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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.
*this post does not include affiliate links.
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No Bountiful Baskets This Week
This week we did not purchase out share of Bountiful Baskets. My daughter graduated from college today so we knew ahead of time that this week we wouldn’t participate. That means that we had to purchase our produce at the grocery store. After the graduation ceremony and our lunch out I decided to go to my local Smith’s grocery store. With tomorrow being Mother’s Day, I decided to have a nice relaxing day at home tomorrow and not have to worry about grocery shopping.
I did still have some produce left over from last week, but not much. I have alot of corn on the cob, green onions, broccoli & canteloupe. So I needed quite a bit to get us through the week until I pick up our produce share next Saturday from Bountiful Baskets. This is also a great opportunity for me to share the value of Boutiful Baskets compared to a regular grocery store. I know that every grocery store’s pricing will not be the same as mine, but Smith’s is one of my normal grocery stores, so it is a great guide for me.
This week I picked up: 2 personal watermelon’s, 8 apples, 5 oranges, a 3 lb bag of halo’s, bananas, 2 lbs of strawberries, 4 potatoes, 1 head of green leaf lettuce, 1 english cucumber, 1 head of cauliflower, green beans, mini sweet peppers, 1 lb bag of organic carrots, 1 bag of baby carrots, & a large container of sliced mushrooms (normally I would buy whole mushrooms but these were on sale for 99 cents for a large container, coudn’t pass them up).
Today’s grand total was $39.90! That is absolutely crazy! My produce share from Bountiful Baskets is $18.00. This is confirmation that Bountiful Baskets is an amazing deal for your money. I can’t wait for next Saturday. I love being surprised by what my baskets will contain. I love getting fresh produce for an amazing price. It makes feeding my family healthy food a wonderfully affordable alternative.
Check them out at here. -
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:
size comparison 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…
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Who Wouldn’t Love Free Items
Does your local grocery store have a program for their customers that allows you to try products and then provide honest feedback on them? Programs like these are free to members. I am a member of My Magazine Sharing Network, which is a program sponsored by the Kroger corporation, where I have the opportunity to receive free full size items to try and leave feedback for the items. I can also participate in discussions with other shoppers about the products I have tried or other general topics that Kroger is interested in finding out opinions on. I am even sometimes given product coupons that I can share with my friends so that I am not the only one who benefits from a great program. You can also be featured in their My Magazine (their store magazine).
This program isn’t difficult. First you need your Kroger store rewards number or alternate I.D. then you sign up and fill out your personal profile as completely as possible. Complete your Introduction Mission, and complete any survey on your dashboard. They use your profile & answers to your survey’s to start assigning missions to you.
It is recommended that you connect your social media accounts to your profile at My Magazine Sharing Network. You earn points for sharing pictures and reviews and posts about the items that you will be receiving. The more points you earn, the more opportunities you can receive for furture product trials.
In the past I have reviewed things like herb and spice rubs, potato chips, snack crackers, received coupons to try their private selection line items and received reusable shopping bags.
reusable shopping bag Today I received my Simple Truth Mega Mission Level 1 box and it was loaded with great items for me to try and also share with friends. I received:
One Simple Truth reusable shopping bag.
Simple Truth Reusable shopping bag One box of Simple Truth Organic Strawbery Fruit & Grain Bars (6 count).
Simple Truth Organic Strawberry Fruit & Grain Bars One Simple truth Organic Moisturizing Lip Balm Srawberry Lavender variety.
Simple truth Organic Moisturizing Lip Balm Srawberry Lavender One Simple Truth Organic Roasted Almonds single serving size
Simple Truth Organic Roasted Almonds One Simple Truth Organic Coupon Booklet filled with a variety of coupons for Simple Truth Organic products
Now that I have my box of goodies. Next thing to do is to try the items included in the box and take my coupons to my local Smiths grocery store and redeem them for more items to try.As I try the items I will take pictures of the items and write up a review of each item. The reviews really need to be honest. I don’t have to love each item, I just need to try it and write what I thought. I have tried items through this program that I really loved and other items that I know I would never purchase because I really didn’t like the item at all. They love to know why you loved it or why you didn’t like it. All honest opinions help them to develope new items or additional flavor varieties.
Once I have my pictures and reviews then I go the the My Magazine Sharing Network website and start clicking through each item on my mission like post a picture & post to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, blog post, and join in the discussion on the website. I will earn points for each item I participate in and in turn the more points I earn the more my chances increase for more mission opportunities.
As for this Simple Truth mission. I have tried my Simple Truth Organic Moisturizing Lip Balm already and it smells amazing. The balm feels like it is softening my lips without feeling waxy. This is a product I would definitely purchase outside of this mission. I use alot of lip balm and this one seems to be a great product.My Simple Truth reusable shopping bag will go with me every Saturday morning for my produce co op pick up. I have to bag my own produce at the co op and I can always use a nice bag for that. I am also hoping that people will see the Simple Truth logo on the bag and in turn start purchasing the organic foods from Smiths. The more people that purchase the more in demand the items will be and hopefully Kroger will continue to develope more organic items. I am a huge fan of the Simple Truth line and have been for years. Kroger’s quality is great and they are trying to make organic foods affordable for the normal every day shopper.
*This post does not contain any affiliate links.