Market On the Move!

For those who don't know (I didn't until last week!), there is this great thing here, in Southern Arizona, called Market on the move (MOMS)!

 

For $10, you get 60(SIXTY!!) pounds of produce! Beautiful produce!

 

For those of us on a budget (who isn't these days?!), that is great news and a GREAT deal!

 

Last week, my friend Erin, her awesome husband who helped keep the kiddos happy, and I tried out MOMS. We walked up, waited in line (which wasn't too bad), paid our money, got a ticket to get a box (we will bring our own next time!), and went to the different tables to pick out our own produce!

 

We were pleasantly surprised at how great the produce was. You see, the produce they have is everything they could not sell at market. Mostly things are too big, like the organic eggplant we got, or mishapen, or kinda funny colored, like the beautiful red and green peppers we got! We did have to sort through the tomatoes and zucchini, but hey, we got some great tomatoes and zucchini, I feel like I have to sort at the grocery store too!

 All of the produce I got. Eggplant, tomatoes, grapefruit, zucchini, butternut squash, red and green bell peppers. I'm pretty positive this is not 60 lbs, but I could have gotten more. The phrase the volunteers working there tell you is "Get as much as you want and can give away." I didn't want to get too much this time because I wanted to make sure I'd use it and I have SO I'll get more next time. They had PLENTY. Mountains of boxes of produce.

I washed EVERYTHING in a vinegar water mixture, except the grapefruit, that will be peeled. duh ;)

 Michael counting the peppers after I washed them.

Having a blast doing who knows what!?

 Oh, yeah drumming with the zucchini

 Then the throwing started. That had to stop ;)

 How awesome is that?

 

I "flash froze" almost everything. Bell peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini.

 After "flash freezing" for about 15 minutes.

 Then stuffed it all into freezer bags to grab and go for meals!

 

 Eggplant "meat" balls!

 They turned out SO yummy!

 

 

The butternut squash will be made into soup...that I have yet to make!