We Signed Up For A Produce Box

I’ve been slowly learning to like vegetables as an adult.  Fresh vegetables just didn’t feature much on the menu when I was growing up, so there were some I didn’t even try until the past few years. 

It’s also pretty easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to buying vegetables.  I love squash, zucchini, peppers, and onions.  It takes little effort and virtually no thought to use them, so I tend to automatically buy those.  I don’t always think about adding different vegetables to the mix, or trying new ones.

A few years ago we signed up for a CSA, and discovered a whole new world of vegetables.  For the first time in my life, I was planning meals around fresh produce, and trying lots of new vegetables.  We liked the CSA so much we signed up for it every year, and from May through October we picked up a box of fresh produce every week.  Our diet was definitely healthier during those months.  That’s also when I discovered that I love beets.

Unfortunately, the farm we bought our CSA from switched over to just wholesale, and we had a hard time finding another farm that was a good fit for us.  A lot of farms only offered full shares (which is too much for just two people), or didn’t have a pickup location that worked for us.  We decided we would just buy our produce from the grocery store and farmer’s markets, but vary what we bought.  That didn’t last very long, Before long, we were back to sticking with our old standbys.

Then I started reading about produce delivery services.  They seem to be becoming fairly popular.  The concept varies a little from company to company; some seem to be focused more on preventing food waste, some seem to be focused a little more on organic produce, and some seem to be very similar to a regular CSA, but with delivery.  It took some time, but I found one with fairly reasonable prices that delivers to us. 

Their focus seems to be organically grown, and sourcing produce as close to home as possible.  Obviously during some months there’s not much (anything?) being grown here, but they source the produce from farms as close to us as possible.  We signed up in February, and have been very happy with it so far.  I set up an account with a default delivery option, which for us is a small bin of mixed (fruit and vegetables) produce. 

We have the option to skip a week, which is nice for when we go out of town.  We also have the option to customize our bin.  There’s a small increase in price if we choose to customize, but it’s worth it to spend a few dollars more on a week we would otherwise be getting something that we just wouldn’t eat.  I’ve been trying not to customize much, unless there’s something we just truly do not like.  After all, a big part of why we’re doing this is to increase the variety of vegetables we eat.  I’m very happy to know that we’ll be able to customize our bin during the summer, though, when we’re usually inundated with certain things from our garden. 

The orders go in a week ahead of time, so that makes it easier to plan meals around what we’re getting.  It also helps me to know that there’s another bin coming every Sunday; it gives me more incentive to use up what’s on hand to make room for the new produce we have coming.  We’re definitely eating more fresh vegetables than we do when we don’t have some sort of subscription service, so I think it’s working out for us. 

What about you?  Do you enjoy a variety of vegetables?  Do you belong to a CSA, or have a produce delivery service?  Do you have to force or trick yourself into eating different vegetables?