Roy and I just joined Fair Shares, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. CSAs work sort of like farmer's markets, a way to get farm fresh food without middlemen. Fair Shares has one level of distribution between us and the farms - they gather food from several area farms, and we collect it once a week.
Most CSAs just do produce, but Fair Shares does meats and even bakery items. This costs more, but it was part of what interested me. There's a 10-month season, instead of just joining for the summer months.
I thought long and hard about this. We had to commit to the full season. I'm a picky eater and a bad cook. Farmer's markets have intimidated me - too many unfamiliar foods. I'm scared of wasting food. But I was excited about getting so much fresh food and I need a push out of my food comfort zone. I'm not counting calories or fat, but if eating a lot more vegetables helps me lose some weight, that's good too. It can't be bad for me.
Thankfully, we do have some ability to choose foods. Fair Shares has the option of "trading" some foods out. I don't eat pork, so I can trade for some other meat on the weeks we'd get that.
I'm starting this blog to document what foods we get and what meals we make with them. And to document my cooking disasters. I've started taking pictures of my meals! I'm mostly doing this for myself, but I'm doing it in a blog to share with some friends who are interested in this experiment or anyone else who wants to learn from this.
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Just found your blog through the comment you left on mine ... congrats on taking the steps to 1) become a member of Fair Shares and 2) blog all about it!
ReplyDeleteI look forward to reading about what you do with all of your Fair Shares bounty!
I joined this year and am blogging, too. Sounds like you and I are in the same place with this stuff. Some does look scary, but that's one of the reasons I joined. It was too easy walking by unknown foods at a farmers market, but if I pre-pay for it each week I better try to eat it. Week one has gone well. We'll see how long my family can keep up their enthusiasm.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to seeing what you come up with!
Thanks for your comments! Good luck to everyone.
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to go 100% into eating locally, but I did want to be able to get fresher foods. I also want to stop running around between Dierberg's, Whole Foods, and Straub's every weekend buying stuff.