At last: I defeated the produce!

Last fall, I was blessed with the opportunity to join an absolutely wonderful organization: a produce co-op. My friend Becky, who runs it, calls it a coop and calls us all coopers in her messages, but some part of me just cringes at the thought of being in a coop. So I have decided that if I am going to live in a coop, the coop must have a hyphen.

Every other Monday (coopday), Becky gathers all the money that her coopers have given her since the previous coopday, and she drives her van to a farmer’s market. I have never gone with her, so I’m not sure exactly what she does, but somehow she uses the power of the cash-filled envelope to negotiate bargains on large boxes of fruits and vegetables. When her produce-filled van returns home, she divides all the produce into boxes, one for each of us. I am curious to know her exact process for doing this—presumably the produce is in boxes when it enters her van (surely it’s not rolling around loose!), and it is in boxes when we eventually pick it up from her house. But when it enters her van, I expect that each box is full of like things (one box of apples, another box of peppers, etc.). When we get it, the box is full of unlike things (4 apples, 3 peppers, 1 cantaloupe, etc.). In order to refill the boxes properly, wouldn’t she have to empty them? Does she remove all the produce and lay it on the living room floor, and then distribute the apples among the boxes, the same number for each box? If I tried something like that, I would end up finding a 6-month old peach under my couch whenever I eventually vacuumed. It’s not a pleasant thought. Anyway, she must have a system for these details, because we each end up with a giant box, filled to the top with a huge variety of fruits and veggies.

For each co-op week, each cooper contributes $20. Being a bit of a data geek, I usually weigh my box as soon as I get home. My box weights have varied between 24 and 29 pounds. What an amazing deal!! Can you go to a store and buy any sort of food for less than $1 a pound?!? Spaghetti noodles, perhaps, but not produce! I am far from being an expert produce shopper, but some of things, such as red and orange bell peppers, are pretty expensive when purchased in a store. Of course, for most of the things, I have no idea whether they are expensive or cheap, because I have never bought them before.

My box has contained many fruits/veggies that not only had I never bought before, but I had no clue what they were. For example, I had eaten dried mangos before (thanks to a sweet sister who sent them to me from the Philippines!), but I had no idea what an actual whole mango looked like. Fortunately, Becky (aware of my status as a produce rookie) pointed out the mango the first time we received one. The mango is a very strange fruit! I still don’t know the proper way to cut it, and I don’t understand the shape of its core or how to tell the core from the yummy mango part, so I just keep cutting slices until I feel my knife encounter something hard and raspy, and then I cut somewhere else. We’ve had plenty of other mystery fruits, including a “cactus fruit” which had a bunch of hard seeds interspersed throughout the sweet parts. That one was more trouble than it was worth, but it was interesting. Kiwis are much nicer.

Since last Christmas, one of my recurring non-writing life goals has been to actually use up (or freeze or give away) the entire produce co-op box before any of it rots. Until last co-op, I had failed miserably in my attempts to attain this goal. I kept persisting, partly because I’m stubborn and hard-headed, but mostly because I am a terrible planner and decision-maker. The produce co-op removed the entire burden of grocery decision-making from my shoulders, a wonderful freedom. I am trying to write a dissertation after all, so I need to minimize non-research-related strains on my mental energy. I no longer had to decide what to buy, or to plan what day to do a grocery trip—when the produce co-op arrived, my only food-related goal was to use it up. Simple goals are good. Just as with my writing, even in the midst of my failures, I could still see improvement. As the months went by, a smaller percentage of the produce went bad.

Two produce co-ops ago, I really thought I was going to make it. I used all the salad stuff, froze a few things, and persuaded my hubby to eat some apples (Scott has many wonderful strengths, but consuming produce is not one of them). That was the first time my box had contained an eggplant, so I looked up eggplant recipes and really planned to do something with it. Unfortunately, it was final exam time, and life got crazy, and the eggplant defeated me. It got mushy and gross, and I had to throw it away without even cutting it open. I still have no idea what the inside of an eggplant looks like.

Finally, the next co-op after the eggplant rotted, I did it!! I actually finished all the produce before it died. (Well, there are a few things that got frozen, and there are still a couple of potatoes left, but they stay good for quite some time—so I still say I won.) Also thanks to the co-op, I enjoyed the satisfaction of another first: I actually used up a bottle of salad dressing! This had never happened before. Every other time I bought salad dressing, the salad dressing purchase coincided with a short burst of salad-buying inspiration. I would make the initial salad, use some dressing, and then put the remaining dressing in the fridge. About a year later, about how long it usually took for salad inspiration to strike again, I would examine the expiration date on the dressing, throw it away, and buy another bottle. Thanks to the produce co-op, I have now polished off two bottles of salad dressing before they expired.

One key to my victory was that I actually ate the squash. Many times, the co-op box has contained squash, and I’ve never had any idea what to do with it. I would let it intimidate me into complete paralysis, hiding it in the fridge drawer hoping for inspiration, which of course never came. When the next co-op arrived, I would open the produce drawer, discover that the nice firm squashes were now mushified, throw them away, and replace them with new fresh squashes. Until this recent co-op victory, the only squash I had ever cut up was a long green one that I thought was a cucumber. (I still didn’t know what to do with it, so most of it got thrown away, but at least I cut it up.) I still haven’t cooked a squash, but this time I cut them up and ate them raw—they’re actually pretty good!

Of course, I didn’t have much time to enjoy my triumph before the current batch of produce arrived. It came on the very first day of fall semester classes, and so far the only thing I have cut up is the celery. I haven’t frozen, cut, or washed anything else. The fridge is stuffed with cantaloupe, red bell peppers, corn, grapes, strawberries, cucumbers/zucchinis/green squash (not sure which), spinach, apples, peaches, carrots, broccoli, mango, tomatoes, kiwis, and some mysterious round green fruits that feel like plums but are the wrong color. My great victory may be followed by my worst defeat yet. I did give away a couple bananas to a colleague, and that’s about it. But I am ready for battle, armed with a 3-day weekend, my Forever Sharp knife, Ninja blender and salad spinner. Let the duel begin!!