I was at a Jazz festival in downtown Burlingame a few months ago, and between buying jewelry I don’t need and stuffing my face with festival food, I walked by a stand called “Farm Fresh To You”, which was promoting a delivery service that brings a random assortment of local/organic/seasonal produce to your doorstep, at a reasonable price. I wanted to hug the poor guy holding the clipboard, shake him and scream, “where have you been my whole life?!”.

I mean, really, this is perfect for me – I cook almost every night, rarely eat meat or processed food (I eat like a fat rabbit), and I can’t afford organic food. I’ve heard of similar services in San Francisco but it would have been a hassle to get my groceries there, since I don’t live there. And $10 off the first box? I grabbed his pen and signed myself up.

So far, the experience couldn’t have been better. For $23, I receive a small mixed fruit and veggie box every four weeks (there’s different plans, but this is all I can do for now). I actually really, really look forward to getting my veggie box in the mail. The night before I know when it’s coming, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like Christmas, every month. I try hard not to look on their website to see what’s going to arrive, but I usually end up ruining the surprise anyway. (“A pound and a half of heirloom tomatoes?! YESSS!”)

So before I talk more about their service (and awesome website), I’m going to show you what it’s like to get a surprise fruit and veggie box delivery. I’m going to unpack everything in order for you guys. Hold on to your seat. This is exciting stuff. Are you ready? Ok.

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Instead of throwing the box on the doorstep, they carefully placed it on one of the patio chairs. (Ok, I took these photos after I opened it, but other than that, this is the real experience). They dropped off the box at 8:00am the last time they came, which was nice so I could unpack everything into the fridge before going to work. It came after I left for work today, but everything seemed to be ok.

I enjoy the life size illustration on how to open the box. Just in case I had half a brain. It makes me laugh.

This is where I start jumping up and down. Grapes!

The grapes came in a paper basket-thing. No bruised or old ones. I really like that about fresh-picked produce.

Lettuce loosely wrapped in a bag. I was expecting it to wilt a little by now, but it looked fine. It wasn’t that hot today, anyway.

Each box comes with a newsletter that has some kind of article, and recipes for the produce that came in the box.

Gorgeous heirloom tomatoes. If you haven’t had one yet, get one now. They are amazing. They taste so much better than regular tomatoes…less watery and more of that sweet tomato flavor. They are also a lot softer, and less mealy. It’s practically a different vegetable. It makes me sad how mass produced tomatoes look beautiful, but taste so bland.

There was a cantaloupe in the box, but I was really hoping for the melon I got last month! We got something called a Galia Melon, which is a cross between honeydew and cantaloupe.

I received itsy-bitsy bell peppers with so much flavor. In my opinion, it seems that organic vegetables have more flavor, and less water. They’re not as attractive, and bruise easier, but taste much better. Maybe it’s like buying laundry detergent – it’s better to get the smaller bottle with the more concentrated stuff, than it is to buy the big, cheap bottle on the bottom shelf even though you know it’s full of water and won’t work as well. Sorry, that was a weird analogy.

We received six Gala apples, all blemish free.

And at the bottom of the box – onions. Always good to have around.

I hope you liked unpacking it with me. Wasn’t it fun? Oh, and after you unpack everything you can easily collapse the box and stick it outside when you expect the next delivery so they can reuse/recycle the box. :) Hrm…last month’s vegetables were probably more interesting to blog about, but maybe this winter I’ll blog if i get an interesting box. The weirder the vegetables, the better.

Farmfreshtoyou.com

I’m not sure how long they’ve been around, but it seems like they worked out all the kinks in their system, because it’s flawless. Their website is especially good – I’m going to point out a few things that I like (because I design websites for a living and I can’t help it). I believe it would be very difficult for them to manage this business without a good back-end to work with. It’s pretty sophisticated for a family-owned farm website.

About a week after I signed up at the jazz festival, they sent me an email with all the information that I need, answering all the questions that I had already, and even made me an online account with all my information in it. Yes – they made me an account! That was impressive, because I was expecting to sign up for an account (ugh) and fill out some long form about everything they know already. Don’t you hate that?

Their plan was smart from the beginning – get friendly people to represent you at a public event, make the first box $10 off, only collect name/email/address (there was no form here, either. They get an A+ for User Experience), send you an email with a pre-made account with all the controls you need so you don’t ever have to call customer service. Brilliant.

With your account, you can easily change any of your information. You can even add delivery instructions (if you live in an apartment complex, need a gate code, have rabid dogs, etc). I added my credit card here so I don’t receive a bill. You can modify how often you get the box, what you get in the box, add a box, cancel a box – without calling customer service! No matter how good customer service is, I’m always happiest when I don’t ever have to call one.

Now this is cool. The contents of the box are random, since you get what’s in season, but they’ve already answered the question, “But what if I’m deathly allergic to _____”? You can actually set up an exclusions list, so you don’t ever have to worry about getting _______ in your box. It’s pretty specific too – you can exclude arugula in a bunch if you just rather get it loose. By the way, I love arugula and bok choy, I just added them in to the exclusions list to show you guys.

Every week, they post what you’ll be getting in your box. All you have to do type in your zip code, select the type of box you signed up to get, and select the week you expect to get it. And it shows you a list – with pictures, and where it comes from (some of the produce come from other farms they are buddies with).

They also have an enormous list of simple recipes for various fruits and vegetables. Most are vegetarian. Keep this link in handy if you go to the farmer’s market a lot.

P.S. I was not paid or bribed with heirloom tomatoes to write this blog entry. I just really like the service.

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