Produce co-op

What do you think of when you think of "co-op"?

A few years ago, my husband's sister-in-law was involved with a co-op. They did a lot of dry foods that they could get in bulk for much cheaper than in the store. The blueberry muffins were sooo good! I bought cocoa powder through them one year and still have some left. Although I am getting to bottom of the bag. That was probably about 6 years ago.

Then a couple weeks ago, one of the young women in our ward was telling us about her home schooling group who she said was their co-op. Much different co-op than I am used to.

Now, I run my own co-op. I call it the Mountain View Produce Co-op, because we have a very beautiful view of the mountains from my house. I had tried off and on for about a year to try to get a "bountiful basket" from a produce co-op, with much stress. I always got on their website to late and therefore had to miss out or try to pick up at a location much to far from my home, or I would forget altogether. It was quite frustrating and I hated having to go to the store each week and decide what produce I could afford or wanted. My family eats a lot of produce, especially lately when my husband and I are trying to lose weight and eat better. Plus my boys love to come home from school and grab an apple out of the fridge. I always felt like I was spening too much money on things that are a necessity in our home, and if you knoow me and know how much I like to find a bargain and shop with coupons, you understand how hard it is for me to buy produce.

In my attempt to find good produce buys and try to get a bountiful basket, I wished that there were some way that I could just have all the things I wanted delivered to my door for me. Well, ask and ye shall receive... I follow the utahdealdiva.com where she finds good deals and is just amazing at saving money, she is also somewhat of a collegue of mine in the Grocery Smarts business. Well, I read on her blog one day how to start your own neighborhood produce co op and it was very inspiring. Thus started my adventure of the Mountain View Produce Co op!

I knew that I needed at least 12 to start but preferred 24. I set the goal to start and have our first co op delivery date Wednesday, August 16, whether I had 24 or not. So having this goal in mind, I set out to find people who wanted to save money as well as have fresh produce every other week, as I did. I talked to everyone, starting with friends, neighbors and people from church. I even asked my chiropractor! Thanks to some effort from me and some good friends who asked people that they worked with, the Monday before I had my 24 people! I couldn't believe it, I was so excited!

Among trying to find people, I knew I needed to find a company that would work well with co-ops and would have the best produce. I started with one company, who another co-op used, and then checked into another. These are wholesale produce companies that deliver all over the state of Utah. I decided upon using Joe Granato Inc. Their produce is delivered on refrigerated trucks and comes fresh. They seemed like a great company and I felt good about going with them.

I must say, I have been very pleased with everything so far. Granato's has been very easy and wonderful to work with! They have helped me every step of the way and whenever I have a problem, they have been great to help me through it! They definitely know produce!!  The selection is great! The quality has been great! And I have definitely learned a lot about produce!

Our price is $16.50 per basket and we get a good variety. The picture below shows what we got this week. We got broccoli, spinach, carrots (2 bags), potatoes, nectarines, green apples, raspberries and green grapes (not shown they got eaten last night for dinner.)

If you ask me, I don't think I would be able to get this much in the store for what we pay through the co op. I have a wonderful group of people that go in on this with me and for most of them it is great to get a lot for so little and also the conveinence of picking it all up at one place and not having to decide at the store what you want. I take many suggestions from our group and try to accommadate every one I can.

I have learned many things about produce. 1...how to make green leaf lettuce stay crisp for two weeks, 2...that you shouldn't store apples with other fruit, it makes the other fruit spoil faster, 3...celery is mostly water and can be crispy again if soaked in cold water. 4...broccoli stems CAN be eaten! And they are very yummy! And 5...salads are best with more veggies!

This has been such a huge success for me that I started an "off week" co op as well. Now I have A week and B week. We are working to get the B week up to 24 and I'm hoping that soon this will happen, there is so much more variety when you have more people.

Thanks to all my wonderful friends in the co op, I have learned so much and I love seeing each of you each time you come and to see you all get excited about produce!

Huge thanks goes out to Joe Granato Inc. and especially Kurt Jeffs there who has helped me all along the way and dealt with my stresses and complaints (which have not been many thanks to his help), and thanks to all the staff and drivers that are so great to deliver and be there to help! You are wonderful!

Freezer Cooking!!!

It has been the week for freezer cooking! I think Mike smoked some chicken thighs for me last Thursday so I could shred and freeze it, then I got some chicken tenders that were on sale the other day and just diced and cooked them on the stove top. I have plenty of chicken now for meals for the month, which I love! Then Wednesday I froze some green beans out of the garden for dinners. That same night I made up some salsa, we love salsa at our house! Thursday I did some more green beans for the freezer as well as pinto beans for the freezer to make refried beans or just add to taco dinners.

Today I had my wonderful friend Kami over to bake with me. I needed to make a potato salad for the ward campout tonight, so I didn't get more beans done like I was hoping, but Kami made some very yummy, EXTREMELY easy pumpkin cookies (they have 3 ingredients), I cooked my potatoes, and then made pumpkin bars and monkey bars that smell great! I got the recipe from the Utah Deal Diva, who got it from Woman's Magazine. They are very easy to make and I plan to freeze them and pull them out before the kids get home to give them as their after school snack. Love it!

Next I plan to do more pinto and black beans, breakfast sandwiches, and "pop tarts" from the Utah Deal Diva. I also plan to start making actual freezer meals soon to. I would love to do a freezer meal swap as well with friends and neighbors. That way we all make a little, but leave with some great variety! So much fun!! I have done this in the past with my mother-in-law and sister-in-laws and have enjoyed it. Here is a picture of the pumpkin bars:

sorry, the picture turned out weird...

Hello, Hello my wonderful friends!

Wow, what a week, I have been wanting to post all week but have been so busy! Wednesday was the first day of school for my kids! YAY! It was a very wonderful day! So quiet, for the most part, my kindergartener doesn't start until Monday, but he is pretty quiet.

I decided that I need to start a new goal for some cleaning in my house. My aunt told me about a website that helps you clean. Not literally, but they help you organize your life and your cleaning. The first thing that she tells you to do is to shine your sink. When your sink is shined you don't want to dirty it again. She then says to not let it get dirty, so no dishes piling up in the sink. She even says to put a bucket under the sink to have family members put their dirty dishes or put them directly into the dishwasher. So I started this endeavor and I want to share with you how happy I am that my sink is clean! I told my hubby that night that I don't think my kitchen has been this clean since we moved in! So as embarrased as I am to show you this, I have pictures to show and prove that this can be done. This is what my kitchen looked like before the cleaning:

As you can see, I have just STUFF all over every inch of counter space, including school supplies, fruits, veggies and many dirty dishes. I don't know how things can get so out of control so quickly. It doesn't take long at my house. I decided to start by actually doing my dishes and putting away items that don't belong in the kitchen, like the school supplies. I made it through all the dishes and had the kitchen looking pretty nice, then I decided to use the dehydrator and dry some zucchini that my parents brought me. I made some zucchini chips to eat with dip, very yummy. I also had a box of tomatoes, pictured above, that were ripe and needed to be made into salsa, so I made two small batches of salsa this day as well. I did a lot that day and only ended up sitting down for about 20 minutes total all day, I stayed really busy and felt great! I also made biscuits and gravy for dinner, with homemade biscuits, so I dirtied and cleaned many times that day. But at the end of the day, my kitchen looked great and I was so proud of myself!

I did have my dehydrator out still, drying zuchini and the fruit bowl on the counter, but otherwise very clean, especially for my kitchen. If you are at all interested in how to start your cleaning habits and goals, check out flylady.net that is where I got my inspiration for keeping my kitchen clean, now on to the rest of the house!

Seriously I have not posted in almost a month and a half?! This is crazy! I am such a slacker sometimes, but I have also been very busy. July was full of camping and lots of family fun! I also participated in a bike ride for Parkinson's Disease. It was just very busy. Now we are into August and we getting ready to send back the kiddie to school. They start next Wednesday, I can't wait! Oh and the kids are excited to.

We started a neew adventure this past week that has worked out pretty good so far. We got a cat! Not a kitten, but a cat. He is older which is nice, as well as declawed and fixed. He doesn't seem to like the kids much and will just hide all day, but he comes out at night and will be with me and Mike, although Mike seems to not like cats at all. Oh well.

So for young women's last week we wanted to do something with the girls that they could make but not have to turn on the oven. So I decided on waffle iron cookies, homemade ice cream and hot fudge sauce. It turned out great and they were very yummy. So here is the recipe for waffle iron cookies:

Waffle Iron Cookies

2 eggs beaten
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 cup flour
3 TBS cocoa

Mix sugar and melted butter with beaten eggs. Add vanilla. Stir in flour and cocoa. Pour in waffle iron 1 cup at a time. Cook 2-3 minutes. These are so yummy but very sweet, so you might want add a little salt so they aren't quite so sweet. But enjoy they are one of my favorites and very easy to make!

Pineapple cherry delight

As you know I love to make up and try new things. I was wanting to make something fun for father's day and wanted jello but it was much to late to make it. I decided to try to make a jello dish my aunt makes and it turned out pretty good. Try it for yourself.

Pineapple cherry delight

16 oz fat free cottage cheese
Small tub fat free cool whip
Large box sugar free cherry jello
1 can crushed pineapple, drained

Mix together, serve immediately or refrigerate.

The cherry jello and pineapple are just yummy together. Hope you enjoy it. Half of my family did, but most of them don't like cottage cheese.

Cream Cheese Bars

One of my favorite treats that I don't make very often is Cream Cheese Bars. I love making bars because you just put it all in one pan and bake instead of making each individual cookie. These are super yummy and you can't eat just one. The last time I made these I sprinkled butterscotch chips on with the filling and we loved it!

Cream Cheese Bars

crust:
1 yellow cake mix
1 egg
1/3 cup oil

filling:
8 oz cream cheese
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350. Mix together cake mix, eggs and oil until crumbly. Set aside 1 cup of crust mix for topping. Pat rest of dough lightly into a greased 9 X 13 pan. Bake  for 15 minutes. In a separate bowl, beat together cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice and egg until smooth. Spread evenly over baked layer. Sprinkle with reserved crust mix. Bake for 15 minutes loner. Cool and cut into bars.

Yummy Curry

So in learning some new ethnic recipes, I have learned a few new tidbits as well. I got a recipe from a friend of my hubby's who served a mission somewhere where they serve Thai food, not sure where. So he makes Thai food often. I finally made it to a restaurant to have some Thai food, it was delicious! I have loved curry since the first time I had some with a family friend of Mike's when we were dating, and we make it every now and then, but we have just used the curry bars that you buy in the store. I wanted some authentic curry, so when I was back with my brother-in-law's family my sister-in-law made some curry from coconut milk, Tahi peanut sauce, chicken and curry powder from Bah-Rain (sp). I loved it and so wanted to try some for myself, here is the recipe that I came up with and it is very close to the yellow curry I had at the resaurant, Mike said he even liked mine better. Yay for me!

Curry

4 chicken breasts chopped
2 cans coconut milk
1 bottle Thai peanut sauce
3 TBS curry powder
1 bag of oriental veggies

cook chicken with olive oil, add frozen veggies to thaw. Meanwhile, mix coconut milk, peanut sauce and curry powder in a bowl. Add to other mixture when veggies have softened. Serve warm over rice.

Something I learned was about the difference between curry powder and curry paste. Most recipes call for curry paste, which gives it the truer Thai flavor, whereas curry powder gives you more of the Indian flavor. I also learned that it depends on where you get your curry powder, or what brand you use, makes a difference as well. I had some McCormick curry powder and some that I bought in bulk at Winco. Even just smelling them, there is a huge difference!! I opted to use the one I bought at Winco because it had the stronger curry smell as apposed to a sweeter turmeric smell that the other had. Like I said, it was very yummy, with a little spice to it as well. The only thing I would do different is to add some chopped potatoes to it as well, that is how the restaurants serve it, with them in the sauce. Also this makes A LOT of curry sauce, more than enough to feed 6 of us, with seconds for Mike and I, so I think it will serve at least 8 - 10 people! So adjust the recipe as you need, or just serve it for your next big family get together!