(Honeycrisp apples. The organic apple is on the right.)

Grocery shopping at our house is a group effort. I make the list each week, prepare the majority of our meals, and pack the boys’ school lunches. Ryan and the boys do the shopping, usually over the weekend, as a way for me to get a break. It’s really stressful to shop with two small children, and Ryan is a great sport about it.

We buy the majority of our food from our local grocery store, and supplement with periodic trips to Costco and Whole Foods.  I love Whole Foods, and they recently opened a new location closer to our house. But we haven’t been yet, because it’s incredibly crowded each time we drive by.  There’s an absence of local and organic food stores in our part of Austin, if you can believe that, and folks are excited to shop at this new store in our neck of the woods.

In my weekly reading, I came across Greenling, a local food delivery service, and last week, we decided to give it a try. Greenling appealed to me because there’s no membership fee to join, and you can order whenever you want.  There’s a $25 minimum order requirement plus a $10 deposit for the storage box the food arrives in, but as a family of four, we definitely spend more than that at the grocery store each week.  The grocery items largely come from farms in the surrounding area, and everything is natural and organic. They also carry well-known brands like Annie’s (my boys love the bunnies!) and Applewood Farms.  Greenling delivers to our neighborhood twice a week, and we use their website to make our weekly grocery list.

Our first order was filled with delicious fruits and vegetables, and everything was fresh and ready-to-eat.  The boys loved the milk from a local dairy, and we were surprised by the actual size of our favorite honeycrisp apples. I’m afraid to slice the store-bought kind with a knife, since they are so gigantic, but James and Rhys can eat their way through these smaller apples on their own.

I’m not mathematically-minded when it comes to grocery shopping, but the site itemizes every single thing you buy, so it’s easy to tell how much you are spending per item. I really like that, and so far, we’re saving money by purchasing fewer things each week. There’s less waste and we definitely aren’t throwing away spoiled vegetables before we get around to eating them.  We still have to make trips to our local grocery store for a few things here and there, but Greenling has turned out to be a great solution for our family.

I’m sure we’ll try out that new Whole Foods eventually.