Foodie Friday: LOVE Delivery Organic Vegetables

This week's Foodie Friday is a little different because it isn't about a restaurant but a service. A few months ago, I subscribed to L.O.V.E. Delivery (Los Angeles Organic Vegetable Express) in the hopes that it would motivate our family to eat more vegetables. Guess what? It is totally working.

There are several different vegetable delivery services out there, some of them cheaper than LOVE. I picked LOVE because A) They let you customize your order completely (as long as they have what you want) and B) Despite being more expensive than say, a CSA box (which runs at $17 in my neighborhood), I still consider the large box I receive (which the website calls a "small box"... they have an even larger option) to be a great deal at $28.50 a week.

Something to consider when choosing LOVE is whether or not local produce is important to you. LOVE provides local produce when it is available, but because they have the option of extensive customization, they do provide non-local organic produce as well. My family is picky and if we were receiving a box that had untouchables like bell peppers and cucumbers, we would be wasting our money. It is convenient to be able to decide exactly what we want. LOVE does denote which vegetables and fruits are local that week, so it is possible to stick to local as much as possible if that is important to you. In addition, one of their box options is an all-local box.

I have also been impressed with their service -- the box arrives in a timely manner and the delivery lady manages to get it to the door despite the gated entry (which, granted, may not speak much for our gated entry).

The produce has mostly been good. LOVE has the philosophy of delivering everything slightly unripe so that it won't go bad right away during the week. My only problem with this is that I can't always tell when something is ripe -- but I am learning. And honestly, the only thing I've gotten that I wasn't impressed with were the raspberries, and I am a raspberry snob.

The service isn't perfect -- for example, the fruits that Scott and I buy at a fruit stand called Loratelli are much better than the ones we receive in our weekly box -- but it definitely does its job of getting me to eat more fruits and vegetables. While I get to decide what we are getting each week, we still get a set amount that is probably more than I would just pick up in the produce section. I'm happy with the service and will continue with it while I remain in Los Angeles.