Azure Standard

I may have mentioned this yesterday but when we first began picking up from Azure Standard, which was about a year ago, there would sometimes be 10 of us there meeting the truck to pick up our orders. Yesterday, there were probably 40 people there picking up orders. Our drop coordinator said there are new members every month. I think it has something to do with the availability of organic foods, the quality of Azure’s foods and, for me, the trust in their products.

When we were in Texas, I checked into ordering from Azure but there was no drop location near me. For the most part, even though I feel the quality of their foods are the best I can get, other than growing it myself, I’ve watched videos of young, stay at home mothers with bunches of children, and they’re buying van loads of food from Azure every month and I’ve often wondered why they don’t just go to Walmart and buy the same things for way less. This morning I watched this video and now, I understand it and I think that one video will change the way I shop for groceries. We’re trying to consume less artificial ingredients, especially those that are not healthy for us to be eating.

While I’m not an expert and I did not verify everything this man is saying is true, it’s enough to change the way I shop. It’s sad that so many young folks, including us when we were younger, didn’t do a better job of knowing what we’re consuming.

It is a very long video but Vince and I both learned so much from this guy. I hesitate to share videos with Vince because (1) he’s much smarter than I am and some of the things people say on videos that I think is great info, Vince will immediately know it’s not all 100% true an (2) apparently I’m much more easily entertained than Vince because I’ll be glued to the tube and he’ll be dozing off because the info doesn’t interest him but after watching this video, which is 1 hour, 20 minutes long, Vince said “Does he have more videos? I learned a lot from him!” Yay!

I’m not saying we should all buy everything from Azure Standard but the video was an eye opener for me.

I was going to share a picture of our Azure haul yesterday but after laying out 50 pounds of potatoes (10 – 5 pound bags) on the table, and starting to spread out 10 – 5 pound bags of carrots, I decided that was a waste of time when I had 100 pounds of produce to get preserved.

Here’s what we picked up yesterday:

• 50 pounds of potatoes – I have loved having the canned potatoes and will can all of these except for maybe 5 pounds I’ll keep out for us to eat.
• 50 pounds of carrots – These are the best carrots. Even Vince, who up until recently questioned the cost of the Azure products (til he bought several bags of carrots from the store and then put them in the compost pile because there was no flavor after eating Azure carrots), insists I order at least 10 pounds of carrots each month from Azure. I have canned quite a few carrots but the ones we got this week will be cut into small cubes and freeze dried. I can add them to recipes but we will also eat them as snacks – crunchy and sweet!
• 50 pounds oat groats – We use a lot of oats! I use it in granola, I mill it to be similar to still cut oats, I roll it to be Old Fashioned Oats, I mill it into oat flour and will add it to different breads.
• 2 pounds of fresh ginger – We use this to make a ginger syrup and then we use that to make ginger ale with fizzy water from the Soda Stream. We also love adding about 1/2 teaspoon ginger syrup to oatmeal.
• 5 pounds Teff – I use this in Eight Grain Granola. I can mill it and use teff flour in whole wheat bread.
• 5 pounds black quinoa. I also use it in the Eight Grain Granola and we like quinoa. We love this Baked Pumpkin, Apple & Quinoa Salad. Today I’m making this but I’m using freeze dried sweet potato leaves in place of kale (because that’s what I have).
• 1 pound Ceylon Cinnamon – This is pretty much the only cinnamon we use now.
• 1 pound dried Bing Cherries – I could sit down and eat this entire bag! We use it in oatmeal and in granola.
• 5 pounds dried cranberries – We use these in oatmeal, granola, muffins and in some sweet bread recipes. The cranberries are a bit less expensive than the bing cherries so I use more of the cranberries.
• 2 pounds Nutritional Yeast Flakes – We use this in place of cheese on popcorn, sometimes on pasta. We will also sprinkle it on salads for added health benefits.
• 2 gallons Coconut Oil – I use this in the granola and I use it more and more in recipes where I would previously have used butter. Not only do we use in cooking but I’ve been using it more and more for my hands, hair, teeth, etc.

I think that covers what we ordered this week.