Forget paper or plastic, it comes in a box. You don’t go a store, you pick it up on the front porch of an wasabi-green colored house in Glen Ridge. And you don’t pick out what you want: you get what everybody else gets, in other words, what’s available this week.
I’m a sub for the Purple Dragon Food Coop, based in Glen Ridge (with satellites throughout New Jersey), which means that I don’t get my produce order every other week, like regulars; I’m called in when a substitute is needed. Mostly recently, that was Friday, and I might have to consider upgrading to regular status.
For $46, my vegetable haul was so big that it filled up the whole seat of my front-porch bench, where it sat for a photo shoot and amused my family. Since then, it’s contributed to a chicken-vegetable curry, a carrot-sweet potato curry and two large vats of vegetable soup. And most of the fruit is still left. Here’s what I got:
Pennsylvania IPM golden delicious apples, organically grown California beets with greens, broccoli, carrots, celery, collard greens, green leaf lettuce, Valencia oranges, Italian parsley, sweet potatoes, Mexican tomatoes, Peruvian bananas and Argentinian Bartlett pears.
This coop seems way more easygoing than the neo-Marxist Park Slope Food Coop, with had good produce for great prices but a rule list longer than your grocery list. Purple Dragon members are required to help with boxing one hour every three months, but you can buy your way out of the requirement for $15.
For more info, check out the Purple Dragon website.
I’ve long been tempted by Purple Dragon, but their website is singularly useless in giving an idea of what you actually get in a delivery.
Looking at Debbie’s list, I can see I’d be wasting my $$ with them, as much as I like the concept. I hate beets & sweet potatoes, my SO hates broccoli & celery, and Golden Delicious is my least fave variety of apple when there are Fujis & Galas to be had at under $1.00 / lb.
Anyway, thanks for the info.
Also, this time of year, when there are mouth-watering FLA strawberries to be had & good Mexican & CA asparagus, the selection starts to look a bit behind the season.
know who’s a vegetable? BUSH IS.
also, this site is so boring now that it should be taken down for good.
i’m a member of purple dragon and while i initially thought “good god, what am i going to do with all these greens, mangos etc. etc.!” i’ve discovered that having produce which i normally wouldn’t buy has made me a more creative cook. as for apples selling for under a $1.00 a lb., i’m pretty sure those aren’t organic apples. but if poison coated produce doesn’t concern you then buy buy buy my friend and leave purple dragon for the rest of us.
Don’t forget that there is also the Bloomfield-Montclair CSA. You can directly support a local organic farmer and get weekly shares of yummy veggies.
people. go to a supermarket. jeez. what do you think you run? a restaurant? think your cooking is good? ask your husband/SO.