Healthy fresh food choices don't have to cost a lot

Over the past few years, I have decided I wanted more fresh fruits and vegetables in my diet. As I tried to make this change, a friend introduced me to Bountiful Baskets. This is a co-op that gives much more flexibility in getting your produce than a CSA  (Community supported agriculture) program does, but doesn't provide as much that is local. Both are great options for increasing the fresh food in your diet at reasonable prices.

With Bountiful Baskets, you join the co-op online at the web site. Each Monday or Tuesday, you can select to receive a basket that upcoming weekend. There are always a number of other items besides the basic fruit/veggie basket. You can opt for organic instead of conventional on the basic basket. You can select from cases of various fruits and vegetables; breads; tortillas; honey from Idaho, Utah, and Arizona; themed baskets like juice pack, Italian, Mexican, tropical or hostess;  granola; and other items from time to time. The extras vary each week.

Here in Prescott, on Saturday morning at 7, I go to the National Guard Armory to pick up my baskets. In the summer, I picked them up at Ken Lindley Park. Volunteers are there at 6 to unload the truck and load up the baskets. Co-op members pick up from 7-7:20 although the set up is frequently done early and they start distribution early. If you volunteer, you get to select an extra from the extra items before they are distributed to the rest of the baskets. The site coordinators are wonderful people and have done a great job of making this an easy process for us.

Trying this co-op has encouraged us to eat a far wider variety of fresh fruits and veggies. I don't use nearly as much frozen or canned as I have in the past. We have tried lots of things I would never buy and have loved most of them. I am luck that I have a friend who loves the things we don't. I give her those as well as the excess when we get far more than we can eat before it goes bad. For example, this past Saturday, we got two heads of cabbage and of celery. I gave her of the other things as well.

This was what was in our basket: roma tomatoes, Asian pears, zucchini, peppers, broccoli, blackberries, oranges, banans, lettuce, celery, cabbage, asparagus. 

We also opted for the hostess pack:

As you can see, between the two, we filled my kitchen table. This had: pineapple, plantain, coconut, jicama, beefsteak tomatoes, grape tomatoes, yellow onion, snap peas, grape tomatoes, mint, mushrooms, carrots, avocados, cilantro, green onions, limes, and jalapenos. The bag at the top is 3 pounds of quartered corn tortillas for making tortilla chips.

The flexibility allows us to participate weekly, every other week, or just whenever we want. I love that as well as the value that I see in the amount of produce for the price.

The Prescott CSA is also a way to increase produce consumption with entirely local items. I participated in the beef share during the summer. Once each month I picked up a hefty bag of locally grown beef. I saw the various items in produce shares each time as well. They were varied and also a good value. However, I will admit to being very thrifty and I get more in each basket share for the same price. The CSA requires payment for every week, whether you can pick up or not. I understand why, but for now, the model with Bountiful Baskets fits our lifestyle better. The CSA does include other items that can be purchased as extras on many weeks.

Options like Bountiful Baskets and CSAs invalidate the arguments of people who say it is more expensive to eat healthy food. Fresh produce promotes health. Most of the food people purchase instead is really a food product. It has all sorts of additives to try to replace the real food that is missing. Even if we ate nothing else, the $15 we spent for the conventional basket (the first photo), would feed the two of us for an entire week. We would have a lot of variety as well. Spending a little extra for protein sources, like meat, dairy, beans, etc. would not greatly increase our grocery spend. 

It is amazing what you can do if you don't buy process food-like things and buy real food instead. Even if you don't have access to a co-op or CSA, there are also farmer's markets, or even the produce aisles at the grocery store. If you filled your cart with that instead of boxes of things, you would still make out pretty well. It would just cost more than what I'm getting.