Our Azure Standard Haul for February was the equivalent of a really caring friend. Let me tell you!! Our 6th child was born last month via c section due to an odd presentation no matter what natural turning methods were tried and I was still having some pain and was overall pretty tired. Thankfully around 6.5 weeks postpartum I started feeling really good. My Azure pick-up was during the “feeling bad” phase. It made my life so much easier and my mom’s life so much easier as she helped a lot with the cooking and had enough on her hands helping me with all the children, not to mention being in a strange city and trying to find her way around.
Azure Standard is a company that has drop points all over the country with many times pretty reduced costs for high quality organic food products and things like pastured raw cheese and pastured butter. You can read about them here. As usual, I saved big bucks and saved myself from having to go grocery shopping multiple times a week to keep our crew fed.
We already had plenty of grassfed meats in our deep freezer, organic dried beans, nuts, grains (organic oat groats, white rice, soft white wheat berries), organic herbs and spices, organic teas, etc, so I was working with that this month as well. My husband or I also always pick up 3-4 gallons of raw milk every week from our local farmer.
Here’s what we got from Azure this time:
10lbs each of organic lemons and limes
5lbs organic oranges
27lbs organic coconut sugar
15 lbs organic red potatoes
20lbs organic frozen peaches
10lbs raw cheese
10lbs organic frozen spinach
10lbs organic frozen broccoli
I bought 4 of these: whole, pastured chickens
10lbs organic carrots
9 heads organic cabbage
5lbs of cremini mushrooms
20 packages of pastured eggs. According to the Azure description these eggs are from hens on pasture and are not given soy.
5lbs organic frozen cranberries
15 lbs pastured butter
10 lbs pastured parmesan cheese
5lbs raw hazelnuts, 2 bottles non-GMO vitamin C, 9lbs organic yellow onions, dried shiitake mushrooms, 5lbs dates, 5lbs organic masa
25lbs organic spelt berries
2lbs organic ginger
The oranges were rapidly eaten. The lemons and limes were used in homemade jello made with grassfed gelatin (I’m still using some of the lemons). The frozen spinach has been used in scrambled eggs, as a baked dip and on pizza. The frozen broccoli has been used in stir fry multiple times and in pureed soups. Pastured chickens were roasted and the bones were made into bone broth.
Every time I make my family eggs, it now takes a full dozen to feed everyone. I bought the bulk amount of parmesan cheese and it will last us 2-3 months. I use onions nearly every day, so those go fast. The hazelnuts will be soaked properly in a saline solution to break down anti nutrients, dehydrated and made into chocolate hazelnut butter which is a favorite of my hubby’s. The cilantro gets thrown into asian dishes, mexican dishes and some salads. The organic masa is for tortilla making. We love to eat dates as an afternoon treat and I like to use them to sweeten our kefir smoothies. The dried shiitakes are for rehydrating in a mug of bone broth. I love them and shiitakes are medical mushrooms. I like to have them around in case anyone gets sick.
I use the carrots almost every day eaten either raw or put into stir fry, desserts, muffins, etc. The cabbage I love sautéed, recipe here.
My 25lbs of spelt berries from late November was almost finished, so I ordered another bag. I use it for all of our bread/bagels/english muffins, etc. Hopefully I can get those recipes on the blog in the near future. I wash, dry and store the ginger in the freezer, so it keeps for a long time and it’s much easier to grate into recipes for asian dishes, desserts and hot tea.
We had go to stores to buy things I didn’t purchase through Azure Standard. Thankfully, it was very little. I bought things like organic green beans, lettuce, cucumbers, various wild-caught seafood, guacamole, bananas, apples (I ordered a box of them through Azure, but they ran out and took that off of my bill), sweet potatoes (same thing happened with these), organic salsa, coconut clusters (a dessert/snack item from Costco) and organic/gluten free ramen noodles.
I also used my Thrive Market membership to buy organic tomato products in glass for making pasta sauce/pizza sauce and Jackson’s Honest Chips and had it delivered.
Here’s some examples of how I used our Azure purchases:
Stems were separated from the caps and both were frozen. The caps were for stuffed mushrooms here and the stems to use in soups, omelettes, etc.
Scrambled eggs being cooked with organic, frozen spinach.
Organic cabbage chopped and frozen for future use.
Organic frozen cranberries added to a raw-milk kefir bowl
Our bread: a spelt, sourdough boule
I’m eagerly anticipating my March drop!
Nikki says
This is amazing! I only have one 2yr old boy and I struggle with everyday life haha. I’m so happy to have found your blog. So inspiring! I need to start buying bulk to save money. Any tips on getting started? I would love some budget tips or blog post on that!
Pamela says
Outstanding explanations of haul and pictures!