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Eating Vegetables Doesn’t Have to be Boring!

We here all the time that people do not like to eat vegetables plain, because they are “boring”. There are so many different ways to incorporate vegetables into your everyday diet to “spice it up”! Below are some fun and creative ways to start incorporating veggies into meals that your family enjoys and is already eating. Cooking with vegetables does not ever have to be boring.

  • Experiment with veggie noodles – they now have tools that will take zucchini and make them into noodle shapes. Or you can use just a spaghetti squash. It is as easy as it sounds – you cook the squash and once cooked the squash comes out like little spaghetti noodles. You can substitute these noodles for any regular pasta and your meal still tastes great!
  • Try cauliflower pizza crust – cauliflower can be used in many different forms. Cauliflower pizza crust has popped up recently as a new trend. You can combine ground cauliflower with eggs, almond flower, and some additional seasoning to replace traditional pizza crust.
  • Add vegetables to a smoothie – many vegetables can be added to a smoothie along with fruit. The fruit overtakes the flavor of the smoothie but you are still consuming the great nutrients from the vegetables! Try adding things like kale, spinach, or carrots to your next smoothie.
  • Switch out your burger for a veggie burger – veggie burgers can be an easy replacement to a regular hamburger. Still add all your regular toppings you enjoy (ketchup, mustard, pickles, cheese, lettuce, tomato) but instead of a beef based burger you can consume some extra veggies in a veggie patty!
  • Mix veggies into sauces – try adding some veggies into sauces (spaghetti sauce, curry, purred veggies into cream sauces). The internet is a great tool for finding different recipes that can practically hide veggies in sauces. Any easy way to sneak more vegetables into your diet.
  • Add vegetables to your pizza toppings – we have found that there are a lot of vegetables that taste delicious on top of pizza (which is one of the most popular foods!). In addition to your favorite go-to toppings try adding bell peppers, onions, zucchini, and tomatoes to your next pizza.
  • Incorporate vegetables into soups – there are many different soups that already have vegetables in them. Try cooking a broccoli and cheese soup, adding some veggies to chili, or making a veggie and chicken soup! You can experiment with different combinations to see what your family enjoys the most.

People seem intimated by cooking with vegetables or are unsure of how to eat them other than raw with ranch. We have found that incorporating them into our favorite meals makes it easy to consume more vegetables on a regular basis! You don’t always need to eat plain raw veggies or just salads to get enough vegetables into your diet. There are many ways to incorporate them in fun and creative dishes! Your family will hopefully start to enjoy consuming vegetables on a more regular basis through you sneaking them into your favorite meals!

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Big family living and The Garden Shed

Living with more than one children is a world of its own. You are looking to squeeze every penny out of each dollar while operating with the highest efficiency possible. And, let’s be honest, if that is you, you’re proud of it. I mean, deep down inside things are insane, but you are excited when you save money for the family… or even better, save time running around.

Here is very possibly one day in your life: Each child wakes up with a different need. Because of course, when you are a child, you do not wake up to be productive but rather for the bathroom, to eat something, you were coughing, or someone woke you up. The potentials are endless and the solution – meet mom or dad.

Now once the initial needs are met, it is time to prepare this group of children for the day ahead. Depending on the age of the child they will either be heading to school or will need entertaining at home via homeschooling methods (another way of saying that the parent at home is fully responsible for all activities for the foreseeable future). And if you do not have a plan for the day, you had better make one quick because you have multiple willing schedulers that might add dessert for breakfast to your agenda!

We will choose to skip the middle of the day which could include attempting to shop at a grocery store or walking across a street to go to a local park. Yikes!

Now bedtime – a comedian once called it a hostage situation in reverse as he stated: “I’ll give you anything! Just go to sleep!” For most tired parents, this is not an ideal time of day.

Then mom/dad ends their day and enjoys the luxury of silence 😊. They open their phone, kiss their spouse, drink a glass of wine while they detox… and hope no one wakes up for pee-pee or needing a drink.

We have been there. Lived as one of the children and raised multiple children ourselves (and survived).  Children are the primary reason we started The Garden Shed and are still running it today.  Early on, we wanted to create an opportunity for our children to get work experience while spending time with them. Today, they are all grown up starting families of their own, and our mission has shifted.  As we remembered back to packing up the kids for a grocery store run, it hit us people must still hate that experience.  Delivery seemed like a family health saver! 

When fruit and veggies go bad so quickly, it is easy to choose the less healthy options when a weekly grocery store run is the alternative. We want to provide healthy food options to families around Yamhill county directly to their front door… without a delivery charge!  We hand pick each box and will work with you weekly to make sure your needs are met.

If this is a service you would like, head over to our Shop page and create your first box today! Or feel free to contact us with any question.

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Fresh Produce To Your Door!

Fresh fruit and vegetables have recently become a desired product, especially now that companies are delivering right to your front door. The concept is awesome! Get fresh produce regularly without the hassle of going to the store. And in today’s culture this has become very trendy. People desire to live and eat healthy but are also busy and want to maximize the hours that they have in a day. Going grocery shopping takes time and to keep up with eating fresh produce you need to visit the store multiple times in a week So produce delivery solves that problem. It saves you time and you can have fresh produce waiting at home for you on a consistent basis. However, the downside is that because this trend is new it is often unavailable to people who do not live in a large city. Many companies offer produce delivery but those living in McMinnville, Yamhill, Dayton, and other local towns do not have those services available to them.

Our desire at The Garden Shed is to offer fresh fruit and vegetables to people who live in rural Yamhill County. We believe that fresh produce being delivered right to your front door is a perk that everyone should be able to enjoy! It makes eating fruits and veggies easy and convenient, and eating healthy should be just that. For years now we have been delivering produce to local companies helping them start and boost their wellness program for their employees. And while we still deliver to local businesses we saw a need and decided to start offering more services for local families. Larger families often don’t live in the city or near enough to take advantage of the bigger companies services. However, the larger families are the ones that most desire and need larger quantities of produce and the grocery stores aren’t as close in the rural areas.

Of course you can find produce at the grocery store, down at the farmers market, or local produce stand but at the Garden Shed we aim to make it easy and cost efficient. We offer subscription based produce delivery. You can choose what fruits and vegetables you desire in your box (based on what is in season and what we are offering) and then we will delivery to your home weekly or biweekly. Our prices are competitive with the grocery store and we offer free delivery if you are in Yamhill County, it doesn’t get much better than that. Our goal as a company is to provide a service that meets the need families who are looking to each healthy and a regular basis.

We hope that you will use our services to help you feed you and your family healthy fresh produce but eliminate the hassle of grocery shopping. We know that your time is more valuable than that. So please feel free to reach out to us and let us know how we can best serve your family. We designed this program for families like you and want to make sure that it is working best for you.