Final Box This Season from The Food Project

I am a bit sad today because it's Thursday, and I have no vegetable box to retrieve in Jamaica Plain.

22 weeks after it started, my fresh vegetable share with The Food Project has ended.

I must say that they totally blew away my expectations for what $425 bought me - a great variety and quantity of produce picked just before distribution. Luckily, I'll eat mostly all vegetables - though I learned that I ran out of things to do with chard rather quickly.

Every week, I picked up a heavy box of produce containing about 12 different vegetables. More often than not, they left items outside of the box which were also ours to take - huge bunches of basil, massive brussels sprouts on their stalks, squash, raspberries, and melons.

My fridge is still packed with a number of vegetables that keep well over time - beets, turnips, potatoes, garlic, cabbage, celeriac, and this massive kohlrabi bulb.

I'm certainly going to miss my locally grown fresh pre-paid produce. Just last week I had to purchase a bag of lettuce, and it was so uninspiring. I never thought I'd feel this way about produce and become a veggie snob, but The Food Project has done that to me.

Next year, the prices are going up to $500 for weekly pickup ($480 if I put a deposit in by December 1st). I'm still deciding my plan, but I think I'm going to do it again. It sounds like a lot of money, but it balances out to a good weekly value of fresh nutritious food (assuming I eat it and don't rely on pizza).