Experiment Update

I spoke with Mark over at Essex Farm yesterday morning, and Tom, Colden, and I are all heading out there on Friday afternoon to pick up our first week's worth of food from the Essex Farm CSA. Mark requested that we sample a week before we join, and we're eager to dive in, so this Friday, it is.

I've had a couple of people asking me questions about this whole diet CSA experiment. What about things like avocados, bananas, olive oil? We'll probably still splurge for those things once in a while, yes. But the idea is to wean ourselves off grocery store shopping on a weekly basis and to reduce our dependence on processed foods like breads, English muffins, and pasta. (Not that we eat a lot of pasta around here, but you get the idea.)

Truthfully, I'm a little nervous about this journey. I'm picturing some of my more spectacular and epic baking fails, wondering how I'm going to be able to make our own English muffins and breads and flat beads. I'm wondering what I'll do for a green salad in the dead of winter - the answer being, probably not eat any green salad, since it won't really be in season.

But then I thought a little bit about Colden, and what this will mean for him. It means: homemade jams and fruit preserves. Good, whole, food for our meals here at home. And it means that he gets to help us in the kitchen when it comes time to bake, cook, can, preserve, freeze, and store our food. It's a different kind of experience for him and for us. My memories of cooking in the kitchen when I was a kid consist of standing in front of the stove, flipping my mother's hamburger over and over until the damn thing was cooked, or watching her warm up a bowl of the blended pasta and vegetable gruel she would make for herself. (But that, and her eating disorder, is a whole other story.)

Tom has expressed doubts that I will be able to carry through with this experiment, but I'm determined. I will learn to like new things, and I'll help move my family towards a better model of sustainability. Yes, I will.