An old lover has returned

I know, I know. You're here for the brownie report. While I'm slaving away, baking in the name of science, please go ahead and read this post and let me know your position on the local/slow/hippie food movement. Brownies tomorrow, I super swear.

I received an email the other day with the subject line "time for a new beginning." Apparently, Full Circle Farm found out about my new and passionate affair with Amazon Fresh, and they want me back.

Full Circle Farm is a Seattle area CSA program that we participated in for well over a year. I decided to suspend my subscription early in my pregnancy, when the idea of trying to figure out what to do with a box full of produce every week was way too overwhelming for me to handle (this would be the chicken fingers era). Plus, it seemed like a good way to shave $30 off my weekly food bill. The variety was nice - but when I could get by on a basic produce selection from the store, without having to figure out what to do with dandelion greens for the third week in a row, it seemed like the right choice.

Since leaving FCF, I have regained some (but not all) of my kitchen enthusiasm. But I stick to the basic salad and side veggies that we usually eat without venturing out. I order them from Amazon Fresh, and they come with the rest of my groceries. They may or may not be grown 45 minutes from my house, but they ARE organic and reasonably priced.

Unfortunately, all the 'food morality' stuff out there has really gotten to me. Long gone are the carefree days of the past where I could buy whatever was cheap and tasty with a total lack of regard for where it came from. Now I have to think about it, and shop according to my conscience. And what my conscience tells me is that I should be spending my food dollar as locally and as small as possible - meaning I SHOULD be buying my food from the little farm co-op down the road, not the corporate goliath. It's strange that it's taken me as long as it has to come to this conclusion. My parents spent half their lives building up their own business; so how could it not occur to me to support other people in similar endeavors?

So according to my own values, I should be buying my produce from the CSA program, my dairy from the milkman, and my meat from a butcher. I should be willing to spend a little extra money to support small business and local food. I should quit telling myself that Amazon Fresh counts because it is a local company, technically.

But will I? Only time will tell. Full Circle Farm does not deliver ice cream OR oreos. That's a big dealbreaker in my book.

My plans to become a shut in continue to run smoothly

My inaugural Amazon Fresh delivery came today!! It was a lot like Christmas, except instead of Santa in the chimney with toys from the sleigh it was a couple of guys on the doorstep with food from a truck. Just like with Santa, I kept looking out the window in anticipation of their arrival - but they swept in and made their delivery while my back was turned. Tricky, Amazon Fresh!

I have to say that overall I am very pleased with this operation. The tote boxes are a little heavy due to the inclusion of ice packs - which I have to store in the garage along with said totes until next time. There was also a little redundancy of packaging. If you dutifully pack along your little cloth totes when you grocery shop, you might be offended by the fact that a lot of things come in a plastic bag in a reusable insulated bag in a big plastic tote.

The upside of this, of course, is you get to open said bags like presents on Christmas morning - and what is more delightful than opening up a big bag of cheese?

Please try and be a grown up and ignore the obvious phallicity of this eggplant. Difficult I know, but I have a point here - the eggplant and the avocado were the two things I worried about most (well, except for the ice cream. The ice cream arrived packed with dry ice, so it was rock hard. Like the eggplant? Stop it.). Ahem.

The avocado I ordered was "large, ripe," and the one delivered seems apt. The eggplant I worried about because there were no such qualifiers in its description, so I really wasn't sure what I would get. But it is a fairly average sized eggplant (out of the gutter, geez) which will work for my eggplant parmesan/lasagna hybrid later this week.

We'll see how long the honeymoon lasts, but for now I think I will stick with Amazon Fresh for my grocery needs. The quality of produce and brands available are comparable to what I can get at my neighborhood (chain) store, and the prices are competitive. Orders over $75 get free delivery, and seeing as I spend about $100 a week, delivery charges shouldn't be an issue. Plus if you spend $300 a month you get free delivery with no minimums for the entire next month, which means I could order up some emergency ice cream and oreos and they would HAVE TO BRING IT TO ME FOR FREE. EVERY DAY.

It's not a time saver yet - between the time I spent ordering and unpacking, I don't think I saved any time over going to the grocery store myself. But that should improve as I set up an auto-list and generally learn the site better. By the time Chopita arrives I should be in the groove and avoid all the grocery-store-with-infant horror story scenarios I've heard so much about.

Amazon Fresh did not pay me for this post. But they probably should.