Food We Want: Can We Live On Food We Can Live With?: First CSA delivery!

Monday, June 20, 2011

First CSA delivery!

So, on Friday it happened! I headed over to pick up our first CSA box. I intended to have a nice sit down interview with Leigh Hauter, one of the owners of Bull Run Mountain Farm, but just as he handed me the bag to pick out my veggies, the skies opened up. It poured for about 20 minutes, during which I chose this week's food and then retreated, soaked and bedraggled, to my car. Next time!

Let's begin the picture apocalypse, shall we?

The bag was provided to us by Bull Run Farm as part of our subscription. It's a lovely big sturdy bag that will get more use than just veggie toting! It looks so innocent in this shot, doesn't it?

Here's what was hiding in that bag!
Keep in mind that in these first few weeks, you'll be seeing a lot of green -- greens like lettuces, herbs, etc are always the first things to ripen.

We got radishes,

and beets

and beet greens

and curly endive (aka frisee)

and pac choi

and garlic scapes.

We also got basil, tarragon, chives, and catnip. The cats were impressed with the chives

and the catnip especially.

Temujin, of course, didn't care.

We've got a great list of meals with these ingredients planned! First up will be ravioli stuffed with beet greens, homemade ricotta cheese, and Parmesan. Joe will be making a homemade tomato sauce (using up some of the canned tomato stash!) to go with it.

4 comments:

Nicole June 20, 2011 at 12:32 PM
LOL - Temujin thinks vegetables are stupid!

Looking forward to reading more :)
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No_Brand_HeroJune 22, 2011 at 12:38 PM
Every time I see you or Joe mention CSA in a text format, my mind briefly logic bombs on why in the world either of you would be talking about the Confederate States of America ;)
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Nicole CarusoJune 22, 2011 at 6:39 PM
You'll be seeing it a lot, so get the brain battened down for logic bombs! :D
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No_Brand_HeroJune 23, 2011 at 5:19 AM
My poor brain meats :(
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The Rules

We're basing our cost allowance on the USDA's food spending study from 2008. It's broken down into several categories, from 'Thrifty' to 'Liberal'. We decided to use the 'Low-Cost' category for this experiment -- if we can meet this budget, living near Washington DC, eating only humanely raised animal products and sustainable produce we're pretty sure that anyone can. That gives us $105.60 each week to spend on food. Minus, of course, our CSA, which worked out to about $30 a week for produce, so we'll have $75.60 to play with. We can carry over unused money from week to week inside the month, and even go in the hole temporarily. However, each month we start with a new 4-week total so we can't bank up money we're saving while we are using up the food we already have.

Animal products (meat, eggs, dairy) need to be sourced from producers that treat their animals in a humane fashion. Our gold standard for this is the wonderful work of the people at Humane Farm Animal Care. While we're not certain that we'll be able to find their certified products all the time, it will give us some questions to ask producers and companies.

Produce will be sourced locally and seasonally whenever possible. We're part of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program this year, we've planted a garden, and we're lucky to have several farmers' markets in driving distance. Where not possible to go local, we'll buy organic.