Hey there everybody! As you might already know, my fiancee Andrew and I have been very much into the weekly Blue Apron box we get. We love the fresh ingredients and fun recipes. We love cooking too, so we really love having the Blue Apron box to ground our meals for the week. It takes so much of the legwork out of grocery shopping and meal planning so that we can focus more of our energy on our day to day lives. Not only that, but it makes our grocery bill more predictable.
As wonderful as Blue Apron is, we still do have other meals to be eating throughout the week. Recently I discovered another great food box delivery program that we have adopted in addition to Blue Apron from one of our neighbors in our apartment building. This lovely gem is the Imperfect Produce Box. And it is full of LOVE. <3 p="">
Basically, the idea is this: grocery stores have cosmetic standards that they put on the produce that they will buy from farmers. As a result, a lot of perfectly good produce goes to waste (About 20%!!!!) just because it might look a little funny.
And let me be clear, these imperfections are all cosmetic— perhaps a carrot is small or crooked, or a tomato or orange has some abrasions from the wind. This food is all perfectly edible and safe for consumption, but it won't be picked up for stores because it isn't 'pretty' enough. There are also cases where there is a surplus as well, so some items don't actually have any imperfections... this food just gets wasted.
So that's where Imperfect comes in. For a weekly or bi-weekly box, you can get fresh produce from Imperfect delivered to your door. We do the bi-weekly box, so every other monday I sign on to my account and choose what to get in my box. It's a bundle of fun, and it's less expensive than buying from the grocery store. I love it for a lot of reasons. The produce is always fresh and delicious, it's fun to build my box, and I can see how much I'm helping food waste via my account profile.
This week I ordered a leek, blueberries, plums, pears, tomatoes, and purple potatoes. I'm so excited to cook with these great little food gems! And this week Imperfect sent me a free tote bag as a surprise as well. This company continues to make me smile.
This company is growing and it's not available everywhere, but they are working on expansion. I would say my only road bumps are these:
- The produce arrives in a fun box (which I love), but I am still tasked with the best way to store them. At the grocery store there is an endless supply of those great little plastic baggies for your produce. So I may need to figure out a better storage bag system. I will say though, that the box is printed on top with a great guide on where to store different types of produce. I think this is somewhat of a mystery to some of us (me!). Certain fruits and veggies do better on the counter than the fridge, etc.
- Limited supply & options. On the one hand it is very exciting each week to log in and see the different array of product available each week. I have to remember that this is special product, the things that were left over. So while you might be able to assume there will probably be potatoes each week, some of the more fun items may be limited or only available some of the time. I was really excited to see the leeks on there and scoop them up. But there was one week I was very excited about blackberries and by the time I 'saved' my box they had already been claimed. Bye Bye blackberries! So if you're really counting on some specific produce for a recipe you want to make, it might not happen that it's available that week. So sometimes there may be limited options. But it's kind of part of the fun, right?
Ultimately, it has been great having these little gems of produce around the house. It gives us healthier snacks and makes healthy produce something to look forward to week to week. I could see this being a great thing for getting kids into healthy snacks as well... There's something special about it getting delivered to your house, and the box is so fun and cute too.
So check it out if this sounds like fun for you and your family.
I do have a lovely little link for $10 off your first box if you sign up from this link (full disclosure, I think this gives me $10 off my next box too >.<).
Until Next Time,
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