Freecycle find

I wasn't able to post last week, because we were away all weekend at a Morris dance event in Massachusetts. So to make up for it, I'm doing a quickie midweek post to share my latest frugal triumph: some organic baking supplies I scored yesterday on Freecycle.

When I checked my e-mail first thing on Monday morning, I found a "daily digest" e-mail from Freecycle containing this listing:

OFFER: Organic baking ingredients (Highland Park)

Organic coconut flour, coconut oil and almond flour. Coconut flour and
oil have been opened and used. Nothing wrong with either- just not our
preference. Almond flour still sealed!

Now, normally, I check with Brian before requesting any item on Freecycle, since I like to get his input on whether we're actually likely to use an item before bringing it into the house. But in this case, I felt so confident we could use these goodies that I just immediately sent a reply saying I could pick them up that afternoon. I wasn't too confident I'd get them, since I've jumped on Freecycle offers before only to find them already taken, but I figured I had nothing to lose by trying.

To my surprise, I got a message back within half an hour saying the baking ingredients were still available and offering to leave them out for porch pickup. So I popped over there during my afternoon walk and came home with this lovely assortment. As advertised, the coconut flour and coconut oil had both been sampled, but they were still mostly full, and the almond flour was untouched.

In case you don't quite comprehend what a deal this is, take a look at the retail prices of these items:

• Bob's Red Mill almond meal: $9.50 at Target
• Bob's Red Mill coconut flour: $4.20 at Target
• Organic coconut oil: I couldn't find a price for the 365 Everyday brand, but we pay $4 a jar for it at Aldi.

So even if you figure 10 percent of those last two items has already been used up, this is still around $17 worth of high-value baking ingredients—particularly handy for baking goodies that are vegan-friendly or gluten-free, as we sometimes need to do. And all I had to do to get them was take a slightly different route on an afternoon walk that I was planning to take anyway.

If we do anything particularly exciting and ecofrugal with any of these ingredients, I'll be sure to let you know about it in these digital pages. But for now, I'm just basking in the glory of my freebie find.