Saturday, February 1, 2014

Bountiful Basket Share



While I was posting my CSA boxes this summer, someone asked me if a CSA was similar to Bountiful Baskets. Before I could answer that, I had to find out more about Bountiful Baskets. It is a different service, but was not available in Tennessee at the time. A couple of months later someone posted on one of the Facebook groups that I am in, that Bountiful Baskets had opened four sites in Tennessee and one happened to be pretty close to me. So I registered and signed up for my first basket. I have been going back for the past couple of months and the picture above is my basket from the last pick up.

Bountiful Baskets is a non profit food co-op that combines the monies contributed to bring the best prices to the contributors. It is run by volunteers, and it does take several volunteers to get everything unloaded and set up each week. You don't have to volunteer every week, but everyone is expected to volunteer every few weeks or so. In addition the the regular basket that every contributor gets, you are also able to order a variety of  different items as well. The selection of extras and what is in your basket varies from week to week. So far I have been doing this for the past couple of months and have been very happy with the food I have received and the savings to my food budget.

I usually try and volunteer with the set up of the baskets. This past week, we had a lot of baskets! Everyone gets two laundry baskets, one is for fruits and the other is for veggies. There has been a good selection so far and it is usually pretty well divided about half fruit and half vegetables.


I have received a few food items that I don't have a lot of experience with cooking and/or eating. Most everything in the basket is familiar foods, there have been a couple of things here and there that are new. The other people there have been great to offer suggestions and recipes though. For instance one week we had Japanese persimmons, another week we had a different variety of grapefruit. This week we had artichokes and poblano peppers. I love artichokes but their price usually keeps me from buying them very often. The peppers were new to me, but I found a great recipe for them that I will share with you next week!

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