CSA 2019 Review

November 24, 2019November 23, 2019 by No Makeup Mama

On a road trip from Chicago to Detroit last month, we passed a billboard on the I-90 interstate that said something to the effect of: without truckers there would be no food.

…Wait, what?

The purpose of the billboard was to thank truckers during National Truck Driver Appreciation Week back in September and – don’t get me wrong – I’m appreciative, but I would not starve without truckers.

I am surrounded by local farms where I can buy my food so I don’t need to have it shipped from half way across the country [with the exception of some foods we can’t grow in the Midwest like bananas and avocados – but those are hardly necessities]. In fact, we should all be concerned by the fact that most of the food in grocery stores and supermarkets are transported by long-haul trucks from their place of origin. According to a Business Insiders article, without truckers, the grocery stores would run out of food in three days [read about it HERE.] To me, it is actually kind of sad that they are shipping in food from all over the map when food [often the same kind of food] is being grown by farmers right in my home town.

Having food shipped all over the world is not the best, healthiest, most economical, or most sustainable approach to feeding humanity, which is why we purchase a CSA share from a local farm each year.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

The way a CSA works is local community members pay a price up front for a certain share in the crops produced on the farm. This provides security for the farmer in the event of a bad season and provides delicious, local, and in-season food for the shareholders. We’ve only had our share for two seasons, but we’ve already seen first hand how unpredictable the farming business is. And still, the benefits to spending my grocery budget in this way are totally worth any “risk.”

Here are some of my favorite things about our CSA:

1. My farmers are awesome. I literally know my farmers. That alone, to me, is super cool. And, what is more, these men are a part of my community. They employ community members. They are helping our local economy. I am proud to support them.

2. My food is picked when it’s ripe. My food isn’t picked when it’s green and then sprayed later to make it appear ripe. My food is also picked within a week of me picking it up.

3. My food is grown ethically. I know that my farm takes care of its employees. I don’t have to fear that I am buying food that is grown by a system that takes advantage of people [as many food sources do].

4. My food is grown organically. My particular farm [Rustic Road Farm in Elburn, IL] is applying for its organic certification, and they are very open and honest about their methods of farming.

5. My food is the real-deal misfit produce. You’ve probably heard about all the businesses selling the “misfit” produce that is rejected by grocers. Well, my food is the legit stuff. It comes in all shapes and sizes. It teaches me and my kids that a head of lettuce doesn’t have to look like those fancy plastic wrapped ones in the grocery store. It is food. We all need to be less picky and less wasteful.

If you’re considering getting a CSA share, my only advice is DO IT. If you have any questions about CSAs, let me know! I’d love to share more of our experience.

Also, you can read about our experience last year:

Our First CSA Share

CSA Update

Maybe you’ve heard the slogan “Without trucks, you’d be homeless, hungry and naked.” Well, I might be homeless and naked, but I won’t be hungry.

👨‍🌾 👩‍🌾 👨‍🌾

Karis

How I got my kids to LOVE vegetables

August 23, 2018 by No Makeup Mama ♥ 2 Comments

Today’s lunch came from the farm.

Yesterday was CSA pickup day at Rustic Road Farm, so our fridge is now stocked once again with farm fresh veggies!

I pulled tomatoes, cucumber, and green beans for lunch today.

[Side note: I have developed a deep and passionate love for fresh green beans now that I have stopped buying them canned or frozen. Even if the waste wasn’t an issue, I don’t think I would ever go back to packaged green beans.]

I steamed then sautéed the green beans [total of seven minutes] and drizzled the fresh cucumber and tomato slices with my homemade caper vinaigrette and VOILA!

Farm fresh lunch!

[Side note: there is no rule that says “salad” has to contain leafy greens or be in a bowl. I like to deconstruct my salads and basically use any veggies I have with a little oil and vinegar.]

My kids ate the same thing.

[They also ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, because 1) we are creatures of habit, and 2) I make the peanut butter, jam, and whole wheat bread from scratch, so it is a pretty healthy meal containing whole grains, fruit, and nuts – then with the addition of the vegetables, it is a well-balanced meal.]

Even my baby girl ate the veggies after her PBJ.

I’m very lucky that my kids love vegetables – but I don’t think it’s ALL luck. Here are some of the things I do to help my kids love vegetables:

1. I assume that they will like vegetables. I think we sometimes condition our kids to dislike vegetables by speaking of them negatively or not even offering them because we assume they won’t like them or forcing them to eat their vegetables in order to get a treat. I purposefully assume that they will like the vegetables. That is partly because I love vegetables. I think that vegetables are AWESOME, so why wouldn’t my kids like them??? Which brings us to number two:

2. I eat a lot of vegetables. I can’t expect my kids to want to eat them if I don’t. I even eat vegetables that I don’t like. I’m not a big fan of cucumbers, but turns out my daughter Evangeline loves them. Brett hates tomatoes, but all three of our kids LOVE them. I eat vegetables every day for lunch which has made my kids view salads as a totally normal meal. I frequently serve them a salad alongside their PBJ – and they always eat THE WHOLE THING. In fact, I started because they used to ask me for bites of my salad so much that there would barely be any left for me to eat so I started just making them their own. I don’t even give them ranch dressing [which, as we all know, is the child-approved way to eat salad]. I make theirs just like mine – with oil and vinegar.

3. I serve a wide variety and large quantity of vegetables. My kids typically eat mostly vegetables at mealtime. They eat a lot of different kinds. Each one of my kids has their own favorites, but they always eat a variety. I always offer at least two different vegetables – but usually more. This way, the meat [if I’m serving any] and starch become the side dishes and the vegetables become the star of the meal [which is the key to healthy eating, by the way].

4. I start them young and don’t stop. I think most people start their babies with vegetables, but eventually start mixing the vegetables with fruit and then slowly over time the vegetables become a smaller part of a kids diet, overtaken by cereal and yogurt and bread and meat and cheese and French fries…things that we typically eat more of as adults. It must be because I eat so many vegetables that I naturally just keep feeding my kids the same stuff I eat.

I can’t say for sure that these things are the only factors, but my kids will typically eat all the vegetables off their plates first and then have to be told to eat their meat.

Don’t get me wrong, they really like mac and cheese too. And tonight we are going to a ball game and they are going to be super excited to eat hotdogs. But, hopefully, overall, they are going to keeping loving their vegetables and being healthy eaters for the rest of their lives.

🤞🏻

That’s every mom’s dream for their kids – that they be healthy – right?

Karis

My [Nearly] Vegetable-Only Diet

July 18, 2018October 30, 2019 by No Makeup Mama ♥ 2 Comments

***Read about my 2019 [Nearly] Vegetable-Only Diet HERE***

*I could have entitled this post “How I lost 20 pounds in 3 weeks,” but that sounds like I’m trying to reel you in to sell you a self-published cookbook or something, so instead I gave you the honest point of the post upfront. Because that’s what people who write on the internet should do. That way, if you are interested, you can read it, and if not, you don’t need to waste your time.*

But first, our garden is producing vegetables!!!! FINALLY!

Aren’t they beautiful?

[I’ve already picked many more tomatoes but I always eat them immediately.]

Here they are on the cabbage and kale salad that I ate for lunch today:

This is just a small sign of the wonderful things to come in the next few weeks. We also have cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, bell peppers, kale, green beans, broccoli and [crossing my fingers] carrots nearly ready to be harvested!

Unfortunately, the snap peas and spinach are not going to make it this year and I have no idea what’s happening with the onions [them being underground and all]…but that’s why we got the CSA.

Secondly, our CSA this week has provided some of my favorite vegetables!

Corn, zucchini, summer squash, cauliflower, green beans, cucumber, eggplant, kale, MORE green onions [I am so overrun with green onions!] and, of course, more cabbage.

So, anyway, we’ve got to get busy on the vegetable front – which brings me to the point of all this…

Third and finally, I have been experimenting with a plant-based, MOSTLY vegetable diet off and on since February. This isn’t an official diet with a name or a book – I completely made it up and created my own rules based on my [slightly educated] understanding of healthy eating [and a fair share of Netflix food documentaries – cuz I’m obviously a sucker for those].

The “diet” [a word a hate using because of its negative connotation, but that I am using here to mean “the foods that I consume”] has sparked many conversations with coworkers and friends and my personal training clients because I lost a relatively significant amount of weight in a relatively short amount of time.

[As a personal trainer, I have to mention that this was baby weight – though some of it had been hanging around since Evangeline was born – and typically it is not healthy to lose more than 1 or 2 pounds per week.]

Everyone wants to know what I’ve been doing to lose weight. The answer is simple. I’ve been eating vegetables – pretty much ONLY vegetables. The other things I eat are fruit and legumes and nuts. The only grain I eat is rolled oats for breakfast each morning, sweetened with pure maple syrup. I use extra virgin olive oil for cooking and I make my own oil and vinegar dressing for my salads.

Oh, and herbs and seasonings – but those are vegetables too…right? Except maybe salt? Anyway…

And sometimes hot sauce.

I eat all of the legumes, nuts, fruit and vegetables in their most natural form – not canned, not chopped, not cooked, not prepped in anyway. I do all that myself.

I drink coffee in the morning and water the rest of the day.

That’s it.

The next question that ALWAYS follows is, “But what do you eat for meals?” because in American culture, meals are built around meat or bread or rice, so the thought of eating a meal without any of those is perplexing.

I was there too – on day one of this thing, staring at my plate of steamed broccoli for dinner. But I’ve gotten much better at it since then.

So, to help people see what I actually eat, I’m going to log my food [not track my calories, btw, because that is unnecessary when eating this way] and show everyone what a [nearly] vegetable-only diet looks like.

[I don’t eat this way all the time, either. I rotate between this and a less strict diet that includes some meat, but I am off the dairy bandwagon forever I think – especially after making my own vegan Parmesan and discovering Haagen Das’ non-dairy ice cream! Who needs dairy when the alternatives are BETTER????]

Anyway, vegetables are actually quite delicious and I feel really good when I am eating this way.

No, really.

You’ll see.

Karis

CSA Update

July 11, 2018 by No Makeup Mama ♥ 3 Comments

Now that month 1 of our first CSA share is over, I can confidently say that this is every bit as wonderful as I imagined it would be. My biggest fear was that we would let food go to waste because I didn’t know how to prepare it. But, I am happy to report that [so far] I’ve done a pretty good job of preparing and eating everything we’ve been given. Nothing has been thrown out [which is good because I am HUGELY against wasting food].

I am starting to fall behind, however. We have a weekly half share, but it is so much food that I am using the vegetables in pretty much EVERY SINGLE MEAL and we are barely able to eat it all before the next week [which is surprising since 90% of the food I eat is vegetables – but more on my eating habits some other time].

I still have a head of cabbage from last week, and I just got another one this week.

Cabbage recipes, anyone?

Here are some of the fun and unusual things we’ve received and how we ate them:

Garlic scapes – [I had never heard of these before] We ate them cooked in scrambled eggs and fried rice, in place of garlic in kohlrabi pesto, and fried with sea salt. They are better than munching on raw garlic…but you’ll still need a breath mint.

These super funky, curly things are garlic scapes.

Kohlrabi – [I had never heard of this vegetable before either] We ate the bulb raw [cut into “fries” for salads or snacks] and also roasted. We ate the leaves in soup and blended into a pesto which we use on pasta and pizza. This is actually a hugely underrated vegetable, in my opinion. You can do so much with it! And it’s pretty dang good!

This is what kohlrabi looks like. Word to the wise – peel the bulb before eating.

Swiss Chard – [I had never had Swiss chard before] We ate it sautéed as a side dish and baked into Swiss chard chips. Not my fave.

Bok Choy – [I had never had Bok Choy before either, though I have bought it many times to feed our sugar gliders back in the day] – We ate it sautéed and roasted with tamari sauce. I actually like it, but Brett and the kids aren’t really fans.

Kale [Red Russia and Siberian] – [I’ve had kale before, but it’s not something I usually buy] I baked it into kale chips – which the kids loved – and put it into vegetable soup [I make vegetable soup a lot], and also had it in salad, obviously. We got more today so I am looking forward to adding it to egg dishes and trying it sautéed. I will probably make more kale chips too.

Scallions – [TONS of scallions – which we are actually growing in our herb planters right now. I have scallions coming out of my ears!] I made a scallion and basil pesto – with basil from a client’s garden – and used some of the remaining scallions to top fried rice, a sweet potato skillet, and eggs. I chopped and froze the rest.

Vegan scallion and basil pesto. Don’t ask for the recipe – I make these things up, but it was delicious!

Other stuff we received: red butterhead lettuce, romaine lettuce, broccoli, cucumber, zucchini, summer squash, green beans, and cabbage.

So, about that cabbage…

Suggestions, anyone??

Karis

Our First CSA Share

June 20, 2018November 17, 2019 by No Makeup Mama ♥ 1 Comment

Ever since I first heard of a CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] program, I have been wanting to purchase a share. But, because my financial priority was always to buy the cheapest “healthy” food possible, I never felt that I could afford to pay share prices. The vegetables at the grocery store were healthy enough and fit in my budget.

[I haven’t actually done the research to determine whether store vegetables are cheaper – I just always assumed that they were.]

But, now that we’ve adjusted our financial priorities to reflect our true values regarding food [sustainability, healthfulness, and quality over…everything else], not only is a CSA suddenly affordable – it is literally the very best option BY A MILE and one that we will likely choose for the rest of our lives [assuming we always have a CSA available in our community].

Here are some reasons why I love it – and why you should give it a try:

Sustainability: Owning a CSA share is extremely sustainable. I picked up my share this week with my own canvas bags. There was literally no paper exchanged, no plastic bags or film around the food, no twisty ties, no produce stickers [hallelujah, cuz those little buggers are so unnecessary and wasteful].

Healthfulness: A CSA share provides the healthiest produce for my family. Each week, I am picking up food that is local and in season and just harvested the day before. I know exactly where it was grown, how it was grown, even the people who are growing it.

Variety: When I go to the grocery store where literally every vegetable is available to me all year long, I can easily just choose my favorites and eat the same vegetables my whole life [not to mention that I don’t even consider where this cucumber must have come from or how it has been preserved so well after being shipped half way across the country or how long ago it was picked OR how does it look so perfect anyway???? …but I digress]. With a CSA, I don’t even get a choice. Whatever is ready to be harvested that week – that’s what we’ll be eating. It makes so much sense. I can’t wait to experiment with a wide variety of foods – some that I have never even heard of before – and hopefully discover some new favorites!

Today was the first pickup of our 20 week share and I was so excited that I almost woke the baby up early from her morning nap so we could get going.

At the farm, the kids had fun petting and feeding the goats and chasing the chickens.

Oh, how we would LOVE farm life.

We picked up our food and thanked our farmers.

This just feels right.

Ever since Brett and I started rethinking how we wanted to live our lives, I have been wanting a simpler existence and more intentional, cooperative relationships with the people in my community. A CSA share feels like the biggest step we have made in that direction so far. And it feels good.

Now, I have to go figure out how to prepare kohlrabi for dinner…

Karis