Today was another Bountiful Baskets pick-up date! Yay! I know I'm a big nerd, but I love the surprise of seeing what will be in our baskets each time, and coming up with recipes to go along with all the fruits and veggies. This week, our baskets weren't quite as "bountiful" as we've been used to getting, but as you will see later in the post, it was still a great value. This is a hard time of year, because the winter fruits and veggie season is dwindling to a close and the spring/summer fruit/veggie season hasn't really started yet. Considering that, I think we got a great basket!
This is the conventional basket ($15). It was heavier on vegetables this time, but that's OK. Savannah got one of her favorite fruits (strawberries) and Hannah got 5 yummy mangos, one of her faves! I got a veggie that I have never eaten, much less cooked before...bok choy! I'm looking forward to some new recipes. The basket breaks down like this:
- 2 bunches of asparagus
- 7 large lemons
- 6 green bell peppers
- 1 bunch of radishes
- 2 heads of garlic
- 1 bunch of bok choy
- 1 bunch of celery
- 6 bananas
- 1 head of green leaf lettuce
- 5 mangos
It's been a few weeks since I price compared the baskets to the grocery store, so I thought I would see how this week compared, especially since it looked like a smaller basket. I went with HEB prices because on previous weeks I found that produce was slightly cheaper at HEB than Kroger or Randalls. The HEB price for this week's basket items was $25.55! I was a little surprised it was so high, but when you just add the asparagus, it accounts for about 40% of the cost of the BB basket. Bell peppers are .78 ea and so they add up as well.
I decided this week to get another certified organic basket ($25). I don't normally buy organic vegetables, but some previous weeks (when I didn't contribute for one), they had some really cool, unusual stuff in the organic basket, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Here's the breakdown for the organic basket:
- bag (0.6 lb) of sugar snap peas
- 4 kiwi
- bunch of cilantro
- 2 green bell peppers
- 1 bunch of butter lettuce
- 1 pineapple
- 5 large bananas
- head of green cabbage
- 2 artichokes
- 4 fuji apples
- 4 tomatoes
When I priced this out at HEB, they didn't have any organic artichokes, sugar snap peas, or butter lettuce, so I used the price of the non-organic of each. That said, non-organic sugar snap peas were $4.98 lb and artichokes were $4.98 each! Who knows how much the organic variety would be! The total HEB price ended up being $35.66. It wasn't as much of a savings as the conventional basket was, but still a good deal. Plus, I love the variety!
I also got a juicing pack add-on ($8). I don't juice, but I got it for more variety. This add-on contained:
- 1 bunch of spinach
- 1 bunch of red kale
- 1 small hunk of ginger
- 1 bunch of parsley
- 2 huge carrots
- 1 large beet
- 1 lemon
- 2 small limes
- 3 apples
- 2 oranges
This pack priced out at $8.58, so it wasn't that much of a "deal" but it had some interesting veggies in it, and I LOVE fresh spinach!
Finally, I ordered 2 bread packs: a variety pack ($10) and 5 loaves of organic whole wheat bread ($12). I didn't price these out, but I'm totally happy with paying $2.40 a loaf on organic bread. And it's good too!
So, that's it! I am looking forward to trying some new recipes too! Here are some I'm considering:
...and I'm still looking for an amazing artichoke recipe. Any ideas would be very much appreciated!
2 comments:
Which of the kids won your contest?
Dakota...I'll write more about the contest in another blog post.
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