CSA

One of our local grocery stores, Hen House, has a CSA program. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It is a program where you can get locally produced foods and for a good price. You should really look into if there is a CSA in your area! Everything that you get is so fresh and tastes like it too. It is awesome for Steve and I cause it is a pre-made grocery list each week, halfway through the week, and we are getting things that we would never have picked up on our own. Which is getting us to cook new things.

How it works is first we signed up and choose a pick-up day. For us this is Wednesday. We never know what we are doing on Saturdays(the other choice) to know if we would be around during the pick-up time. This also gives us a chance to not buy weekend groceries that we don't use or go bad. Our weekend shopping is now for just 2-3 meals, since we can pick-up anything else on Wednesday when we are at the grocery store to pick up our CSA. Each week they send you list of items you will get that week. Sometimes things change though based on the crops and weather effects on them. Each item is given a points value based on its price. You can exchange anything you want for things of similar points values. They also have a table set up with things you can exchange for not on the list that week. There is usually a meat item each week, a dairy item and then veggies. Ranging from 5 to 6 items each time too. If you can't pick-up a week you just tell them. Also, it is just $25, no matter what the actual cost of the items totals. Lately its always around $30 worth of stuff. Here are just a few of the awesome things we have gotten and some of the things we have made with them!

A whole chicken! I had no idea how to cook a whole chicken. Luckily Steve just got a new cookbook with a recipe for cooking a whole chicken. We also invested in a dutch oven for this. Got a great deal on it. This is one of those things I am not sure we would have ever bought, a raw whole chicken.

Fresh baked bread. It was delicious!

A melon(who knows what type this one was, we are getting to know all different types of melons. Did you know there was more than watermelon, honeydew and cantaloupe?) Also heirloom tomatoes. I made a "bruschetta" with them. Used the above bread and some whole milk white cheddar cheese we received one week.

Baked some red potatoes with fresh dill...again all from the CSA.

This is not even a sliver of all the things we have gotten and made since signing up a month ago. It is such a great program, I really recommend looking into if you have one around you. And remember it is all local!