Eat More Veggies - Bountiful Baskets

In an effort to eat better and include more veggies in our diet, I posed the question to my Facebook friends about the best place in Vegas to buy local or regional produce. One friend mentioned Bountiful Baskets. I immediately remembered reading a blog post about this last summer and remembered how much I wanted to give it a try.

So, I read everything on their website and decided to try it out.

If you're not familiar with the program, it's a co-op way of purchasing produce. Basically, you choose a location for pick-up, make a contribution on Monday or Tuesday, all the money gets pooled together to purchase whatever is available, you show up Saturday morning to pick-up delicious produce.

It's all run by volunteers, so all your money get put toward the produce. Since it's run by volunteers, they ask that you volunteer at least every 6-8 times that you contribute.

We picked up our first basket this past Saturday, and it was so much fun!!

The two nearest locations were about 5 miles away. An easy bike ride. We chose the one location because it had a later pick-up time and we are not at all early morning people on Saturdays.

We fully intended on getting there early enough to help volunteer. The website said the volunteer time was 7:15. We arrived at 7:10, and everything was all finished. I guess we'll have to get there earlier next time. :-)

With your order, you get one basket of fruit and one basket of vegetables.

All packed up and ready to head home.

Ewwww!

Yep. That's ketchup splattered all over my legs and shoes.

About a mile or so from home, I ran over a ketchup packet. I'm not sure why I didn't really think to avoid it, but I definitely learned my lesson as I scrubbed the dried, sticky ketchup mess from my legs and shoes. Ugh!

Here's everything we got in our baskets!

Fruits: 4 mangoes, 3 grapefruit, 1 pineapple, 1 cantaloupe (not pictured, as it was already cut and in the fridge)
Veggies: 5 ears of corn, 2 cucumbers, 1 head of romaine, 1 box of grape tomatoes, 1 butternut squash, 1 pound of carrots, 1 head of cauliflower

It seems like kind of a lot for just the two of us, but hopefully it will force us to eat more veggies.

We've already eaten most of the fruit, but writing this post reminds me that I still need to cut up the cauliflower and carrots into snack-size portions, so we actually eat them.

I'm going to need to get a little creative on some of the veggies, because we already committed to week #2. :-)

We also purchased some additional add-ons like bread, tortillas, and a Mexican blend of veggies. So excited for next Saturday!!

Hope you all enjoyed a lovely Memorial Day weekend. Back to the grind in the morning...

Have you ever tried Bountiful Baskets?
Where do you get most of your produce?
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