I've known about the idea of community supported agriculture (or CSA, or farm co-ops) for awhile now, perhaps since my book club read Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I've also been interested in the idea since hearing about problems with "factory farming" from friends who have read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and from my own reading of his book In Defense of Food. I believe smaller CSA farms are more sustainable and better for the environment than large, corporate owned farms. They also tend to be organic farms, which I think is not only better for the environment, but makes for healthier food. But as much as I like the idea of organic produce and buying locally, it has always seemed too expensive. Especially when I go to the local farmer's market where my $20 budget tends to yield less than a grocery bag of produce.
But then we found out that friends or ours were members of a local CSA. And I was shocked at how affordable it is. For $30 a box, which you can pick up either every week or every other week, depending on your needs, you get about 2 paper grocery bags full of organic, farm-fresh produce. The reason they can sell it so affordably is that members pay by the quarter and take whatever is in season. So they have a reliable market and can plan accordingly since people commit to 3 months at a time. I imagine in the winter months, we wouldn't get as much produce, despite paying the same amount per box, but it still seems like quite a deal.
We signed up for a trial membership of 4 boxes, which we'll pick up every other week. We got our first farm share box last week. It included:
A bunch of asparagus
A small bunch of arugula
3 medium beets
3 medium Bok Choy
About a dozen carrots
celery
chard
2 large cucumbers
2 large heads of green lettuce
Spring onions
About 8 oranges
A large bunch of parsley
A bag of Spring Mix
3 pints of strawberries
2 large zucchini
I gave some to our nanny and still couldn't fit it all in the produce bins of our refrigerator.
We hesitated to sign up at first because a) we thought we might get too much overlap with our fruit trees and our own garden (we had already put in 7 tomato plants) and b) we were afraid we'd end up wasting a lot of the produce because we don't eat a lot of vegetables and because we wouldn't get to choose which vegetables we received.
But we've been talking about how we should be eating more veggies and I've felt bad for not including more veggies in Aaron's diet while he is young and learning food preferences. Given how affordable it is and the potential upside in our diet, we decided to sign up for the trial and see how it goes.
The first week has been great. Getting our first box was like Christmas - I couldn't wait to see what was inside. And the fridge full of produce has inspired me. The first night, we had salad, and I steamed carrots for Aaron and gave him some cucumber for the first time (which he seemed to enjoy). Then I pulled out The Flavor Bible, which lets you look up an ingredient to see what goes well with it, and I've put together a couple of new dishes I would never have tried otherwise.
The first new recipe I tried was a simple chicken stir fry using bok choy, carrots, celery, shallots, garlic and mushrooms, all ingredients that The Flavor Bible indicated would complement the bok choy. It came out really well and Aaron ate everything in it.
For some reason, I got it in my head to try making a quiche using some of the veggies. Since swiss chard isn't something I normally cook with, I searched online to see if anyone else was making quiche with chard. They were! So I pulled out the Flavor Bible and discovered that chard is indeed good in egg dishes and is complemented by (among other things), garlic, bacon, mushrooms, oregano, cheese, polenta and shallots. So I created a quiche with an oregano polenta crust and a filling that included the other ingredients. It was a big hit with Thom (probably because I sauted up the veggies in a little of the bacon fat) and something we will definitely make again.
Then last night, I had no appetite and we couldn't decide what to make. I wasn't opposed to pasta, but haven't been in the mood for a tomato sauce at all. I was trying to think if we could make some kind of sauce with olive oil and garlic, like we do in the summer when our cherry tomatoes are coming in and we cut them in half, toss them with garlic, olive oil and fresh chopped basil. Then I remembered that we had the flat leaf parsley. So I looked it up in the Flavor Bible and found that it goes with pasta, tomatoes, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic. It wasn't as good as the tomato/basil pasta we have in the summer, but it was pretty good for something we threw together at the last minute, and a good use of the parsley which I had no idea how to use.
I feel good that we are eating more vegetables and more variety of dishes. We had gotten into a dining rut recently, especially with my lack of appetite and reduced energy. Despite my lack of appetite, I do tend to perk up over the idea of eating something new, so the CSA plus the Flavor Bible has been a huge help in improving my diet, which is important to Baby 2.0. We'll see if our enthusiasm lasts the remainder of the trial membership, but right now, I feel like we will become permanent members. Trying to add more vegetables to our diet by planning meals and then shopping just wasn't working. Getting the produce and then planning the meals seems to work out much better with my way of cooking.
If you are local and are interested in what farm we joined, send me an e-mail and I'll let you know. They have drop-off sites throughout the county. Otherwise, this website Local Harvest http://www.localharvest.org/csa/ will help you find a local CSA farm if you are interested. Even in urban areas, you'd be surprised how many local farms are out there if you know where to look. I've even found a local farm on this site that sells eggs from free range chickens as well as the chickens themselves and heritage turkeys, which we plan to look into.
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