January 30, 2012

Azure Day!

I have several tricks up my sleeve when it comes to feeding my family without blowing my (very) tight budget. One of them involves indexing the prices of massive amounts of items in my head so I know which ones are cheaper at what location. Yeah I know, it's a little weird. I think I thrive on getting the best possible deals.

But another one is Azure Standard. They're an Oregon based company that specializes in healthy, natural and organic foods, which they deliver by semi-truck all over the country. When I first discovered them, I assumed there was NO WAY they delivered to anywhere even close to here. But a couple weeks later while talking with a fellow foodie at church, I discovered she'd been ordering from Azure for years and they have a drop point right by Brookings!

I can get a lot of items from Azure that I can't get around here, and several items are just significantly cheaper than what I can get here. And there are a few things I use frequently that I can buy in bulk to save money.

Today's delivery included:
5 lbs organic cheese
1 lb butter (from grass-fed, hormone free cows)
2 - 32 oz containers of yogurt
1 - 16 oz coconut milk yogurt (never had this before, but thought it deserved a try!)
20 lbs unbleached organic white flour
2 lbs sliced almonds
1 pkg organic dried black beans
1 gallon raw clover honey
5 lbs organic steel cut oats
5 lbs organic rolled oats
1 lb rosemary
1 container organic chocolate syrup
5 lbs organic raisins
32 oz. Dr. Bronner's Castille soap
5 lbs organic russet potatoes
5 lbs organic yukon gold potatoes
25 lbs organic juicing carrots

The main reason for purchasing MOST of these items, is that the price I can buy (what I feel to be) a higher quality item from Azure, is usually about the same price I'd pay for the regular, big-box label item at the grocery store.

For example, my organic yogurt was about $3 for 32 ounces, which is roughly (maybe a few cents more) what 32 ounces of Yoplait costs and about half the price of organic yogurt I can buy in my hometown. And I know it's coming from cows that aren't given hormones, antibiotics, or stuffed full of genetically modified grain. Same story with the butter, although it's still expensive, I can get it for about $4 a pound through Azure instead of $5.59 at my local grocery store.

The carrots are Jon's purchase. They're juice grade carrots, which just means they're a little too crooked to be sold as eating carrots, although these look really straight so I'm not sure why they're classified as "juice carrots." It's just much more economical to buy them in bulk when you go through as many as he does.

And...Dr. Bronners Baby Mild Castille soap. I get this from Azure simply because it's hard to find the unscented soap in the larger size. I use Castille for everything from hand soap to shampoo to floor cleaner. It's extremely versatile, works extraordinarily well and is completely non-toxic. Ever heard the saying "if you can't eat it, don't put it on your skin?" You could totally eat this. Not that you'd want to. It would taste horrible. But it does make me feel better about using it on my little sensitive-skin princesses. We've tried the peppermint and it smells great, but it actually irritated Jon's skin just a little, so we stick with the unscented.

If you're ever interested in ordering from Azure, just check out their website. All you have to do is get a username and password and you can see all their prices and products, but it does NOT require you to purchase anything. They deliver once a month, and I'd love to coordinate pick-ups and take turns with anyone from the Brookings area who is interested!


  1. We wouldn't want to be around Jon if he was too pepperminty anyways! I'm just going to have to get on the ball and order one of these days! :)

  2. Thanks for the tip, Virginia! ~Darla