Get a Good Food Box!

Coming from a girl who would eat Korean take-out or Indian roti every night if she could, (and one who has a fast-food column that gives her an excuse to eat good/bad food every week) I have taken a big adult step into the world of eating fruits and vegetables. And I feel so great about it.

Dan and I just got our first Good Food box, and I want to share with everyone just how awesome it is. If you live in Toronto (and certainly there are other locally run places that do this in other cities) you should really consider signing up the food box from Foodshare. If you’re like us, and don’t live anywhere close to Kensington or the St. Lawrence market, it’s hard to get a good amount of fresh and mostly local fruits and veggies. Yes, there are farmer’s markets, which I love, but those tend to be on the expensive side, and (lazy as I am) I kind of love having my decisions made for me.

Here are all your choices! Call and order one anytime, and you can pick it up the next week.

There are households all around the city that distribute good food boxes—there’s likely one with a few blocks of where you live. You can get them as often or as little as you want, and there are many choices in what you can get. The boxes are always a little bit different, and vary from season to season, which I love. You get to experiment with food that you’ve never eaten of cooked before (Swiss chard! Omg!) and expand your horizons a little bit.

This chart includes a typical haul from a large food box in May, so what we got is obviously a lot different. A close inventory in the winter is going to be: potatoes, rainbow carrots, oranges, apples, many, many pears, tomatoes, kale, bananas, chard, more that I'm sure I'm forgetting. And all this for $18! It's well worth it, and great when you're trying to save money by regulating and planning out your meals a bit more.

One warning: when you are ordering the box, you'll probably have to make a couple phone calls. Like many community programs, this doesn't always run super smoothly and it might take a while to get a hold of them. It's well worth the effort.