Passionate Homemaking

Azure Stan­dard is a great resource for buying high qual­ity nat­ural and organic prod­ucts for great prices. They are a family run busi­ness out of The Dalles, Oregon, and from what I have heard they are also a Chris­t­ian com­pany (they sell Chris­t­ian books in their cat­a­log, I noticed as well), and they dis­trib­ute to all over the NW, and Mid­west now. You can become a drop spot or con­nect with others in your area which pro­vides free ship­ping. They also ship UPS any­where. My family and I have done the research, and their prices are sig­nif­i­cantly cheaper than Whole Foods/Wild Oats and Fred Meyer’s Nutri­tion Center. It is com­pa­ra­ble to Trader Joe’s, but then again they carry a lot more prod­ucts then my local TJ’s.

On request of my friend, Lylah, I have decide to post some of my rec­om­men­da­tions of items that I buy from them. Their cat­a­log and web­site is packed with resources, so it can be intim­i­dat­ing for a first time user. I hope you find this helpful.

What I rec­om­mend (all the brands are listed in the paren­the­ses, unless it is just an Azure stan­dard product):

BULK PRODUCTS

Grains - I buy 25 lbs of most of my grains, due to the sav­ings - rolled oats, hard white wheat grain (for my bread), soft white grain (for all my other baking of quick breads, muffins, etc.),-I store these in 5 gallon con­tain­ers in my garage. If you don’t have a grain mill, you can also buy these prod­ucts already ground into flour. But I would not rec­om­mend buying in bulk as the flour would go bad.
Other grains (5 lb quan­ti­ties last a few months for me)- barley, quinoa, short grain brown rice, kamut, spelt
Legumes - split peas, lentils (5 lbs)
Beans - kidney, black, pinto (5 lbs) All of these I store in glass quart jars or gallon jars in my kitchen

OTHER PRODUCTS

Herbs - (Fron­tier or Oregon Spice) - I try to just buy in 4 oz quan­ti­ties, because they go bad quickly

DAIRY PRODUCTS

Raw Milk Ched­dar (Brunkow) -excellent cheese!
Coconut Milk (Thai Kitchen Organic) -great for smooth­ies and coconut ice cream!
Coconut Oil (Wilder­ness Family Nat­u­rals) - for use in your smooth­ies, cook­ing, and body
Olive Oil (Bragg’s)
Sup­ple­ments - Cod Liver Oil, Lecithin, Apple Cider Vine­gar (raw organic in bulk), Flax Seeds (5 lb. bulk)
Baking Prod­ucts - Baking Powder (rum­ford), Baking Soda (bulk-I use it for clean­ing as well), Real Salt (Red­monds), Cin­na­mon, arrow­root powder, but­ter­milk powder, cocoa powder, SAF yeast, gluten flour
Sweet­en­ers - Raw Honey (1 gal), Molasses (Whole­some Sweet­en­ers), Rapadura (Rapun­zel) -an excel­lent nat­ural sweet­ener, use in replace­ment of sugar or brown sugar
Soap - Dr. Bronner’s (for bath soap, sham­poo, tooth­paste, clean­ing, after­shave, etc-I am just in the process of learn­ing how to use this one prod­uct for many uses)
Ground Turkey (Shel­tons) case of 12 lbs, pack­aged in 1 lb. pack­ages
Canned Goods -Tomato Sauce, Diced Toma­toes (12 cans ea quan­tity packs)
Kamut or Spelt Spagetti (Eden)-great way to get other grains in your pasta!
Berries - I try to buy all my berries fresh during the summer and freeze them, but in case I run out, Azure sells large quan­ti­ties of pes­ti­cide free berries for very good prices.

God bless you in your pur­suit of buying good qual­ity resources for your family!