our csa experience

Now that summer is coming to a close and we've been getting our CSA for quite a few months I wanted to share our experience.  For those of you who don't know what a CSA is, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  Basically, you buy a "share" in the farm and then throughout the year or season you get shares of produce, herbs, meat, eggs or whatever your farm offers!  So you're buying your produce in advance, essentially.

We've been really happy with our CSA and I'm glad we decided to go for it!  Our CSA is through a local farm, Little Eorthe.  There are quite a few farms that do CSA shares here in the Northwest, so we had a few options, but we had friends who had a share with Little Eorthe last year so we decided to go with them.  We had initially wanted to get the full share, which includes everything from meat to eggs to produce, but we couldn't afford it when we paid for our share back in the springtime, so we opted for a half share of produce and a half share of eggs.  I believe the total for that came to $460, and we pick up produce and eggs every other week from June through October.  The full share was $1200 and you pick up every week, instead of every other week.  I'm so glad we didn't end up getting the full share.  We can barely make it through all of our produce before the next pick up day two weeks later.  They fill about 4 big tote bags full of produce and when we get home and put it all in our fridge it's pretty much stuffed with veggies!   Since Little Eorthe does just a summer/fall CSA season, I'm not sure what we'll do for the winter months.  Our friends who introduced us to Little Eorthe used Terra Organics during the off-season, so we may look into that as an option.


 

There are some weird things that come in a CSA, and a lot of things I'd never pick up at a grocery store.  Dragon Tongue beans, Collard Greens, Purple Basil, Beets, Bok Choi, etc.  In order to cook everything I often find myself googling recipes for ingredients I'd never used before, but it's fun to learn new things and try new foods.  I'm pretty sure I'd never eaten collard greens before our CSA and I'd certainly never cooked them.  I've never even seen or heard of a dragon tongue bean before our CSA!  It's definitely a ton of veggies, which, if you're not used to eating a lot of veggies can be hard.  Some weeks we end up with a few rotten veggies we didn't end up consuming, but most weeks we try our best to make it through everything.

We didn't get a meat share in our CSA, since we don't eat a lot of meat anyway.  We've found that we can just pick some up at the farmer's market when we go to get our CSA if we want some that week.  Plus, then it's local meat, which is something I think is important.  When I decided to try eating less meat, I also decided that if I did eat meat I wanted it to be locally raised, if possible.  The farmer's market is a great place to find that, and I love being able to support a local farmer instead of whatever giant corporation makes the meat in the regular grocery store.

But all of that aside, one of my favorite things about our CSA is the community it creates.  We know the person who grew all that food.  We know about how her week was, we know that their apple tree just had it's first harvest of apples after being planted four years ago.  She emails weekly letting us know how things are going, not just around the farm, but in their lives, and what produce we'll be receiving that weekend.    She sends recipes along with the list of what we got that week, so we can know how to use some of the more obscure or abundant veggies.  It's great to know that my investment is going directly to a person I know, and I would be more than welcome to go to the farm to visit and see how everything is grown, how they raise their animals, etc.  In October Little Eorthe has a Harvest Celebration and they invite all the shareholders out to the farm for a potluck and to see the farm, so I'm really looking forward to going out there and actually seeing the farm where all my food came from!

A good way to find a CSA program in your area is to either go to your local farmer's market and ask the produce vendors if they have a CSA option, or google it!  Some of our local livestock farmers even have meat shares that you can sign up for!  In addition to our CSA Dan and I also signed up for a local milk delivery service from Smith Brother's Farm, so on top of the CSA we also get milk, eggs and butter delivered every other week.  They also deliver bread, yogurt, cheese and more, so if we wanted we could have that delivered too!  There's no delivery charge if your order is more than $10, so it's pretty much the same as going to the store, except it shows up on our doorstep!

Some CSA's go year round, but ours is just a summer/fall seasonal one.  Paying for months of produce up front can be a bit expensive, so saving up in advance is a good idea, and I think some farms would let you work out a payment plan if you talked to them.  The amount of produce we get is kind of ridiculous, I'm always amazed at how heavy my bags are when I'm carting them home.  Who knew vegetables could be so heavy?  I would definitely recommend at least trying out a CSA, if you're interested in getting fresh, local produce (and meat, eggs, or milk!).  It's been a blast and we're absolutely going to do it next summer.

homemade tzatziki sauce

I've come to the realization that I don't eat cucumbers.  Because we got some in our CSA (well a lot, actually), and I was stumped as to what to do with them.  We made refrigerator pickles with some, but this is my favorite use of them.  Tzatziki Sauce!  I pretty much only ate Tzatziki with pita for like 3 days after making this, and I made a second batch because I was craving more.  It's so fresh with a bit of spice from the garlic, and the fresh dill just has the best flavor.  I love the combination of all the different flavors in Tzatziki.  
I haven't eaten a lot of greek food in the past, but what I have eaten I've liked.  As I've gotten older I've started enjoying more and more things.  I've never been a picky eater, by any means (I did hate grilled cheese sandwiches as a kid.  Like, loathed), but I've always been one to at least try something, and as an adult I'm starting to like more and more exotic things.  Exploring new foods is so much fun.  I think doing a trip to europe, or anywhere really, would really just be a tour-de-food for me.  Dan loves exploring new food and drinks too, so it's great to be able to share that experience of trying new things together.  

Ingredients

1 cup cucumber, peeled and finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, peeled & minced finely

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 tbsp dill, finely chopped

16 oz Greek yogurt

Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

1. Line a sieve or colander with a paper towel and place the greek yogurt in the bowl.  This will allow the excess liquid to drain out.  Do this for about an hour to as much as five hours.

2. Place the cucumber in a sieve and place the sieve over a bowl for the excess water to drip into.  Salt it abundantly and let it stand for 5-20 minutes.  Press all the excess water out of the cucumber, place it in a food processor and chop for a few seconds to chop it a little more finely, if you prefer (if not, just skip this!).  Remove from food processor and squeeze out excess water again.  If you don't do this step, you'll end up with watery tzatziki!

3. Add the garlic and olive oil along with the cucumber, dill and yogurt to a big bowl and salt and pepper to taste. Mix the ingredients until all the elements have dispersed evenly.

4. Place the dip in a bowl, drizzle it with olive oil and enjoy!  Great in Gyros, with pita, or as a sauce along with lamb kebabs!

unexpected pleasures

I'm in St. Louis!  Remember how I was all, "I'm not going to blog!  I scheduled some stuff!" Well, I only half scheduled some stuff and since it was easier to do this outfit post than finish the post I had planned, here's an outfit from my first evening in the STL!
So far I'm really loving St. Louis Fashion week.  I'm rooming with Jackie from Living After Midnite, so we took some outfit photos before we headed next door to Basso for dinner with the blogger posse who've descended upon STLFW.  After dinner we had the option to go out for happy hour, or go watch the Project Design final fashion show, so Jackie and I decided to go to the show.  We got front row seats and had a blast watching all the new designers debuting their creative and beautiful collections.  I haven't been to a runway show since 2010, so it was fun to see one again!  Today we're going to be attending the Industry Night presentation which includes another fashion show, with designers like Eva Franco, Samantha Pleet, and more. 

 

top/courtesy of spotted moth :: skirt/courtesy of modcloth :: belt/hand me down shoes/courtesy of lulu's :: necklace/courtesy of adorn by sarah lewis bracelets/courtesy of jewelmint and musana :: flower crown/courtesy of STLFW photos taken by Jackie
When I arrived at the hotel yesterday afternoon there was this pretty flower crown sitting on my bed, so I had to wear it.  Me?  Refuse a flower crown?  Nope.  I thought it went pretty well with my outfit anyway.  I wore almost this exact same outfit a few months ago for a party in Tacoma, but never got any photos of it, so I decided to give it a rerun for STLFW.  Pro tip: if you're going to stuff your face, consider the effect on a midriff baring outfit.  Halfway through our dinner at Basso and I was feeling a bit... turgid.  But hey, whatever.  Turgid is as turgid does, and I continued eating any way.  There was pizza, okay?  I can't say no to pizza.
Well, I'm off to go do some yoga in the park with lovely blogger ladies this morning!  Lets hope it doesn't rain!

pulled from the archives

Since it's been pouring rain, and I've been too lazy to try finagling a way to take outfit photos, I went back in my photo archives a few weeks and found these outfit photos I never posted.  This outfit makes me feel pretty bad ass.  Even though I think it might be a bit of a lumberjack-hooker outfit?  Either way, I don't care.  I'm excited that it's tights-with-shorts weather again.  Although the current weather has mostly just been wear-a-tarp weather.  I'm currently making my way eastward to St. Louis for St. Louis Fashion Week, and the forecast is calling for thunderstorms, so I might not be escaping the rain after all.  At least the temperatures are still up in the 70's and 80's!  My last warm weather before the long, grey, wet season here in western Washington.  

In a totally and completely unrelated note, I went to my first pole dancing class last night and it was so. much. fun.  My best friend and I decided to get an intro to pole dancing class series when it was on Livingsocial a while ago, and like terrible Livingsocial voucher people we waited to the last minute to snag our deal before it expires.  There was only one spot in yesterday's class so I started my intro class series without her, but hopefully she'll start up next week!  I had really wanted to do a pole dancing party for my bachelorette party, but I don't think I was aware of the pole dancing studio here in Tacoma.  Anyway, it's super fun.  If you've been thinking about doing it, I definitely recommend it.  It's a great work out, and learning how to spin around and climb and hang on to the pole is so interesting!  There was such a variety of women in my class too!  All body types, ethnicities, ages.  I think a lot of people think that it's just for strippers or women trying to learn sexy moves for someone else, but at least at the studio I go to, it's so focused on the athletic aspect, which is nice.  I'm all for more fun ways to workout.  Treadmills and gyms are not really my cup of tea. 

 

top/thrifted :: jacket/modcloth :: tights(similar)/h&m :: shorts/courtesy of modcloth shoes/courtesy of blowfish :: bag/courtesy of hearts

I don't think I'll be posting any STLFW stuff on the blog this week.  I've got a few posts ready to go, but if you want to follow along with happenings in St. Louis, I'll be instagramming and tweeting.  There are going to be a bunch of bloggers at STLFW so you can also check out the #STLFW hashtag, and see some of the bloggers attending here.  I'm excited to meet new people, but I'm also really excited to see Tieka, Julie, Erin, and Keiko again!  I just saw Tieka and Julie at TxSC in August, but I haven't seen Keiko since NYFW in 2010, and I last saw Erin when I drove into San Fran in the Winne in 2010 as well!  Erin has a little one on the way, so it'll be exciting to see her with a little bun in the oven! 

here.

Here, look at some cute pictures of Dusty.  And then go die a thousand deaths because she is the cutest thing to ever walk the Earth.  I can't even.  Thank God for cute corgis because I haven't done outfit photos in probably a week.  Since we've had flooding and even a tornado touch down here in the Tacoma area, I don't feel too bad about staying inside.  Last night Dan finally pulled the trigger on buying us some Magic the Gathering cards, and he had the day off so we hung out all day, went climbing, made food, drank wine, and learned how to play.  So far I'm really liking it!  I've never played a card game like that.  I play a mean game of solitaire, but that's pretty much it.  Dan's been trying to convince me that we should start doing D&D, so I think this is his first attempt at converting me.  Honestly I'm not really opposed to the idea, so we'll see if he succeeds!  But for now Magic is a pretty fun alternative to watching Netflix or doing something else that's mostly passive.  I've always liked that games fill time, but they aren't a passive kind of brain-rotting activity like watching TV.  I mean, I love me some brain-rotting TV, but when it comes to hanging out with other people, playing a game is much more interactive than just sitting next to one another watching the same show.