Door to Door Organics

One thing about living in St Joe versus Kansas City that is the hardest for us is ... food! Not only do we miss our favorite spots (Quay Coffee, Westside Local, Little Freshie, etc) but there's not an over abundance of fresh local and organic foods for groceries. We are thankful for the options Hyvee has but so often, I've found their organic produce to be lacking in quality and variety. Along with that, I love being able to purchase local products, especially meat and eggs, which our Hyvee doesn't offer.

Enter: Door to Door Organics

We've gotten Door to Door over the years sporadically but for whatever reason, had stopped getting it for a few years while living in KC. Once we came back to St Joe, however, I almost immediately signed up again because we could no longer just swing by Badseed on a friday night, etc. After tagging them in an Instagram post of Emersyn hanging out with these awesomely huge rainbow carrots I got in my box one week …

… I got an email asking me if I'd be interested in reviewing them. I don't really do many reviews on The Purple Carrot these days but this is one company I really do appreciate and love to share!

What Is It?

Door to Door Kansas City delivers fresh organic/natural local produce and food products right to your door in the KC and surrounding areas.

How It Works

Each order starts with a produce box that you chose and customize.

You can make 5 substitutions to your weekly (or biweekly) box and shop their whole selection of vegetables and fruit. Their produce is always USDA Certified Organic and sourced locally whenever possible.

After that, you can shop through their ever growing selection of pantry staples. They have a variety of farm-fresh milk, free-range eggs, gourmet cheese, humanely raised meats, sustainably fished seafood, and artisan breads - to name a few.

One of my favorite features is that you can put your order on hold anytime you want for as long as needed so there's no weekly or monthly commitment if, for some reason, you need to take a break from receiving it.

Examples

I snapped some photos of some of the past couple weeks boxes for some examples.

We get the majority of our groceries through them and they always seem to be growing and improving their selections. They also do a great job of keeping everything cold via their packaging even if it be frozen meat or milk.

 

Their prices are overall very reasonable and in line with most healthfood stores and I've always been impressed with the quality. Less than a handful of times have I had to contact them with any problems with an order and each time they were quick to happily fix it. I highly suggest giving them a try! I mean, who doesn't want to skip the store and come home to their groceries sitting at your doorstep? Yeah. Visit their website for more details and to check out what all they have to offer! And give them a try!

***Enter the word "purple" at checkout on your first order and receive a $10 discount!***

PS: Dear D2D, please add Oddly Correct coffee, Little Freshie pops, meat from Local Pig, aaaand Kalona SuperNatural milk to your selections. Thank you ;)

Sprouts, Summer fruit, Super smoothie

I just realized that it’s just about April already. Spring seems to go by so quickly!  It’s probably the nicer weather and because I’m itching for steady 70 and 80 degree weather once again!

Sprouts

We’ve been enjoying the fruit of our latest grocery shopping fun at Whole Foods.  I mentioned that we planned to start juicing more.  We also decided we need to start eating more raw fruits and vegetables in general.  There’s been a few too many Amy’s and Kashi frozen pizzas and burritos eaten lately (not to mention sweet potato fries on my part, ha), and not as much “real” food as normal.

Enter: sprouts
This is a clover sprout salad with celery, mushrooms, chopped walnuts, feta, and vinegar & oil.  I love the taste of sprouts!

A few facts about the health benefits of sprouts:

• Rich in essential nutrients and minerals.  Sprouting makes an already nutritious food even more nutritious since it’s still “living”
• High in protein.
• Great source of enzymes. This helps keep our bodies healthy, fit, and energetic, and also makes sprouts easy to digest.
• Contain concentrated amounts of phytochemicals, that can protect against disease.

Breakfast

Breakfast this morning was 2 slices of toasted Bread of Life raisin bread with cashew butter and a little local honey, served with a strawberry Greek yogurt, and my vitamins, ha.  I put them on my plate so I wouldn’t forget to take them.

 
Bread of Life is a local KC organic bakery.  We don’t usually buy their bread for no reason in particular, but we picked up a loaf at the food expo we went to this past weekend.

Lunch

My husband surprised me with lunch today.  My nose lured me out of my office to see that Erik had made me this:
A grass fed grilled bison burger topped with caramelized onions and cheese on an Ezekiel bun.  Yum!!

Followed by some cantaloupe. Summer fruit, anyone??
Super Smoothie

For my afternoon pick-up, I made a super smoothie.  I’m always slightly afraid my smoothies won’t turn out well … too much ice, not enough ice, too sweet, not sweet enough, etc, etc.  But today’s combo was perfect!It included:

• A huge handful of spinach
• 1 grapefruit, peeled and broken apart
• 1/2 really ripe banana
• 1 TB acai powder
• 1 ts maca powder
• 1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
• Generous squirt agave nectar
• 5ish ice cubes

I’ve decided the key to a delicious smoothie (at least for me) is the additional of juice from an orange, grapefruit, lime, or lemon. Perfect!

Now I’m off to cook some dinner! I also get to pick up my really good friend from the airport, who will be in Missouri for about a week … yay!

What’s on your dinner menu for tonight??

Aloe Vera Juice, Tempt Coupon

** my new RSS feed address is: http://www.lesleyliftinglife.com/feeds/posts/default
be sure to update your feed readers!

Two more days until Thanksgiving!

Truth be told, Erik and I won’t be doing much for Thanksgiving this year. Due to work issues, we’re unable to make it to Nebraska (Go Huskers!!) to see my parents. My mother-in-law and her husband are out of town, and my father-in-law is still staying in a living community due to cancer. Besides going to see him there probably won’t be much of a traditional Thanksgiving meal this year. I could go all out and cook for just us  but I don’t think I will (and I’m okay with that : )

Erik does, however, want me to make a “healthified” sweet potato pie so I will be doing that. Does anyone have a recipe suggestion for sweet potato pie? I’ve never made it, but am excited to see how it will turn out.

Thanks

Thank you all for the positive comments about our business venture!! I knew you would all be just as excited about a healthy vending machine as we were ; ) I will definitely be giving you all the inside scoop as we start out!

Snack Time

Here was my morning snack: Toasted cinnamon raison sprouted bread with Justin’s almond butter, banana slices, and chia seeds. I never get tired for this combination!

New Food Review: Aloe Juice

I love trying new, healthy foods and drinks!

While we were at Whole Foods this past weekend we picked up some ALO Awaken juice. It’s ingredients are: spring water, aloe vera pulp, aloe vera juice, wheatgrass concentrate, cane sugar, citric acid, calcium lactate

You can even see small green “floaties” when you look into it. Right away, I had serious doubts whether or not this would taste good and I didn’t know about the texture. But of course we got it anyway. I’ll try (almost) anything once.

Surprisingly, it was actually really good. The “floaties” were more sweet than anything and the texture of them wasn’t a problem at all because there wasn’t an overpowering amount.  Very refreshing. Erik’s already bought a different flavor to try.

Why do we get these products that sound so “gross”? Because they’re good for us (not to mention it’s just plain fun!!) Some claimed health benefits of aloe juice:

• Aids in healthy digestion.
• Contains vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, B12, C and E, Folic Acid and Niacin.
• Minerals in aloe include: calcium, sodium, iron, potassium, chromium, magnesium, manganese, copper, and zinc.
• Contains anti inflammatory properties
• Naturally detoxifies the body and cleanses the colon.

The recommended amount is 2-4 ounces twice daily. (I don’t know that I’ll be drinking that much but now you know ; ) Have you ever tried any type of aloe vera juice?

Coupon

After seeing my mini review of their help milk ice cream, Tempt e-mailed me sharing a coupon for $.75 of any of the products. Check it out!! : )

It’s Biggest Loser Time for Erik and I … have a great night, everyone!

 

-Lesley

 

Grocery Shopping, Etc

Good afternoon on this lovely Sunday! I like Sundays, if you can't tell ... relaxing morning, church, lunch with family ... doesn't get much better than that : )

First, a bit of recap from yesterday ... grocery shopping was a huge success. We've been trying to spend less and find good deals on things and we did pretty good yesterday. First off, some people at work told my husband about a local market nearby that we didn't know existed so we decided to check it out. It was called Fleek's Market and we will DEFINITELY be buying all our fruit/veggies from there from now on. We got stuff way cheaper than we would have been able to at a grocery store and we very excited we found it, so we got A LOT, lol.
Here's the tally: (yes, I know it's a lot ... keep in mind it's for two weeks and we eat fruits and veggies in every single meal) ...

38 bananas (we freeze many of them for shakes)
3 pears
14 grapefruits
19 apples
2 4lbs sweet potatoes (these things are HUGE)
4 lemons
13 oranges
6 tomatoes
5 zucchinis
4 huge onions

But the coolest part is we got all that for only 40 dollars and that is way cheaper than we ever could have gotten all that in any grocery store around here ... hooray for saving! Then, at Hyvee, where we got all our other groceries, we were ecstatic to find half gallon organic milk on sale for one dollar per half gallon!!! That's 2 dollars per gallon organic milk, people!! We were excited and amazed. haha. So, we got six of them, aka 3 gallons which only equaled six dollars, which is normally what just one gallon of organic milk there costs! What will we do with all that milk, you ask? Make yogurt! (and drink a little of it, too ;)

Now onto today ... here was breakfast this morning with my new kind of Ezekiel cereal ... 1/2 cup Cinnamon Raisin Ezekiel cereal with some frozen raspberries, some cinnamon and almond milk along with some goji berry green tea. Perfect!

Random snack that I've been having lately that tastes way too good ... a mini Ezekiel wrap with almond butter and some agave nectar. Last but not least, my husband and I went to Old Navy and Target after we ate lunch with my mother-in-law (at Panera) after church and I went away with some very cute and inexpensive shirts (mostly for work), a shirt, and a pair of shoes. I'm all about bargain shopping, I rarely buy any clothes or shoes at full price and I usually have pretty good luck at both Target and Old Navy. My husband and I don't get to shop together often and it was fun! : ) I couldn't seem to take a good picture, so that will have to do ...

That's about all for now, folks. Sorry if I haven't been commenting as much as usual, I've been busy havin' too much fun hangin' out with my husband this weekend, but I'm still here and am still reading and enjoying all your blogs!!

Also, check out Kelly at Every Gym's Nightmare ... I always enjoy her posts and her giveaway this week is a Arctic Flash V-Neck Tank Top from Danskin. Who doesn't love a clothes giveaway?

I hope you all have had a wonderful, joy-filled, pleasant kind of weekend!! : )

Grocery List

I'm glad it's the weekend : )

I'm just sitting here drinking some True Blueberry tea as I'm figuring out my grocery list. (Anyone else love tea as much as me?) We're going to get groceries at Whole Foods tomorrow ... hooray!!! (That excites me so much because we live an hour away and we don't get to make it there too often). Typically, we get our groceries at Hyvee (they have a pretty good health food section at least). But there are things that we can't get anywhere here that we have to stock up while we're there.

Produce

• mushrooms
• apples (lots of them)
• tangerines
• tomatoes
• spinach leaves
• baby carrots
• zucchini squash
• couple sweet potatoes
• few lemons
• peppers
• kale
• frozen veggies
  
• frozen berries (no sugar added of course)
  

Meat -- (though we'll probably still have to get our chicken and turkey meat at Hyvee)

• chicken breasts
• ground turkey meat
• shrimp (haven't cooked with it much, but want to try)
  

Dairy

• Organic skim milk (lots of it - for Erik to drink and for me to make yogurt)
• Organic eggs
• Organic cheese
• Non-dairy, buuuut almond milk (for my cereal)
  

Canned/Packaged/Misc.

• Canned tuna/wild salmon
• Almonds (natural)
• Truvia (does anyone else use Truvia, if so what do you think of it ... or what is your favorite sweetener?)
• Organic canned beans (garbanzo, pinto, black, and white)
• Ezekiel bread
  
• Ezekiel Penne pasta
• Ezekiel cereal (can you tell we like Ezekiel/Food for Life food?)
• Ezekiel small wraps
  
• Wild rice (we get a lot and all kinds of different brown/wild rices when we're there that we can't get here)
• Quinoa
• Curry powder (this is a spice I don't have and haven't really ever used that I want to try)
• Tea bags
• Heinz less sugar ketchup
• gum
• frozen veggies (espeically brussels!)
• frozen berries
• cacao nibs

And I think that's about all ... when we're at Whole Foods we not only stock up on certain things, but we kinda splurge and just look around to see if there's anything else we want to try since we don't get to shop there often.

Tomorrow along with grocery shopping our project is to put together the Boflex ... I'm excited to have it up. While I was on the tredmill tonight I coudln't help but staring at the empty space in the corner where it'll go. Have a good weekend everyone!!