This morning we got our first delivery of produce from www.naturesgardendelivered.com! A friend shared a link to the website, and I was so excited by what I found – a local company that provides organic fruits and veggies delivered straight to your door. Immediately I decided to try it out, and by what I see in this first box of produce, I’m pretty impressed.
Over the past year I have dramatically changed the types of foods that I am feeding to my family. As I have become more educated about the pesticides that are present in traditionally grown fruit and vegetables (if you don’t know already and are interested in learning more, take a look at the Environmental Working Group’s guide to Pesticides in Produce here). My husband has played along like a good sport, all the while joking about how we went from just organic milk to now buying things like organic cinnamon. Come on – organic cinnamon was $0.50 more than the regular stuff - I don’t know about you but I waste $0.50 enough other places that it seems worth spending it on something that goes inside the bodies of my children.
However, it isn’t always easy to buy organic – overall it is definitely more expensive, and sometimes it is just so convenient to buy that pack of six, beautiful, multi-colored bell peppers at Costco (Costco – are you listening??? Please can’t you starting selling organic bell peppers?!?!?). I had heard of CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture – here‘s a definition from Local Harvest) but didn’t know where to start. Also, if I’m being honest, most of the things I had found here in the Phoenix area required you to be at a certain pick-up place downtown from like 7-8am or something, which just doesn’t fit into my schedule right now).
Long story short, I’m very excited about this little box of jewels. Lots of apples, oranges, tangelos (!) and kiwi. Beautiful round yukon gold potatoes (by the way, potatoes are on that list of the most heavily sprayed items – definitely worth buying organic here), beets, and multi-colored Swiss chard.
Now I’m going to have to put my money where my mouth is and cook for the next week so all of this bounty doesn’t go to waste…. guess I’m off to find a recipe for Kabocha squash that will appeal to a picky 40-something and two finicky preschoolers. Wish me luck! 
It’s great that you are working to feed your family more healthy. It’s an ongoing challenge for me. The delivery service that you’ve chosen is great but when I went out to their website I noticed that many of their products aren’t local. There are local CSAs in Phoenix with delivery service (I also couldn’t manage the location pick-up) that use all local pesticide free veggies. Of course, you won’t get things like kiwi but you will get sustainable produce without the impact of shipping them from great distances.
Tammy -
Thanks so much for your comment. I agree about the local issue, although I thought that a bunch of the things on my list of produce were local? I will have to look more closely. For me just making the change to organic has been a big mind-set shift for me and my husband, but as I continue along the path I hope to be more and more conscious of our environmental footprint as well. Thanks for reading.