Co-op Day!

We recently went to another Co-op pickup. As I've become more and more familiar with what I can get through the co-op, our orders have grown larger and l a r G E R.

Here's the lowdown on our haul this month:

(all of this is organic, so I won't type that in each description)

20 pounds Evaporated Cane Juice (this is what we use instead of white sugar, it's less refined)
15 pounds Brown Flax Seed
13 pounds brown rice
10 pounds Thompson Raisins
5 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes
5 pounds raw walnuts
5 pounds Quinoa (we'd been out for a week, and the kids were dying to pick this up, Zibing and Daniel would be happy to have it for breakfast every morning!)
4 whole Chickens
3 boxes Blue Diamond Pecan Nut Thins
2 10-oz. packages Frozen Green Beans
1 25-oz. jar Bubbie's Sauerkraut
6 35-oz. jars Woodstock Farms Peanut Butter
2 pounds Dates
4 packages Lundberg Brown Rice cakes
2 1-lb. packages Baby carrots
3 3-lb. bags Pink Cripps Apples
3 3-lb. bags D'Anjou pears
2 1-lb. packages Baby spinach
1 pineapple
16-oz. Organic Valley Sour cream
1 pound bag Yummy Earth Organic Lollipops, assorted totally yummy flavors
1 jar Frontier Lemon Pepper blend
1 jar Simply Organic Garlic Powder
8 dozen farm-fresh eggs (from our co-op coordinator's "girls")

Now some of this might last for a couple of months (like the 5 lbs. walnuts)...
some might last for 3 or 4 months (like the 15 lbs. flax seed and 13 lbs. brown rice)...
some will last us for longer (the 20 lbs. of evaporated cane juice might last us for a year!)...
and some will have to be ordered again for our next monthly pickup (all the produce!)


As you can imagine, hauls like this put quite a dent in our monthly food budget...so I plan our menus so that I will not need to buy any food from the regular grocery store on the weeks that we do this co-op pickup. And, of course, there are now many things that I no longer need to buy at the regular store - ever - because we now get them through the co-op instead.

I feel so good about feeding my family with these healthy things we've bought through the co-op!


And the other reason we love the co-op...

How we make these co-op pickups every 4 weeks!


This is how we travel to make our pick-up:

Me and my four precious ones pile into my dear friend Kris' (12-passenger) van with her and her 3 precious boys!

Lily Kay loves "Mrs. Tris" (Kris) almost as much as I do...


The town where we make the pick-up is over an hour away, but we make it into a grand time.



And this month, we started our Co-op Pick-up Day with a special event...

A convoy of soldiers returning from Afghanistan was driving through our small hometown, so we turned out to welcome them home...yelling and waving our support.



Elisabeth's sign told the soldiers "Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! Welcome Home! Welcome, Welcome!"

And then we stopped at a park in a little town on the way, to play for a few minutes.






And, lest you might think that Kris and I are Over-The-Top-Crazy-Fanatics about healthy eating... I just have to confess what we bought for the children while we were at this new park in this little town along the way to pick up our Super Healthy Organic Food...

Snowcones!

Some of my children (like all four...but who was counting) couldn't finish their snowcones by themselves, so I - ever the martyr - stepped in to help!

But you know I hated every High-Fructose-Corn-syrup-mixed-with-Outrageous-Dyes (read: super yummy tasting) slurp!

What can I say...I would do anything for my precious children.