Bountiful Baskets

If you live in Idaho, Arizona, Utah, or Washington and like fresh fruits and veggies in the winter, you need to go to the Bountiful Baskets site and jump on the produce wagon! I got all this for $16.50.

1 head romaine lettuce
3 lbs bananas
8 kiwis
4 lbs oranges
3 lbs honeycrisp apples (the really amazing and expensive kind you can only get at Christmas!)
3 mangoes
3 lb butternut squash
2 avocados
1.5 lbs broccoli
head of cauliflower
6 ears of corn
3 lbs red potatoes
4.5 lb cantaloupe

I wrote down everything and weighed it so I could compare prices at the store, and found out it would have cost me $28.59, and I would not have gotten any corn. (When I asked the produce manager if they had any corn, he said, "In this season?")

Bountiful Baskets is a co-op, not a business, which means that a bunch of people buy the food together so we get a lower price. Go to the website and register so that when you buy it will go faster. Then check back on Monday or Tuesday each week to see if the sign-up is available yet. It will say "closed" until it opens. (There are only so many available baskets, and they don't take any more orders after 12pm on Wed, so hurry!) If you are a first-timer they charge you $3 extra bucks. Every time after that it's just $15 for the food and $1.50 for handling. (There are other options available at the site, too, like loaves of bread, an extra citrus package, or all kinds of healthy goodies. So far I have only done the produce.) You pay the "monetary contribution," as they call it, and then wait for the weekend. You bring your own boxes/laundry baskets to the pickup location on Saturday and drive home with your wonderful food! (If you don't pick up the food--or have a friend get it for you--it is donated to a local soup kitchen, no refunds. So be sure to pick it up!) My frugal friend Kimber alerted me to this great deal, you can read about her experience here.
Annalee was so excited about the food, and asks for it all the time. (She calls the red potatoes "apples" and was carrying one around for half an hour.) I love having fresh fruit around. Maybe I'm just weird, but I really love that we don't get to pick what we get, it's just a surprise. I probably would not have bought kiwis or mangoes myself (even though I like them, I just don't think about them.) It's fun to plan our meals around the food we get. I made a cauliflower and broccoli casserole that was so yummy!