Upping the produce intake and making lemonade

After a few too many pricey grocery visits in the early spring, Hubby suggested stretching our grocery shopping to three weeks instead of two. I declared it implausible, but then we tried it anyway. As it turns out, we end up emptying our cupboards and freezers more effectively, so that when we do eventually bring home three plastic tubs of food, we can actually fit it all in our house.

This week, I went a little crazy on the produce side of things. Everything just looked delicious, and no, I was not shopping on an empty stomach, although I was there sans kids. Here's what I bought:
-3 heads of cauliflower
-1 pineapple
-1 pint raspberries
-a bunch of kale
-6 sweet potatoes
-2 zucchini
-3 leeks
-2 lemons
-2 butternut squash
-celery
-giant bag of russet potatoes
-medium bag of vidalia onions
-4 bell peppers

The upside is that the trip to Food Basics only ran me about 80$, between all the fruits and veggies and the various other things like milk, pasta, sausages, hash browns, etc.

My hope is to use up everything before it goes bad, and I have three weeks. As soon as I got back from the store, I chopped up the leeks and froze them in 1-cup servings to add to soups or whatever. D and I gobbled up the raspberries (she finished them with her lunch today), and I went through both lemons (I literally made lemonade, surprisingly for the first time) and half the kale (made into chips, only the second time I've ever done so) with dinner tonight. I'm planning to steam, puree and freeze the cauliflower tomorrow in one fell swoop, and maybe shred and freeze the zucchini, too. I might cut the celery into sticks and keep it in a bowl of water in the fridge, so that's it's easy to snack on. I'll wait until the pineapple's properly ripe to cut it up and keep it in a bowl for the same purpose. All of that should take care of the more perishable items, and the rest will keep nicely until we need it.

I adapted a lemonade recipe and was shocked at how well it turned out. I've really only ever had bottled or made-from-frozen-concentrate lemonade, and this was way better.

1 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup lemon juice (I squeezed two lemons, then used bottled lemon juice for the rest)
3 1/2 cups cold water

In a saucepan over medium heat, stir the water and sugar together until the sugar completely dissolves. Pour into a pitcher, along with the lemon juice, and stir in the cold water. Serve with ice.