As usual my kids and I purchased our share of produce from Bountiful Baskets. Just like any other Saturday morning we were up early and at the park at 7:45 a.m. to volunteer at our local drop point. Even though the number of baskets that were purchased was a bit on the low side we stil received a great variety of produce for the week.

This weeks baskets contained: 4 zucchini, 2 cucumbers, 1 bundle of asparagus, 2 bundles of cilantro, 2 bunches of broccoli, 10 russet potatoes, 1 mango, 2 kiwi, 7 granny smith apples, 7 oranges, 6 bananas & 1 lb strawberries. Each share costs about $18.00 for all the items I have listed. It really is such an amazing deal. Normally for my family I purchase 2 shares so I receive double of the items listed and it lasts my family of 4 adults for just over a week.

I know that 2 shares seems like alot of produce for a family of 4. Trust me, we go through alot of produce. My husband has had some health issues and as a result we eat alot of fresh fruit and vegetables and Bountiful Baskets is an extremely cost effective way for me to make sure he is eating a healthy diet and as an added bonus the rest of us are eating healthy too.

This week I am really pleased to have the oranges, I love oranges and I eat them every morning with my breakfast, I quarter them and include them in my husband’s lunch daily as well. I am generally the only one who eats bananas and I will take one with my lunch daily. What I can’t eat before they get to brown goes into the freezer, my daughter will use them in smoothies. Kiwi are a favorite of my daughter and husband. My husband likes to put them in his multi grain cheerio’s and milk. Now for the mango… This time of year we tend to get alot of them in or baskets and we really don’t love them. I can chop them up and put them into a fresh salsa when I am having pork carnitas taco’s but normally my daughter just chops them up into her smoothie so that we don’t waste them. The granny smith apple’s will be peeled and chopped and put into my crock pot for applesauce. My daughter and husband both like chunky applesauce and making it myself I know exactly what is in it. We do love apples and many nights with dinner or for snacks I will slice apples, but granny smith aren’t our favorite apple to just eat plain. The strawberries will be used a few different ways. Tomorrow I will be making strawberry shortcakes, we will also eat them alone, on oatmeal, and in fruit salad or frozen and used in smoothies.

The vegetables are pretty straight forward. The broccoli we will steam to eat as a side dish, or it will be included in dishes like a stir fry or maybe fettucini alfredo. Broccoli is my favorite vegetable so it never goes to waste around here. The asparagus (which is one of my son’s least favorites) will be roasted with garlic, a little olive oil and Trader Joe’s 21 seasoning salute seasoning blend (this is a salt free seasoning). The cucumbers will be eaten alone or in a salad with some left over green leaf lettuce from last week’s basket. The potatoes will be either baked (like we had tonight), roasted with other veggies, mashed, or fried with onions and garlic. The cilantro is a favorite of ours, I will most likely use it in cilantro lime rice this week as a side dish. The one vegetable I am not thrilled about is the zuccini. Our family really doesn’t like squash at all and most of the time we just give it away to the other volunteers but this week I brought home 4 of them. My daughter wants to try to make zoodles with them. We’ll see how that turns out…

If you are looking for a pretty inexpensive way to include more fresh fruit and vegetables in your diet, check out Bountiful Baskets. They are a wonderful option for families wanting to eat healthy and want to stretch their grocery budget. Check them out at www.bountifulbaskets.org and for more information on them check out this post https://oursimpledays.com/bountiful-baskets/

*This post does not contain any affiliate links.

We are a family that loves fresh produce. There is nothing like a good ear of sweet corn on the cob, fresh berries, a nice crisp tossed salad, a stir fry full of a variety of what ever type of produce I have in the refrigerator and a good fresh fruit salad. But living in Las Vegas means that I really have to look for great produce deals. I have a wide variety of grocery stores and natural foods stores to choose from and I can buy practically anything I would ever want from one of those stores but I have to say unless a store is running a really great sale produce can be very expensive. We even have Farmers Markets here but they are even more expensive than grocery stores. The produce is trucked in from other states and really isn’t any fresher. I have even gone to my farmers market and found items packaged with the same labeling as I can find in one of my local grocery stores. We do have our local orchard here where we can pick apples, peaches, apricots & a variety of vegetables. While I love the whole u pick idea but the orchard is pretty expensive any more.

One day while I was looking around on line I found a link asking if you wanted fresh produce at an affordable price. I clicked the link and was taken to a web page for Bountiful Baskets. You can find them here http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/ Basically what they are is a produce co op that is volunteer run. That offers participants seasonal produce at an affordable price. The more I looked into it the more it sounded like it was something I wanted to try. I signed up for an account on their website which was very easy, just entering your name and address, email and choosing a password. Once I signed up all I had to do was wait for Monday to arrive so I could order. They open their websites for orders on Monday’s at noon and keep them open for orders until Tuesday evening.

That next Monday I couldn’t wait for noon to arrive, I logged into the site, chose my state, chose my county and then chose a location close to my home. I ordered my 1 basket and I chose to add on an additional item labeled as a salad pack. I entered my credit card number and I was done. Then the hard part came, waiting until Saturday morning to pick up my produce.

When Saturday morning finally arrived I was pretty excited to go pick up my produce. I really hoped that everything was good and I also hoped that what was included in the basket was something that we would eat because you don’t get to choose what is in the basket. It is all a huge surprise… When I got to the park to pick up I was so surprised to see a huge line of people waiting for their baskets. I didn’t realize how populat it was. When I checked in the women there walked me through signing in for my items and then took me over and explained that I got one basket of fruit and one basket of vegetables and handed me my additional salad pack that had came in it’s own box. I unloaded my produce from the baskets into my reusable shopping bags and went home. I was so surpised at the quality of the produce and the amount of items that I received for such a small amount money.  Today baskets cost $18.00 for a share which is a basket each of vegetables and fruit plus a $1.50 handling fee. It always amazes me the amount of produce I come home with. I would easily pay at least 3 times that amount for what I bring home weekly.

I have been buying produce from Bountiful Baskets since 2014 and I have been so very pleased with my produce. I love knowing that my family is eating good healthy fresh produce. Plus it is pretty fun to see what I will be bringing home each week.  I have been volunteering with them since my second week ordering and it is alot of fun. The volunteers are all really wonderful people and they are all there for the same reasons that I choose to be there, they want to be able to provide their families with good healthy fresh produce for an affordable price.
Bountiful Baskets is not available nationwide yet, but they are continuing to grow and hopefully soon they will be available everywhere. Currenty they can be found in 18 states with 7 more states pending (which means they are in the process of bringing Bountiful Baskets there).