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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Bountiful Baskets
I saw in the dinner post below that a couple girls use the co-op thing but i was just wondering how it worked and about how much it cost? I was looking at their website and it looked like you pay for things as you want them, like the bread and stuff so i was just curious on how it worked and do you think it is worth it?? I have been wanting to do it for a while now but i didn't know any who had already tried it... TIA
Re: Bountiful Baskets
The conventional basket is $15 and the organic basket is $25
Every week they will show what the specials are for that period. Last week they only had the bread, which was $10 for five loaves. Sometimes there are Mexican packs, Asian packs, Italian packs etc.
You do pay as you go, which I really like. So on Tuesday/Wednesday you'll log on to your account and add the basket and extras you want. You pick your pick-up location and prepay. Then on the day of you take your confirmation receipt and go to the pick-up place.
It was super easy, and for us well-worth it. I have photos in my blog of what we got this past Saturday.
ETA - we eat primarily vegetarian at home. If you aren't going to be eating produce consistently then it probably won't work for you as it can go bad before you'll get to it. Also keep in mind that you have no idea what the foods are you'll get - I think it's fun
I just picked up my first BB this past Saturday. It was fairly easy (other than a few hiccups which were purely my fault.) Basically you get on their site, pay for the basket. It's $15.00 ($19 for first timers) and you have to pay by Wednesday 10pm. If you want to add bread, that's additional. Otherwise, the basket consists of fruits and veggies (50/50.)
The most important thing (as I learned) is that you MUST be there within 15 minutes of your pickup time.
DH and I thought about joining Bountiful Baskets, but decided against it. You don't get to choose the veggies and fruits that they put in the basket, so what happens if you get a basket full of stuff you don't like? It would just get wasted in our house. Also, you get so much stuff all at once, that it would go bad before we would eat it all.
I like the concept, and I understand why its practical for some families, but it isn't for ours. We prefer farmers markets, where we can select the quantity and contents of our shopping.
Can't wait to meet my baby boy!
Where have you found a decent Farmer's Market? I grew up in CA, going to the Farmer's Market at 5 am every Sunday morning with my grandparents to sell produce from thier garden. We've been to a few here and I was completely dissapointed with the selection!
<a href="http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y126/wayfastwhitegirl/?action=view
Well I found a list of farmers markets in this blog:
http://azcrunchywife.blogspot.com/p/farmers-markets.html
And we've tried a couple, they definitely are not nearly as big and nice as the CA markets. Instead of fresh produce and baked goods, its all raw and vegan diet stuff. DH and I used to go to the Newport Beach markets during the summers - the AZ markets just do not compare.
Can't wait to meet my baby boy!
We use Bountiful Baskets and love it! We've gotten about 5 baskets so far. Our location only does the conventional basket, so it is only $15 plus any add ons. We've added on the Mexican and Italian extras, which were great. We also add on bread when needed, we freeze the loaves until we're ready to use them.
We are able to get through a basket every two weeks, but we eat a lot of produce, take our lunches to work and eat at home during the week. We will also give some produce away if we know it is too much. For a few weeks we had a ton of bananas left over, so we experimented a bit and made banana bread, cakes and cupcakes.
I think it is kind of fun to see what you get in each basket and try new recipes if you've never cooked with an item before. I pick the basket up Saturday morning, then make a meal plan for the week.
Thank you all for you wonderful advice. I am so excited about this because i thought the co-op would be a great alternative to farmers markets. And i think 15 dollars is great pricing because you could easily spend that or more on produce at the store and not get as much.
So now i have somewhat a silly question i suppose. Where does the basket come from, by this i mean... do you supply the basket or is that apart of the inital $19. See i told you it was a silly question... I think of the most random things when trying to figure out to try something new.
Rubysoho44 - Banana bread,cake, muffins sound so good right now lol
I have talked to my mom and asked if she would want to split it but my parents are creatures of habit. Chicken and salad with the occasional porkchop or steak
so she wasn't to open to being surprised in your produce.
Also, if you don't need a weekly basket do you just log in and pay when you do need a basket? Because I was thinking that i want to expirement with foods and cooking more and try to get my meat and potaotes man to eat some more veggies and friut... which i have to say he is much better then when we first met. lol so side story when we first started living together the only veggies CJ knew of and liked were canned greenbeans and corn boiled in the liquid that is in the can... so when i ade fresh green beans for him he didn't know they could be so delicious
any who, sorry i get distracted. I think having it be a surprise of what would be in your basket would be exciting and give us a chnace to try some new foods 
You don't actually get a basket, you bring your own laundry basic or shopping bags with you. When it's your turn you take the items out of the basket and put in your own container.
OH ok... lol see what a hot mess i am lol i took it literally like you got a basket full of delicous produce... oops my bad
Yes, you have to log in and add a basket each time you want one. So if a basket lasts you two weeks, only do one every two weeks or whatever works for you.
I know for us it will probably be one per week. We eat so much produce! It's a great way to try new things. Almost everything we got this week was stuff we usually would buy - but there were two interesting things in there: swiss chard and a galia melon (hybrid of canteloupe/honeydew).
Something else I've noticed is that you need to be very aware of how long the food will stay good. We knew right off the bat that the bananas would go very fast (in the first day they started to brown-but they are the best bananas ever!) so we put all the other fruit to the side and have only eaten the bananas(okay and a few blackberries) for the past few days. Then we'll move on to the pineapple/melon and lastly the apples that are in the fridge. Same with the leafy veggies. Our romaine and swiss chard are getting soft, so I'm going to use those tomorrow.
I think we could go through a basket in a week too. Unfortunately our site is only offered every two weeks and on the off weeks there isn't a site very close to us. Some of the veggies and fruit (mostly the apples and oranges) will last through the second week, so we just buy produce at the grocery store to supplement what we have.
Also when we get home from picking up our basket we just chop most of produce up, so it is ready to eat. That way it is handy and quick to use for snacking and dinners.
It was the first time I did it this weekend as well, I've been meaning to, just kept forgetting.
We eat a lot of produce so it won't be any problem for us to eat all of it. Though I did still have to pick up spinach and would have picked up apples but decided we had enough from last week (from sprouts)
I think a few years ago it used to be a LOT more stuff which was why people were having trouble eating it all. It didn't really seem like it was too much to us. You can check my blog, I posted on Monday about BB and today about how to cook Swiss Chard.
I'd say give it a shot and see how you fare, it's not like you are losing money by doing it, the prices are cheaper/comparable to sprouts.
I like that I get different foods than I would always buy, it makes me branch out.
And I *think* that there is always Lettuce/carrots and bananas in there , I think