Bountiful Baskets 4/28/2018

As usual the kids and I volunteered at our Bountiful Baskets produce co op. It was a beautiful morning and it is always good to see my “Basket Friends”. There was a fairly large turn out of volunteers this morning and it made our time spent there go very quickly. There were several ladies who I hadn’t seen in a couple of weeks so it was nice to catch up as well. It’s always nice to catch up and find out how everyone is doing. I work so many hours each week at my job, that I welcome my Saturday morning volunteer time. I find it relaxing to spend the time with my children and the other volunteers. I love that even through my kids are grown they really don’t mind going with me. Hopefully as they continue through life this Saturday morning ritual of ours will also be passed down to their own families.

I am always amazed at how much fruit and vegetables that an $18 share provides and this week didn’t dissappoint…

This week’s basket contained the following fruit: 6 Lady Alice apples, 5 oranges, 15 tangerines, 1 package of strawberries, 1 mango, 6 lemons, and 11 roma tomatoes. The fruit looks amazing and everything smells so sweet and wonderful.

This week’s basket contained the following vegetables: 1 bunch kale, 1 cabbage, 2 bunchs of green onions, 2 sweet potatoes, and 4 broccoli crowns. I am pretty happy with the vegetables also.

My only problem I have with the produce this week are these monsters:

Oh my gosh, can you believe the size of these sweet potatoes? My problem isn’t with the size it is with the sweet potatoes themselves. I really do not love sweet potatoes, I don’t even like them! Normally I just ask any of the other volunteers if they would like to take them, but this week my daughter decided that we would keep them and she is going to try to make sweet potato dog treats with them. Ok so here we are with a double share of our produce which means I have 4 massive sweet potatoes! I sure hope she finds a recipe that our dogs love and that once the treats are made they can be frozen to be thawed and eaten at a later date. My poor daughter has her work cut out for her…

I am not sure what I am going to do with the rest of the produce this week. The fruit will be eaten fresh with meals or for snacks. The vegetables will be used for our dinners. Again, I am not sure what we will be eating yet.

I have been toying with the thought that I really need to start menu planning. My work schedule has been quite busy lately and for as much as I would love to work less hours, that just never seems to work out for me. I think maybe menu planning and doing some food prepping on the weekends would really help me. We’ll see…