Saturday, December 10, 2011

Bountiful Baskets: December 10

I have dearly missed doing Bountiful Baskets.

Colorado is an "A week" state... so all the locations are only every other week... and unfortunately, when Bountiful Baskets took the Saturday after Thanksgiving off, that was an A week. So it has been 4 weeks. And it will be 4 more, as Christmas Eve is an A week also.

Anyway, the three biggest boys and I headed out this morning to volunteer... once we located my glasses... which requires us to be out the door by roughly 4:10. We got there and were thrilled beyond measure to see the truck there (last time the truck was very, very late.... like over 2.5 hours late...)

And then we started to grasp how wonderful this basket was. I wish we could have afforded two... but alas, it was only one this time. And I was too stressed when we got home to get photos. However, the goodies included:
  • one bunch of asparagus. Yummm. Connor chose another one of these as his 'extra' for volunteering, so we actually ended up with two.
  • four tomatoes. Which we really needed.
  • a ginormous butternut squash. Even more Yummmmm. I chose another (a normal sized one) for my extra.
  • one bunch of romaine lettuce.
  • two green peppers. Something else we really needed.
  • two avocados. I'm the only one in the family who appreciates those.
  • six Fuji apples. We were actually out of apples, so this is quite appreciated.
  • six pears. We love pears.
  • twelve clementines. Those itty bitty orange-like things. These are yummy too.
  • one pineapple. Yum, yum, yum. Thomas chose a second one as his extra.
  • nine bananas. Those are always appreciated.
  • a big bag of red grapes. William chose a second one for his extra.
And we got a huge box of oranges.

Plans are pretty boring here. We'll eat the fruit. I may dehydrate some of the pineapple.

Tomatoes, green peppers and lettuce will simply be used without any planning necessary on my part.

The avocados? They aren't ripe yet... by the time they are, the guacamole in my fridge will probably be gone, so I'll make some more. I ought to come up with something else to do with one. I don't know though.

Asparagus will be served with dinner a couple times this week. And Butternut Squash keeps, so that will be served with dinner probably three times later this month.

The best part was finishing up and heading back to the van to watch the eclipse.  And we didn't have to get up special to see it!  


We've been clients and not just volunteers at a mission in town the past month or so... and today that meant lots and lots of oranges... 21 of them.  And a couple of grapefruit.  Some other produce too, but none of that overlapped with my Bountiful Basket.

I'll probably be juicing the mission oranges... unless I come up with something else I can do with them.  Like maybe I'll do some canning... I've never canned citrus before... but Pick Your Own has some pretty easy-sounding directions.

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