Disappointed

This morning the kids and I were up bright and early. We were going to pick up our Bountiful Basket. What is a Bountiful Basket, you ask. Well it sounded like a great opportunity to save a little green. I found out about this co-op called Bountiful Baskets from a friend of mine. Basically it is a way to get a substantial discount on fruits, vegetables, breads, baking goods, spices, oils and at time beef. So for $17 for a first time user (us), we got 13 different varieties of fruits and veggies. We did get some good stuff so it wasn't a complete waste of time or money. But I was quite unimpressed with the quality. The website that you order off of says that they purchase in large quantities from a warehouse in South Phoenix that distributes to grocery stores and restaurants around the valley. While I believe that they get it from said warehouse and I do believe that its the same stuff they distribute, I actually think that its the stuff that is sent back. There is no way that I would pay for the quality of these fruits and vegetables in the store.

I received one bunch of wilted lettuce. I was able to put some life back into it with a ice bath.
~8 bananas. They will be great once they are ripe so no complaints there.
~3 of the smallest green bell peppers I have ever seen. I swear to you they are the size of a apple!
~4 very large tomatoes. They should hopefully be good once they ripen.
~1 cantaloupe. I don't like cantaloupe but maybe the kids will eat it??
~3 walla wall sweet onions. They look good though they are much smaller than the ones at home.
~9 plums. 1 of which was moldy. They were all pretty much ripe so I put them in the fridge to stop the process. I hope it works.
~12 nectarines. These were all bruised up and over ripe. So I looked up how to freeze them. I ended up blanching them to remove the skins and then sliced them up and am freezing them in some lightly sugared water. This was where my biggest complaint is. While slicing them open 3 of them have moldy pits. Could you imagine if I gave these to the kids to eat! I think not I was quite disgusted to say the least.
~1 brown lunch bag of green beans. I haven't dumped them out yet but did look at them and the top ones look good.
~1 bag of grapes. These are in good shape no mold and the kids are enjoying them.
~1 very large bunch of nice crisp celery.
~6 ears of corn. It looks good so we will see.

I think that I will go back to buying my own produce from now on. It was a good learning experience. Besides I enjoy going with the kids to pick out what we should eat for the next week. The co-op runs every other week. So I guess you stretch it to last 2 weeks or buy additional. Oh well a good lesson learned and it only cast me $18 after the processing fee. Not terribly bad.