Bountiful Baskets

Eating healthy is hard. It's expensive, and anywhere that you can find affordable fruits and veggies are usually not the best quality. This is why I was so excited when I found out about Bountiful Baskets. We have been purchasing baskets for a couple of months now and it has literally forced me to eat better. If you've never heard of Bountiful Baskets before, it is a food co-op that distributes produce baskets, organic produce baskets, artisan bread and sandwich bread every other week. It is completely volunteer run, and you can volunteer too, to get a little extra some-some in your basket! A regular basket costs $15 plus $1.50 for processing, or you can upgrade to an organic basket for an additional $10. The bread packs (I love the 9 grain bread- so good as toast with peanut butter!) cost $10 for 5 loaves and they also offer different packs like a tropical pack (pineapples, mangoes, kiwis, etc.) or salsa packs (tomatoes, onions, tomatillos,etc) and tortilla packs plus way more! It is an awesome deal (we went and compared the prices of the items in our basket one week at Walmart and figured we saved about $35!!!) The original basket contains about 50% fruits and 50% veggies. They are more local then what you most likely find in a local grocery store and I've never received anything that wasn't completely fresh and delicious. The downside is that you don't get to choose which fruits and veggies come in your basket. But I look at this as a fun opportunity to expand what I eat. I love finding new recipes for some fruit or veggie that I have never had before (baby bok choy anyone?). 

How it Works

First off, Bountiful Baskets are available in the following states-

Idaho

Utah

Wyoming

Texas

Arizona

Nevada

and Washington

If your state isn't listed, check back every so often. They are constantly expanding, and doing it fast. To get a basket you must sign up at the beginning of every week (Monday or Tuesday) and you pick up your basket on Saturday. For the red states, signing up starts on Monday at 8PM in ID, UT, and WY, and 9PM in TX. For the blue states it starts at 9AM on Tuesday. Go to bountifulbaskets.org and I suggest creating a username and password beforehand and being logged in and ready to go as soon as your time to sign up starts because they go fast. You can find a location close to you here where it also lists the pickup times for each location. Once you select your pickup location you will be directed to where you can purchase your basket and any additional items you like. A receipt will be sent to your email that you must take with you when you go to get your basket. You have 20 mins from the beginning of the pick-up time to retrieve your basket (or to have someone else with your receipt pick it up for you) or you abandon your basket and it will be donated to a predetermined source. Make sure that you take your own basket (a laundry basket work great) to transfer your fruits and veggies into to take home.

So anyway, this program is just awesome. My family of 4 (me, my hubby, and my two tots) gets the basket every other week and it is plenty to last us for 2 weeks, but you can get it every week and even get multiple baskets every week depending on how much your family eats! I love going to see what I end up with each week and I love the challenge of figuring out how I'm going to use all of the item in my basket. Go try it out, I don't think you'll be dissapointed. I haven't been yet :D If you have any questions about the program feel free to leave it in a comment or drop us an email at scrapsnstrings {at} hotmail {dot} com.

(We were in no way compensated for this post. I just think that it is an awesome program that I thought that you all might be interested in! Also pics were taken from the Bountiful Baskets facebook page.)