Veggie Tales

This post is about vegetables (and fruit). Get it? Oh man that was lame! ha ha! I thought I should represent for Steve's favorite childhood cartoon. Here is a video he made me watch at least 3 times, probably more.

So in the interest of saving some money, I decided to try getting our produce from a co-op. I found our local group here It is actually pretty cool. Here is some info from their website about the co-op.

We are a community Produce coop that has started from a few friends hoping to save a few dollars to becoming an amazing community wide coop. We have been fortunate that the coops have had wonderful volunteers to help everyone continue saving money.  We hope everyone enjoys the experience and please keep in mind this is run by the wonderful volunteers from the group leaders, group members sorting, etc. It is a great way to help others in your community and an opportunity to promote healthy living among our famililes.

Thanks for being a part of this wonderful community!

Pretty cool. I'm not totally sure how it works or where they get their food from but I know they try to keep it as local as possible and also as cheap as possible. Both of those things are a-ok in my book! So they have all kinds of things you can order but the main attraction seems to be the "produce basket". For $23 you can get a mixture of seasonal fruits and veggies. This is what they have to say about the produce basket:

Conventional Produce Basket50% Fruits, 50% Vegetables, 100% healthy and delicious The produce basket contains a variety of high-quality seasonal fruits and vegetable, generally enough produce to feed a family of four for two weeks. This is the core of the coops buying power. It's the best value for your money! Each week your group will purchases produce in bulk, based upon the number of baskets ordered. The items are chosen with variety and seasonality in mind so you get the most appealing and cost-effective baskets possible


So I thought I would give it a try. Baby Steven and I picked up our first produce basket last Tuesday evening and let me tell you, there was a ton of stuff in it! It almost filled up a whole laundry basket! Here are some pictures of what we got.

Our laundry basket o'produce...man that thing was heavy!

 The fruits!

The veggies!

It seemed like so much food! This is what we actually got: bananas, fuiji apples, peaches, mangos, plouts, papaya, cantaloupe, portabella mushrooms, tomatoes, corn, romain lettuce, carrots, green beans, peppers, cucumbers and an onion.

I think this is so cool! Not only did we get a ton of cheap fruits and veggies, but we also got some things we would not normally eat/cook. It forces us to try new things. I mean what the heck is a plout? Well apparently it is a hybrid plum and apricot and it is delicious! Isn't that cool? So this week I've been wracking my brain (and my mom's) for ways to prepare and cook all the yummy things we got! Kind of exciting and almost like a vegetable adventure! ha!


 Has anyone else tried a co-op? What did you think?