June 2, 2007
Organic Porn Delivery

Feeling a little lazy. Maybe a little experimental. We ordered in. We refused the nice bike ride to the grocery store. We said no to the nice farmers at the market. We skipped going out for dinner. Instead, we went online and pressed "yes" to delivered organic fruits and veggies. To live in a city with farmer's markets everywhere, it just feels so lazy to do this.
But when we opened that box, we fell in love.
To suede our guilt, we looked to GreenLAGirl who has been exploring organic delivery services for some time now:
The deal: Every 2 weeks, I’ll get several servings each of 12-16 types of in-season, all organic, 90% California-grown fruits-n-veggies delivered to my door. The cost: $29 per delivery...I get some organic stuff at Trader Joe’s, but what’s up with all the packaging on their produce? Apples don’t need individualized compartments in four-pack plastic containers, recyclable or not. Exhibit for those unfortunate TJ’s-less people: to the left is what their tomatos come in. Unnecessary, especially if one wants just 1 or 2 tomatos, not 7. Plus, a lot of TJ’s organic stuff seems to come from far, far away places, like New Zealand. Why?
See? Our lovers at Trader Joes use too much plastic! But our organic delivery friends use a box that they ask you to give back upon the next delivery and as evident of the above photo, much less plastic is used.
Other pros, cons and things to ponder:
- We didn't use our car to get the food/They used a car to bring us food.
- How much money actually went into the Los Angeles economy? Was it truly shopping local?
- Since you do not control exactly what food shows up (however, they give you the option to tell them what foods you hate), it forces you to create dishes you may have never before.
- Opening the box was a lot of fun, but going to the farmers market has its own charm that we'll miss this week.
For more info, Siel at GreenLAGirl has a very nice guide to organic delivery services in The paradox of organic grocery delivery choices



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Just as an FYI, Trader Joe's now sells its apples and oranges individually so you don't have to get the plastic carton.
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I read about farm co-ops doing this years ago, but they didn't cover Los Angeles. Yay! Thanks for telling us about this!
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Hey Zach,
You said "To suede our guilt, ..."
So you don't embarrass yourself further, the correct phrase is "assuage our guilt."
You could look it up.
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Wow. Thanks Zach.
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Well, we are typing very quickly in the middle of the night to get these posts out by morning.
So typos happen. There is a system already set in place. Every time you catch a typo, you are obligated to down a shot of jaeger (or whatever you have leftover from the holidays). We promise to do the same. My favorite one last week was about repelling.
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LOVE Delivery until recently (quit because work is so consuming that the food mostly goes to waste, but at least work feeds me for free)