Bountiful baskets

This is how much produce you can get for $30 through Bountiful Baskets. I also split a box of apples with another family, so I ended up with 19 pounds of pink lady apples for $11.25. Some of the less obvious items up there include Asian pears (as crisp as apples, as sweet as pears, and totally delicious), and the real quantity of celery and red bell peppers. The celery is really quite exceptional this time. It amounts to 4 bunches per basket and I always gets two baskets. I'll post later about what it looks like when you cut all of that celery up to freeze it for soup and stew.  :D There were 16 peppers, which is also quite unusual.

The tomatoes are going to make me a mondo batch of spaghetti sauce for the freezer, the asparagus is going to get roasted with olive oil, parmesan, salt and pepper, the peppers are getting chopped and frozen, and those two heads of green leaf lettuce and the radishes are getting made into salad. I'm going to try making the salad all at once so I don't forget the lettuce this time.

This food co-op is how I buy most of my produce. We still get a few things on the side, especially since we don't get potatoes very often. The main baskets are different every time but some frequent flyers are the green leaf lettuce, celery, some variety of apple, bananas, broccoli and some variety of tomatoes. I often buy one of the extra boxes of produce and we just go to town on what the season has to offer. The grapes were wonderful, I've still got a heap of Roma's in the freezer to use in sauces, the oranges were great for cold season, and it took us just a couple of weeks to go through about 20 pounds of cherries whether fresh or frozen, plain or in smoothies.  We don't end up with a whole lot of waste as long as I'm careful about preservation and keeping bulk items on the radar.

$30 (two baskets)
$11.25 (half a box of great apples)
$1.50 processing fee for the whole order.
=$42.75 for two weeks' of fresh produce

Also, the free workout since I went early and helped load the baskets. Slinging 50# bags of potatoes ain't work for no pansy.