I make my own

Have any of you ever tasted raspberry vinegar? Not the balsamic kind, but the pure raspberry vinegar. Well I have. I found it one day on the shelf and bought a couple, at $5 something a pop. I like to make a salad and sprinkle a little over along with other various spices and sometimes a bit of mayonnaise or olive oil and sometimes Splenda. I use the Splenda in the salads with chopped cabbage, coleslaw type salads, and in the broccoli salad. When I ran out of the vinegar, I looked for a long time before I spotted it again. This time in a different grocery store. The next time I ran out, I could NOT find it anywhere. Having frequented many different grocery stores on my Tuesday trips to choir, I couldn't really remember which grocery store I had found it. Finally when I found it on my local grocer's shelf, I bought five bottles and made a mental note where I had found it. Lo and behold, next time I needed more, it was NOT there. Not even a tag. I looked for the next few weeks in every store I stopped, and it was NO where.
Then one day, our freezer needed a good thawing, and when the Sailor (hubby)was sorting the foods into various coolers, he found this poor package of frozen raspberries that had somehow gotten thawed and refrozen into an unrecognizable cube. An idea popped into my mind. I took a knife and broke the raspberry cube into smaller pieces. I put them into several empty vinegar bottles and added white vinegar. We let them sit for a week and gradually they took on this beautiful red color. After about two weeks, we tried it, and voila! We had vinegar that tasted just like the $5/bottle variety, but it was WAY less expensive! A gallon of white vinegar costs about $1.50.
Since I don't have anymore raspberry cubes in my freezer, I purchased a container of frozen raspberries for about 2.50. This container will make about 4 bottles of raspberry vinegar, it is a steal when you take the time to make your own. Just save your old vinegar bottles as you use them up. Peel off the label and you have a "berry" attractive bottle for your counter top.
So there you have it. Your tip for today, whether or not you asked for it.
:)