Trouble With Toast

A produce problem, solved

As anyone who lives in the District (or any urban center, I’d imagine) knows, grocery shopping is the pits. Sure, it’s easy enough to go to the national chain to pick up cereal, salad dressing, and other non-perishable items. But what about fresh food? Safeway is a disgrace when it comes to produce, Whole Foods isn’t much better (yet still charges double), and the neighborhood markets are often prohibitively expensive and limited in both varietal scope and temporal availability.

Well, if you live in the DC metropolitan area, you no longer have to suffer with such mediocrity.  Washington’s Green Grocer is here!

I found WGG through a DC blog. Basically, it’s a family-run operation whose goal is to simultaneously deliver better produce than you can find in the local groceries AND support sustainable local agriculture. Each week, they publish a list of available items, and they bring a box chock full of ’em right to your door. The boxes come in small or large (I’ve been very happy with the small size, which has about 12-15 pounds of goodies and costs $27.50), and you can choose the regular or organic mix (obviously, the latter is a bit more expensive). Don’t need a delivery every week? No problem. Don’t like one or more of the items on the list? Just ask for extra of something you WILL enjoy. For example, this week there’s broccoli, sweet potatoes, grape tomatoes, red cabbage, portobello mushrooms, acorn squash, celery, Granny Smith apples, D’Anjou pears, ruby red grapefruit, mangos, and bananas. I’ll be getting extra mushrooms, broccoli, and grapefruit instead of the cabbage, celery, and mangos. Yum!

I’ve been extremely pleased with the quality of the items, and it has forced me to eat more (and varied) fruits and vegetables. Originally, I was going to get a delivery every other week, but everything has been so lovely and delicious that I’ve caved and ordered every week. Hey, it’s good for me, right?

So, if you live in or around DC and you’re tired of settling for sorry produce, check out Washington’s Green Grocer. Tell them that a very satisfied customer sent you!