About a month and a half ago, my friend Marcy told me about an organization called Bountiful Baskets. It's basically a cooperative where many people pool their money together and buy fresh fruits and vegetables from small farms in Mexico. It's a completely volunteer venture and because of that, the people involved can buy produce at a good price.
It works this way. You got to the website Bountiful Baskets and look to see if it is first of all available in your state. If it is, then you look to see if they deliver to a site near you. If they do, then you can purchase a basket that is delivered in your area on either a weekly or a bi-weekly basis.
You go to the website on the Monday before the Saturday delivery. Produce goes on sale, on-line at noon that day.
The offerings are a conventional basket which is 50% fruit and 50% vegetable and you never know what the basket will contain from time to time. There are also other offerings, like boxes of apples, pears, tomatoes, etc as well as bread and other products like cookies or granola, depending on what's being offered. Last time, I bought a 38 lb box of Jumanji apples for 26.50...which worked out to about .70 cents a pound. At my nearest grocery, they are around 1.50 per lb. I also bought a 20 lb box of tomatoes, which cost me 8.50. They were a little green, but ripened up after a few days with each tomato easily covering the palm of my hand.
There are also other offerings like last time there was a guacamole pack you could get for 8.50 and contained 10 avocados, 3 lemons, cilantro garlic onions, green onions 4 large jalapenos, and some other stuff which escapes my memory at the moment. This time, I got what was called an Italian pack which contained fresh herbs, onions, garlic, an eggplant, zuchinni, mushrooms and some other stuff. I've already made some babaganoush with the eggplant, and since I am the only one who likes eggplant parmesean, it was a nice way to use up that eggplant.
Last Monday, I put in for granola, 2 conventional baskets and the Italian pack. There was also an apple combo offering, boxes of pears, bread and some other things that I didn't buy because I still have some stuff left over from two weeks ago. My conventional baskets today contained potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, mangoes, cantaloupe, pears, bananas, apples and kiwi.
The produce is just beautiful. When I pick it up and take a good look at it, it inspires me to try new dishes. I would have never gone looking for something to do with eggplant besides eggplant parm unless I had another eggplant to figure out what to do with. I first wondered if it would freeze well, and that was when I stumbled onto the babaganoush or saw the Cooking Channel video. Rick hates eggplant but loves hummus and so when he tried it, he gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up.
So, I would encourage you to look over BB and see if they deliver in your area. If so, give it a try. I am really pleased with it and plan to buy more. I am using my dehydrator much more and we are getting more fresh fruits and veggies into our diet for a very reasonable price, which, if you live in a place like Montana, can be pretty challenging to do, this time of year.
0 comments:
Post a Comment