Bountiful Baskets

I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but Darrell and I have awesome neighbors. In fact, the whole neighborhood/development is pretty fantastic. We bought this home intending for it to be a starter home--we initially intended to move before we started having kids--but now I can't really imagine living anywhere else. Granted, our house is still built a little like a starter home and not a family home... But that's an issue for another day. And I digress.

The point of this post is to talk about Bountiful Baskets, this awesome food/produce co-op delivery thing that one of our neighbors introduced us to shortly after William was born. Instead of the typical meal or dessert that many people bring new parents, she came over with a small basket full of fresh produce. And it was delicious produce. We found out that she buys and picks it up every two weeks through this Bountiful Baskets program, and we were hooked. Over the past few years we have made a point to buy pretty much all of our produce fresh, and we try to stick to stuff that is in season (and subsequently cheaper), so it only made perfect sense for us to get involved in this program. For a flat fee, you are able to buy a basket full of produce (you never know what it will be!), and you can also buy add-ons of additional produce (like 25 pounds of peaches) and bread. Doing the program with our neighbor makes it even more great--Darrell and I on our own would never be able to eat through 25 pounds of peaches before they went bad, but splitting them with her makes the load much more manageable (plus--as we did when we had the peaches--it's a good excuse to make some pies or other desserts to share with family and friends). One of the other things we love about the program? Since we can't control what is in the basket, Darrell and I get produce that we would probably otherwise pass by in the grocery store out of fear of the unknown (what does it taste like? how do you fix it? will we like it? etc.) Thanks to Bountiful Baskets, we've learned how to tell when a mango is fresh (and how to cut it), we've tried cooking with eggplant (we grilled it--it was okay, but next time we'd definitely us it more in a meal versus on the side), and we've found creative ways to eat through large quantities of produce (like 13 pounds of peaches--don't be surprised to see some peach recipes pop up in the next few weeks!)

Here's a picture of our basket from a few weeks ago--yum!!

In addition to our "normal" basket haul, this week we split 25 lbs of peaches and 18 lbs of grapes with our neighbor. It was a lot of produce for a little dough!