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| Our Last CSA Box |
OK so I will come clean - we canceled our CSA membership. This was hard for me to do because I am totally behind the CSA mission and really want to support the local farmers. It just came down to the lack of variety for the expense. My husband is such a picky eater and tires of things very quickly. After giving away rounds of corn and squash I knew we had to do something else. My Sissy (my sister in law & that is what we call each other - goofy I know, but I love it) had a great question about the whole CSA box concept - what do you do with the things you know you are not going to eat? A real problem in the home of a picky eater. Sissy then suggested that my husband and I go to the farmers markets together on Saturdays & pick out things we really want to eat for the week & we would really be supporting local farmers. I never thought he would go for it - Saturday mornings are his time to sleep. However when we talked about it as a solution to canceling our $170/ month veggie box delivery he was very responsive. We have had a blast. The first week we stocked up on what we would receive in our weekly veggie box for $18 & it was completely customized. This morning we went all out and stocked up on local honey & preserves.
CSAs are a wonderful resource and down the road I will explore rejoining one. I live in a city with a state farmers' market that is open 7 days a week. I can't get any more local than that.
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| Bounty from the Alabama State Farmers Market on 9/4 - honey, blackberry preserves, pickled peaches, tomatoes, okra, oranges, avocados, peaches, and pink eyed peas |
4 comments:
I can't wait to get back to Montgomery to go visit the Farmer's Market now!
We would have so much fun - must plan!!!
I've been curious about CSAs for a while. But I definitely found myself wondering whether they would work for me. I do get bored pretty fast, and you'd have to get very, very creative to find new ways to use the ingredients you were getting. I always wondered if the variety would be enough for me.
If you've got a 7 days a week farmer's market nearby, that seems the obvious choice. Living in Thailand, that's exactly what we have downtown! It goes all day and all night. It's really quite wonderful. But it isn't the same as one back home in the states. There's no cheese, no milk, no yogurt, no dairy products of any kind, no wine, and no honey.
I can't speak Thai well enough to really communicate with the farmers. Also, meat is limited. There's usually one farmer there butchering a pig on the spot and handing out cuts of it. The one thing there is tons of is fruit. More kinds of fruit than I knew existed. And there is also ready made curry paste of every description imaginable. Win some, lose some. But I still miss my farmer's market cheese and honey!
Daniel - you put it perfectly - you have to get very, very creative with the same veggies each week. I think a CSA from a really unique farm would be a wonderful experience. The one that we were members of is too large - they supplied the entire state and represented many different farms.
I can only imagine what the Thai farmer's markets are like! Being introduced to all of the new produce must be wild & difficult to not get the staples you are used to.
Thank you for following - hopefully some of the posts can remind you of home!
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