In my recent drive to save the planet by cutting down on food that makes it into a landfill, I’ve joined two services. One is my compost service, which I love, because even though I have the option to get the compost back, I have a brown thumb; so the compost materials (aka my food trash bucket) I’m donating every week will instead be given to sustainable farms and community gardens in the area.
The second is an organic fruits and veggie delivery service called Misfits Market. Misfits Market buys unbought fruits and veggies from regional farms and delivers them within four days. These aren’t the fruits and veggies you get in the grocery store—deemed too “ugly,” (or too large, small, or misshapen to conform to rigid grocery store beauty standards), they would normally languish behind on the farm. But Misfits Market buys these unwanted fruits and veggies and sells them at a lower price to both help out farmers and keep the (perfectly good, just not always perfectly presenting) food from the landfill. (Side note: A friend pointed out that this may simply be a marketing ploy to sell more farm food; if so, it worked on me.)
I got my first box on Wednesday, and I was so thrilled I almost wished I had a gourmet chef on hand to cook all the beautiful veggies I received in my box! Examples: two oversized zucchini squash, 2 (compostable!) bags of brussels sprouts, 2 giant bags of cremini mushrooms, green beans, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, kale, Treviso radicchio, oranges, avocados (not the recalled ones, thankfully), and mangoes. A veritable plethora of organic veggies, and best of all, packaged in a recyclable box. No single-use plastic baggies from the grocery store, no cellophane wrap, and no regrets (though, full disclosure, the heirloom grape tomatoes came in a plastic container.)
So we’re clear, the veggies were not actually deformed, as I (sort of) expected them to be. They weren’t ugly, either. They were very similar to what I would find at the Farmer’s Market in the end of the summer, although some of the sweet potatoes were on the smaller side and the oranges were tough to peel. But in the interests of proving how lovely the rest of the veggies were, here’s a photo of some of the roasted ones. Yum.
The box I got was full of enough veggies that I could share some with my brother and mother, so in future I will probably sign up for the smaller box, but I wanted to see the variety available in the larger with my first order. You can sign up for weekly, bi-weekly, or one-time deliveries. This was a one-timer, and I had a referral coupon for 25 percent off (I’ll share my own with you, and you can get 25 percent off, too!)
For the price, I found the veggies to be better than both the supermarket and the farmer’s market price-wise for organic items. And the biggest draw is that in the store I would normally pack those veggies in throwaway plastic baggies, or they would come in cellophane-wrapped, non-recyclable packaging. These beauties all come in the box (and loose items like mushrooms came in compostable green bags), so I don’t have to fill my trash bag with all the packaging.
If you’d like to try out Misfits Market, you can use this referral code for 25 percent off your first order!
—
Check out our programs and sponsorship offers for #EarthDay #GreenerTogether https://t.co/skEK7AFW1M pic.twitter.com/7fqNTzRiUU
— The Good Men Project (@GoodMenProject) March 10, 2019
Imbedded image credit: author
Feature image: jf-gabnor on Pixabay.