Eating Local

This fall, my family joined a "CSK," a Community Supported Kitchen. Once a week, we pick up a box with all the ingredients and recipes to make five dinners. All the food is local, fresh, and organic. We can order other items and meals through them as well, including extra bread, meat, and dairy.

Each week, we get one meat meal (some past examples include beef strogonoff, meat loaf, and sausages), one fish meal (some examples include fish sticks, smoked salmon chowder, and shrimp pumpkin curry), and three vegetarian meals (some from the last week or two include Moroccan stew (with garbanzo beans and squash), squash soup with cheddar apple sandwiches, and kale Gouda strata). Also, one of them is also a pasta dish. Often it is the meat or fish dish, but not always.

I am so glad that we did this. We now eat all fresh produce, so that means a lot of kale and chard, potatoes, and squash. At first, I was not sure about the kale and other veggies like that, but I have found that most things are good if they are cooked the right way. For example, kale is actually pretty good if it is sauteed in butter. :)

The best part of this is that I now eat all sorts of things that I didn't before. A lot of this is dependent  on what is available locally, so we don't get much chicken, because it is not easy to get here organically, but we get a lot of beef. I eat a lot of kale, Gouda cheese, beef, cabbage, Shitake mushrooms, parsnips and salmon, all of which are in season and here organically. 

I am so glad that we did this. :) I wish there were more options like this in other areas, and I hope this model becomes more popular.