Bountiful Baskets 5/19/2018
I was so glad to see Saturday come this week. After missing our Bountiful Baskets produce csa last weekend due to my daughter’s college graduation, I was so happy to get my produce this weekend. The kids and I were up early so we could volunteer at our drop site again. As I have said before I really enjoy seeing the volunteers each Saturday. I love catching up with them. It’s fun to see what everyone has been up to, especially when it had been 2 weeks since we were there.
The weather this weekend was really beautiful. Summer is coming to Las Vegas, and we are being spoiled by having some respite from the heat. There was a light breeze and temperatures were in the 70’s which for mid May is beautiful weather. We took our time distributing the produce to enjoy the morning.
This week’s baskets were heavier on fruit than on vegetables. That’s not always bad except that I really regret that there wasn’t any citrus this week. Some weeks oranges or tangerines are plentiful, not so much this week.
My vegetable basket included 3 ears of corn, 2 cucumbers, 1 zucchini, 1 bunch of kale and a large romaine lettuce. I was happy with the vegetables, I was thrilled to see the romaine, with the romaine lettuce recalls out here in the southwest, we haven’t gotten romaine in such a long time. My dogs were excited too, they love romaine lettuce! My daughter gives them each a huge leaf of it and the dogs think it is the most amazing treat in the world. Nothing like happy puppies to make everyone smile. The only thing I wasn’t overly excited to see was the zucchini, I have a love/hate relationship with this vegetable. I love to hate it! Maybe I am being to hard on it, I don’t actually hate it, but I don’t really like it. I love it in zucchini bread but that is about it. My daughter tends to grate it really fine and tries to hide it in soup or something like that so that we use it and it doesn’t go to waste. Of all the produce I have to say I LOVE CORN! I am a Michigan girl at heart, and I have fond memories of fresh picked bushel burlap bags of sweet corn. We would eat corn on the cob all summer long. I don’t think my family could eat it as frequently as my brothers & I did when we were growing up, but what do they know, they aren’t from Michigan. They don’t know how good fresh from the field corn is.
Now for the fruit… We received a personal watermelon, a pineapple, bananas, 2 packages of organic strawberries, 5 tomatoes on the vine, 1 mango and 5 apples. Overall the fruit is great. I could do without so many pineapples lately, it seems like we get alot of them this time of the year. Summer is coming and summer is watermelon & berry season, so I very happy with the melon and berries. My daughter made a vegetable soup and used the tomatoes already and they were a nice addition. Can we talk about mango’s for a minute. Maybe I am doing it wrong, but are mango’s really worth the work? I mean, once you peel them and try to cut them off the pit, or seed or whatever that huge thing is in the middle, I feel like I get very little fruit. Generally we just freeze the chunks and my daughter uses them in smoothies. The organic strawberries were amazing, I sliced them up and tossed them with a little bit of organic sugar and made homemade pancakes and topped them with the berries. SO GOOD! Pancakes with strawberries is my favorite breakfast.
Remember last week when I posted my grocery store produce, here ? This week’s haul cost me $18.00 for the share of fruit and vegetables. That is a much more amazing deal than the nearly $40.00 that I paid last week for produce at our local Smith’s grocery store. If you are curious to learn more about Bountiful Baskets click here. They are amazing. They try to bring you produce as local and in season as possible.
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