Monday, January 21, 2008

Our produce list

A month or so ago, we finally settled on a base weekly produce list, one that would get us from one big run to our favorite fruit stand to the next with minimal mini-runs in between. It gets tweaked each week based on what's left over from the last and/or what recipes we're planning on preparing, but here it is as it generally stands.

lettuce, 2 heads
red & yellow bell peppers 1-2 each
persimmons 6-8
avocados 3-4
pineapples 2
carrots 2 pkgs (2k?)
cucumbers 3k*
bananas 5k
apples 2-3k
pears 2k
kiwi 1k
oranges 2k
grapefruit 1-2k
Clementines 1-2k
strawberries 1/2-1k
tomatoes 1k
mangoes 2k
plums 1-2k
peaches 1-2k
green beens 1k
(1-2 jalapenos)
(onions 1k)
(potatoes 2k)
(garlic 1pkg)

The items in parentheses are ones that we only need occasionally, but I don't want to forget to check. Our cell phone company offers 30 free text messages/month sent from their website. I keep this list on a "stickie note" (a Mac program) on my computer, and I cut and paste it into a text message sent on-line. I then make any adjustments, and ML, bless him, goes shopping.

A produce run with most of the items on this will cost us around $55. We are so blessed to have such affordable produce.

And if you're wondering at the magnitude of the list, keep in mind that we eat 50-70% raw, depending on the member of the family and the day of the week, and we eat very little meat when we do eat cooked, so we consume a lot of fresh veggies and fruits. 

We sometimes have to re-up on bananas right before another run, and cucumbers can run low, if the kids have been hitting them hard for snacks, but this mostly does us for the week.

*1k=2.2 lbs

4 comments:

Grateful for Grace said...

Hi, friend!
Wow! That's a lot of fresh produce. How awesome!

I'll be emailing you back today, just wanted to check in on you.

love,
GfG

mideastmom said...

Yeah, we really hit the produce hard. :-P

Sarah said...

How did I not know you had a blog, Cara!!!! I'm surprised at all the produce you're finding there. I would have thought that it would be harder to get certain things...

You guys do eat a lot of produce! That's so cool.

mideastmom said...

Sarah, I've only been posting for a few months and very sporadically. It's less of a what's-going-on thing than a here's-a-link thing for when people ask me certain questions.

And, yes, we're blessed by all the produce we have. It's probably 1/2 imported, 1/2 local. We definitely do the seasonal thing, though. Strawberries are just starting to roll in and are getting cheaper. Yay!