Bountiful Baskets Saturday

Our town started working with a food co-op last spring. The organization is called Bountiful Baskets and they have pick up sites in many states and are constantly opening more and more sites. It's a really great deal! Only $15 for a regular basket and you get roughly 50% fruit and 50% veggies. There are always extras you can add on too or bulk items such as oranges, apples, tomatoes, loaves of bread, extra veggie/ fruit packs etc. Every two weeks you place your order on Monday or Tuesday you pick it up the following Saturday. This past Saturday was our pick up day. My friend Bonnie and I always go and volunteer our time. When the truck comes - usually a semi truck - the volunteers help unload the truck, check the shipment to make sure we got everything we were supposed to, pass out the fruits and veggies to the baskets (we use laundry baskets that were purchased for the site), and help people check in and find their numbered basket and get them the extras that they ordered. When you volunteer you get to choose an extra large item, or two extra small items. Here are a few pictures of what we got this time.

As you can see from the pictures you get a lot of bang for your buck! The produce is almost always better quality than we can get at the grocery store - a lot fresher and a lot more flavorful. For veggies this time we got 7 roma tomatoes, 8-9 Jerusalem Artichokes, a small bundle of spinach, two heads of romaine lettuce, 4 English Cucumbers, and 4 yellow squash.


For fruits this time we got 5 bananas, 6 oranges, 10 apples, a small container of blackberries, 4 mangoes, and 2 large lemons. Sometimes it's hard to believe that we got ALL of this for only $15!