozens of fruit pieces. I still think they're right.

I love when there's a clamshell of berries in the fridge when there happens to be a ripe crop of the same berry in our garden.

This is so true… let alone organic berries

The “fruit” budget has been quite a shock to me as well. It’s like = to all other food we eat, including coffee.

My younger one wants berries, honey, salmon. Pretty sure she’s a werebear.

A half pint of blueberries costs $25.

My child eats so many berries that I put it in a short story I've been trying to publish for three years

I've eaten more blueberries in one year since my son's birth than I had the thirty years prior

Why did we ever let them taste Luxardo cherries??? They will have nothing to do with they typical bright red maraschino ones

I suppose... My dad used to get his mountain huckleberries for free. Take us kids up in the woods on the pretense of going on a camping trip--which was technically true-- and then send us all out with buckets all day long as free berry picking labor... Not much else to do, so...

My sibs and I were sent out with buckets to pick wild blueberries. I loved to eat them, but hated how much work it took to pick and clean them - which, in hindsight, was a valuable lesson.

Yew is free... Hth

But Costco knows. Costco always knows.

You'd think berries were diamonds by the level of inspection & eatability ratings that apply over here by the teens.

Which is why a rite of passage is to get a Costco membership. It is not for the hot dog. It is for the bulk berries.

I managed to mitigate it by buying frozen, but ... yeah.

I thought you said "various batteries", but it works either way.

Um? Wait till you hit extra curricular activities

One of my kids lit me up for bringing an insufficient number of berries to an extracurricular activity just last week

I have no point of reference for this . In Little League- we provided snacks Birthdays- we made sure there were enough cupcakes Marching band - don’t even fucking get me started. Berries?

Swimming is first thing in the morning, so there isn't always time to eat the berries before we leave the house, and the tween beat the hangry one to the thermos

Quick-read that as "batteries" and that is also true.

one of my littlest's first word adjacent sounds was "bloobs" while doing the baby sign language "more"

Beware the Berry Tax! My spellbook says: "Pay 50 gold for a strawberry, or risk a cursed diaper explosion. Choose wisely, mortal."

Yup. It's a significant amount and it fluctuates quickly. And yogurt buyers notice how quickly cups change in price week to week.

Ive joked that we should buy Chobani stock because we've been keeping them going for over a decade now 😭

They keep disappearing the berry pickers!!!

on the other hand, you can recruit them to help you gather them in the fields and bushes for a whole half day (and then preserve them) for 'free'.

Summer is my favorite time of year with the kids because I absolutely do not have to worry about them not eating enough fruit.

Yeah. Welcome aboard.

We just spent $40 at the u-pick, but we’ve already had blueberry muffins and will get to have this later tonight.

A really good book for folks who love berries! #Jamberry

Cackling like mad at this. And salmon. I can’t believe how much salmon they eat. Hey wait a sec. Are they bears? Maybe.

Finally got mine trained to harvest the berries we planted for her in our yard. Only took twenty three years.

I spend $48 a week on strawberries — so glad they are going out of season here

And batteries. So many batteries.