Our Organic Produce Basket with Plums From Our Coop

This week’s basket from our local produce co-op offered a great variety of interesting and varied types.  We’re not sure exactly how to use the raw beets or the baby kales (we really do love kale though!) so this week’s menu should have some interesting and unique dishes.  We do believe this week’s basket was worth the $25 but know we’ve had better weeks as far as value.  But that’s the “beauty” of being part of a co-op – some weeks are definitely better than others.

Here’s a tally of this week’s basket:

• 4 organic beets
• 4 organic nectarines
• 4 organic mangoes
• 6 beautifully-ripe organic tomatoes
• 2 organic yellow squash
• 1 bunch organic bananas
• 1 bunch organic celery
• 3 organic Earthbound Farms romaine hearts
• 1 lb organic strawberries
• 5 oz Earthbound Farms organic mixed baby-kales
• 1 bunch organic broccolette

In addition to the normal basket, we purchased the 15 lbs of Earthbound Farms organic plums for $1.30/lb.  I was amazed when I opened the box to inspect it this morning and saw the beautiful fruit!  We are looking forward to an abundance of plums this week and make some jam for this year.

We have also posted this information before, but we wanted to keep posting it in these posts so that everyone reading can have some ideas on how to get involved with a produce coop:

There are many produce co-ops and grocery co op groups and it’s various forms across the nation that you can join and be a part of.  A good place to start looking is at a the site localharvest.org (which id going to help you get organic local food) or coopdirectory.org (I am not sure how updated this site is as our area’s listings were old and many not listed, but at least worth a shot!) or search produce co-op your state under google and see what listings come up.