Veggie Tables

Hubby and I have been really trying to do better by our family. We have cut our expenses, curbed our spending (some days are better than others), added more fresh to our diets, and tried to eliminate as much yuck as we can. But we all like yuck. You know what I mean. The good stuff that is so horribly bad for you. Big Macs and a large Dr. Pepper, while fantastic with an order of salty fries, are not the best diet in the world. To counteract and hopefully do better by ourselves and our kids, we have gone organic.

One of our homeschool moms runs an organic veggie co-op. Today was our first pick up. And we got a great deal of food for our money. And we got some things that we want to try, like beets. I cooked some tonight with orange juice of all things. The great thing about Florida is that oranges at this time of year are plentiful to put it mildly. The more we can get and eat the better. I'll let you know how the beets come out. They are beautiful and deep red and smell so good. I even took some of the tops and put them in my salad for the night.

I also got some kale. I have never had kale before and it sounded pretty interesting. It is a dark green leafy veggie that has tons of vitamins. I logged onto Recipezaar and got a couple of interesting looking recipes. It may turn out alright. I'll let you know how that goes, too. I'm pretty excited about that.

The green peppers are gorgeous. I love bell peppers. The red ones were some of the prettiest I have ever seen. I just hope they have that great snap! I love in my raw, fresh veggies. We also got some green leaf lettuce. Hubby and I like to have a great salad every night with dinner. It's our way of adding more to our diets. I'm going to cut a bunch of our stuff up and have a great big salad tonight. I cannot wait. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. So is hubby's, but he can't have any of it.

Hubby has a stomach virus and is on a BRAT diet. He can only have plain foods with no extras, like salt, pepper, or flavor. So he sits at the table with us and uses his cute puppy dog eyes, and mopes. My poor baby. But he only has a week and a half left.

The prices for the food we got was fantastic. We got apples, pears, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, beets, kale, potatoes, garlic, and I don't remember what else and paid less than $40. We filled 4 reusable shopping bags and then some. If I had bought everything at the grocery store, some of it not organic, in the quantities I got, I would have spent close to $60. And it's all certified organic, which means they have not used pesticides in their grow areas or plants for at least three years. I found out the other day that if an apple is not organic, they have used up to 43 different pesticides on them. Why do you need that many chemicals?

Anyway, if you have the opportunity to go organic and support your local growers and economy, I would suggest it. It makes us feel good that our local community benefits as well as us. I'm going to go enjoy my dinner now. Orange juice beets, yum!