The cost of fruits and vegetables seems to increase with each warning that we in America don't eat enough of them. Going to the grocery store can be a headache when you start adding up the prices and have to pick barely enough to make it through a week - do you choose the healthy fruits and vegetables you know your family should eat more of, or foods that keep you full longer?

One alternative to giving up on the fresh foods is to participate in a co-op; you join together with lots of other people (being poor is not a requirement, no one asks anything about your finances), pool your money, and buy in bulk yourselves. There's a co-op called Bountiful Baskets that operates in Arizona, Utah, and Washington to get really good deals - $15 gets you a laundry basket full of a variety of fruits and vegetables that would otherwise cost $40-50 at the very least. They operate in my area every two weeks, you pay online by Wednesday and go pick up the food on Saturday. Sign up early, by the deadline time, they may be full already. It's really $16.50 due to a $1.50 processing fee (there's also an additional $3 first time fee to take into account). For the money, we got Romaine lettuce, broccoli, bell peppers, avocados, apples, grapefruit, potatoes, bananas, peaches, one watermelon, and pears, all in decently large quantities except of course, the one watermelon. We actually had to throw some away because we're not yet in the habit of eating so much good fresh food; that won't happen again! I don't remember if there were tomatoes, and I know there were no onions, but the offerings vary each time. For example, corn on the cob was available one of the weeks. There are also extra deals you can get on specialty breads; tropical fruit baskets with pineapples, mangoes, and coconuts; other fruits for canning; and even meat (beef and bison) in certain areas but not mine.

Not only was there plenty of food for the money, Bountiful Baskets offers a wonderful opportunity to do community service volunteering. It's strictly volunteer-run so they welcome help from the participants. It doesn't take long to help out and it's a useful service to those without money to buy as much as their family needs at a regular grocery store. They're also hoping to keep expanding into other areas - if you're interested in participating or starting your own location, you can contact them from their website:

The volunteers show up an hour before the pickup time to prepare things, they divide the food into small laundry baskets (each pickup is two of the baskets full, just rememer to bring at least a regular sized basket of your own or grocery bags or boxes!), volunteers check off names from the list of those who've paid, they keep track of the extra orders for bread packs, extra fruit, etc. Afterward, they clean the site and remove leftover boxes. It was well-organized when I went and I'm looking forward to doing it again as well as being one of the volunteers myself.

The site will show you when and where you can pick up your food. It's every other week - on the off time the section showing the time and location says closed for this week so don't let that worry you. You can explore the rest of the site before you decide. Once you've paid, you can't get a refund, the money will have been used to get the bulk rate already - be sure you can go at the right time to pick up the goods! They also tell you to be careful and not to submit your order twice. There will be an email to confirm your order, once you've got that, you're good to go!

Having fruit for snacks whenever the littles at home needed something was a great relief; this was a much better deal than the fruit plates sold at the grocery store. Also, I'm no cook so getting our vegetables this way made me look up things to do with actual fresh food instead of boxed and bagged expensive throw-in-the-microwave foods. While I looked into that, I got reminders of just how healthy fruits and vegetables are, they're really not just a luxury. (I never knew avocados have been shown to prevent or help prostate cancer for example.)

It was a good deal and an enjoyable experience, I'm waiting impatiently for the next opportunity - our fridge is close to empty and besides that, how much easier can it get than having baskets of food just waiting for you to pick up?