Food Frozen In Time: I Love My CSA

I Love My CSA by Ecolicious
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I Got a Rain Barrel

This week’s Tuesday CSA pick up came with a rain barrel. There it was with a piece of paper, with my last name on it, taped to it. Had I not glanced to some of the plants to my left I would have missed it. It isn’t 55 gallons, 30 instead, but I’ll take what I can get for the price, $20. Now all I need to do is fix it so that I can attach a hose. I’ll have to ask my husband and neighbor to help. I will also be receiving another one soon.  Now all I need is some more rain!

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CSA and Soups Equal Good Food

On my stove right now is dinner. Its a healthy soup filled with vegetables and ground beef. A few spices and herbs. The recipe with amount of your choice:

large pot
csa ground beef
corn cobs split in half bought from store
organic carrots bought from the store
csa super small potatoes (perfect for this soup) from the first CSA pick up of this season
csa green beans of a new variety also from today’s CSA pick up
left over purple cabbage from the store
left over white onion from the store
salt
pepper
very little from the fajita spice mix
celery salt- just a dash to make up for the lack of celery in the soup (I ran out)
cilantro from my garden (which was doing very well up until the heat of this week)
tap water
large soup bowls (smaller for the kids)
spoons unless your willing to go without
empty stomachs
clear nostrils – smells so good while it boils
a smile

I cut up all the veggies into big chunks. Add the meat. Put it all in the water. Add the the spices and herbs. Cover the large pot and let it boil for an hour or until done. Done means vegetables are soft. How soft depends on you. I like them almost falling apart soft.

I’ve made this dish before with different veggies, different spices. It always has a lot of veggies and ground beef and of course water. It is always very good.

When done serve in large bowl. You can add lime or lemon to the soup. You can eat with crackers or my favorite, tortillas, which I roll and dip in the soup and then bite along with a spoon full of food. My husband like to add pico de gallo. Too bad. We don’t have any to make today. Eat and enjoy!

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P.S. There is an issue with the CSA

Struggling as we are in this economy (who isn’t?) my husband has asked me to discontinue the CSA and cut down on organic shopping more than once now. I know to many people, including my husband, a CSA is considered a luxury item like cable or Starbucks drinks, but to me it is something completely different. To me it is priority because it’s about my families health, about keeping them healthy from harmful chemicals added to everyday meats, fruits and vegetables. 

I understand money is tight, but that is why I am making a considerable effort to make homemade items. I am cutting down on our portion sizes (this helps our waisteline too). I am using cloth napkins instead of paper napkins (saves money and trees). I compost kitchen scraps and in the spring and summer we use this compost now rich black soil in our garden. To make up up for the cost of CSA I consign our gently used items, I blog and I freelance write. I don’t make much money doing this, but every little bit counts. In addition to all of this I am trying to learn to garden so we can buy less at the grocery store. With the lack of time its a little harder than I thought, but so far our garden has saved us money on cilantro, which use to go to waste in our fridge because after we bought it from the store we couldn’t use it fast enough, cucumbers, which were yum yum yum, tomatoes, not as much as we hoped but at least $1 worth, rosemary, which is expensive at the store, parsley, we didn’t use this much before, but now we  do because it is free, and hopefully soon brocolli, cabbage and lettuce too. Yes I forgot to mention we have cabbage, some onion like thing and an onion that we accidently grew (long story), growing in out garden too.

So I can’t stop it. I have to keep it up. I will just have to find a way to afford it. By they way we don’t have cable, cellphones or buy Starbucks. I cut these out way before I joined the CSA, way before the economy dilemma, way before everything because I’m a frugal person….for the most part and honeslty we couldn’t afford it then and can’t afford it now. A cellphone would be nice though.

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HEB, Bulk and A Pumpking Pie From Scratch

I have set it in my mind that today I will make a pumpkin pie from scratch. I’ve never made a pumpkin pie from scratch before, but the CSA pumpkin I received last week and the one I received at today’s last pick up of the season, keep whispering to me, “Make me! Make me! I will tastes delicious!” So you see, I have no choice.

Today’s shopping trip to the new HEB for the ingredients only inspired me more. Why? I discovered today that the new HEB has a bulk isle in the store where we, the customers, can grab a bag and fill up on ingredients like spices and nuts and snacks. The kind manager there explained the system to me. She also told me some of the items were local from Texas and others where from and eco-friendly vendor in California. I quickly caught on and then I asked her if we could bring back our containers to reuse and cut down on waste instead of using the a new plastic bag everytime. She told me they are working on it. She also told me some customers are interested in using glass containers to refill, but she let them know glass is heavy and that would weigh on the cost. That makes sense. I wish they were a way to seperate the weight though, because I have tons of glass. She then gave me tips on other ways to use the spices I was buying for the pumpkin pie. One spice I had never used before (cardamom) and the other was ginger. I wasn’t sure if I had ginger at home.

The store was crowded and I overheard a few people complain about feeling overwhelmed from the crowd. I’m just happy it wasn’t as crowded as the first week it opened. In a few minutes I will begin to cook our semi thanksgiving meal for my family. It will be eco-friendly chicken (yes again) with olive oil, rosemary from the CSA and basil I received today from the CSA. As side dishes I will cook today’s CSA green beans, HEB sweet potatoes (candied yams) and last weeks CSA acorn squash (I need to eat these before they rot). For dessert I will make two pumpkin pies. One for our family and the other for tomorrows pot luck. I may even make my special semi-organic oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but it already seems like too much food. Maybe I’ll wait for next week to make the cookies.

I mentioned the menu to my girls and they were so excited they didn’t know what to do with themselves.

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My Neighbor and I Just Traded Garden Food

My neighbor G and I just traded food. She stopped by to give me washed mustard greens from her garden and I snapped off a few twigs of rosemary from my rosemary bush for her. I wanted to tell her about the CSA, but most people are turned off by the expense of the CSA especially if they already grow their own garden. I decided to hold off on that conversation for now. A few minutes later I came inside and looked at the mustard greens then realized I forgot to ask her how to prep them. I haven’t had much luck cooking or preparing leaves for eating other than the store bought romaine and such.

However I had had more luck with squash this time around. Just the last week I baked a whole chicken with olive oil and rosemary. On the side I made a butternut squash casserole (very much like the sweet potato casserole except with more of a butter taste to it). Opening and chopping and trying to peel a butternut squash was a new and learning experience. I saved most of the seeds to plant for next year.

Some squash is much like a potatoe and some squash is much like a cucumber or catelope. I printed the recipe for butternut squash casserole from daily green.

I printed another one for sweet potatoe fries and another one for winter squash. All the recipes are so easy to make, tasty, sweet and from the Daily Green.

I am really enjoying the vegetable and the service from this CSA. There really isn’t anything for me to complain about. There is even a chance volunteering for free veggies next season. This will help me keep the cost down, something my household really needs. He wants us to grow more of our own and let go at least of one CSA which I’m fine with but we have yet to build raised beds and finish prepping the ground for January’s seeds. Between his 60 hour or more job and my work and mom schedule it is still difficult to find time for the garden. About once a week I tend to the gardens for a few hours and the rest of the time I just watch and scan for bugs or problems walking past the garden when I dump the kitchen scraps in the back yard or when I wait for my daughter’s bus in the front yard. The baby in my arms most of the time.

At the same time I really don’t want to let go of my CSA. I enjoy supporting our local farmers, helping the environment and I love reading their newsletters. These farmers really care about their crop and they enjoy watching it grow. They put a lot of love into it. Then they enjoy sharing their grown love with people. They are very giving people.

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Broken Refrigerator and Today’s CSA

Our freezer gave us another scare earlier this week. We tried the same technique as before. We defrosted the block of ice built up in the back, but when all was done and the food put back, the freezer would still not drop to its normal and safe temperature. What made matters worse was that the refrigerator side would not cool either. Did this mean we would have to call a repair guy? How much would that cost? Was it even worth it? We bought the fridge new but second hand from a not so nice lady several years ago.

After paying rent and health insurance the first week of this month we had nothing to pay for someone to come repair the fridge. We still hadn’t even paid our electricity. So we panicked! Would we have to live with out a refrigerator for a while. Where would we store our food, our meats, vegetables and everything else? That made me rethink about the need for a refrigerator and our diets. Could we give up refrigerated food? Could we live on nuts and counter stored veggies and fruits? Would we have to live without milk and eggs and meats? I guess if we had to we could, but I’m not sure we could do it well.

Before we did that though we called our neighbor. We had considered calling our neighbor before but we felt bad for always bothering him and we assumed he wouldn’t know how to fix it. We also wanted to try to fix it ourselves. It feels good to be able to fix something by yourself. When we realized we couldn’t and we knew we definitely could afford a repair person to come fix the problem, we called our neighbor. Actually my husband did. I was at work.

While at my part time job (1-5 hours at the most a week) at the Y my neighbor and my husband unscrewed the freezer indoor panel. They said the coils were covered in one large solid piece of ice. They defrosted that and that is when my neighbor discovered the freezer heater was broken.

The freezer has a heater? Apparently so. Everyday we learn something new….So my neighbor and my husband waited for me to get home to watch our baby so that they could go to the store and buy the heater part. In the mean time our frozen food was in my neighbors freezer. Whew! That was a relief. That was our CSA meat and that stuff is expensive. We almost lost it last time too. When they came back they put in the new heater and then we all chowed down on not so eco-friendly store bought Mexican food for lunch.

Our freezer works now and all it cost us was the heater part and a free meal for my neighbor. That’s how he likes to get paid for his labor, free food. He often talks about one of his friends saying that feeding him is more expensive than paying him. We all smile when he says that. In a way I guess it is and isn’t true. My neighbor helps us so much we owe him more than we could ever pay him back, not that he asks us for pay back or anything. He isn’t that kind of person, but we would like to repay him for his help. With the baby and work and everything else it’s kind of hard to invite him over for a meal all the time though especially since he likes a lot of attention when he talks and our kids want attention too.

That same day we repaired our fridge and ate Mexican food for lunch I invited him over for dinner at 6 for spaghetti. It wasn’t my best spaghetti. I was in a hurry to make the food, watch the kids, have my older ones to their homework…. My point is as I’m taking the plates to the dinner table the food in the plate in my left hand slides off and falls all over my daughters right arm. She begins to scream. I pull her long sleeve shirt off and rush her to the bathroom sink where I stick her arm under cold water. I just burned my kids with spaghetti and I felt terrible but we were lucky she had a long sleeve shirt on. Her skin was a little red but it recovered in no time.

Meanwhile my neighbor who is an elderly man who likes a lot of attention makes a few insensitive jokes about eating the food off the floor. I smile but try to ignore. He’s an elderly man who has never had kids before. I think at first he didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation and then when he did he was a little nervous and made jokes to ease his nerves. My dad is kind of like that sometimes. Shoot my oldest sister would say I’m kind of like that sometimes. Oh well….

So today our fridge is still working fine and just in time because yesterday we were almost all out of food. We had to go grocery shopping and today we had to pick up the CSA vegetables: more Poblano peppers. Yum! We also have more of that strange fruit persimmons, some cucumbers, some squash and some zucchini.

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The Science Teacher, The Second CSA Week and a Toast to Great Meals

In the oven right now is a whole chicken cut in half covered in olive oil, salt and fresh CSA rosemary. Next to the chicken dish are 3 small CSA sweet potatoes. We will have a salad with the chicken and the sweet potato. In the salad there is CSA radishes, fresh from the farm today tomatoes and fresh from our garden cucumber. My stomach growls in anticipation.

At the grocery store, Kroger,  the organic milk was on Manager Special so it came at half the cost. At the farm not only did we buy fresh tomatoes, we also bought a pumpkin. The pumpkin looked great. When our girls arrived home we carved the pumpkin. My husband did most of the work but it was all very enjoyable and gooey. The seeds were separated and are waiting to be baked. Half will be baked with sugar the other half with salt. The inside gunk was thrown in the compost bin and then a soy candle was lit in the carved and cleaned pumpkin head. Yes, I have pictures.

Today, despite the heavy rains we had to drive in, has been a wonderful day. Soon we will all sit at the table and eat a fresh healthy meal, part local, part organic, all fresh and I will smile because I and my husband are giving my family the best we can, on a budget, for our health and our future. My heart leaps in excitement.

Tomorrow I will tell you about the meeting with the Science teacher C.G. about the school garden. It went very well. Then I will tell you about this weeks CSA adventure. It’s dinner time.

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Darn Freezer!!!!!!! And Frijoles a La Chara

We almost lost our entire months worth of CSA meet. We noticed things in our freezer were melting. It turns out our freezer was not properly organized and ice/frost built up in the back creating poor circulation in the freezer. But!!!!!!!! We saved it! Yeah we saved it!

There we were cooking as much meet as we possible could to store it in the fridge so that it couldn’t go bad. We gave the liver to the dog. We can’t stand the stuff no matter how we try it. My dog on the other hand loves the stuff. It was gone in seconds.It was the first to melt to so it would not have lasted through the freezer fixin. That’s right I said fixin. That’s the Texan in me.

On another note the poblano peppers, cilantro and the leaks from last weeks CSA have helped me make some great meals. What an amazing flavor. Today with some CSA sausage, non-CSA bacon, diced CSA leak, diced CSA poblano pepper, tomato, pinto beans and CSA cilantro, I made Frijoles a La Chara. My husband said they were the best I have ever made.

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The New CSA, the School Garden and the Tomatoes

I don’t have much time to write this post, but I wanted to post something about what happened in these past two weeks before it gathers with future events and I end up writing one gigantic long entry like my last one.

The news:

The New CSA-Today I picked up the first basket of vegetables at the CSA I switched to for this season. The batch was small and some of it didn’t look very fresh, but the pickup was much closer than the last location. The pick up time is also convenient and there also isn’t much traffic going to or coming back from the location. I will update this entry with pictures once I get the chance.

The School Garden- Remember in one of my last entries (the last one I think) I posted the conversation my husband and I had with the expert gardener who gave us a ton of advice? Did I mention I had a small conversation with her about starting a school garden? Well, long story short she suggested I contact the school principal and then find a teacher interested in starting a school garden. So….on teacher conference day I stopped by the front office asked for the pricipal. She wasn’t in but they left her a message. Several days later C.G. gave me a call and told me she was the 5th grade science teacher. The principal gave her my number because she had also mentioned a school garden to the principal.

I don’t know how to explain the excitement I felt during that phone call other than that after I found out she was excited too and after I hung up with her I put the phone down and began to clap, then shake my fists in the air while I lifted both heels off the ground and back down repeatedly.  I know, this was a very weird reaction, but that is what I did and now I must live with a picture of it in my head forever.

Earlier this week I received an email with her available times so that we can meet. I replied with my availability and a few how to start a school garden links. I can’t wait until we meet. I hope we can pull this off and make a success of it. 

Oh! I almost forgot. We have tomatoes! In our back yard garden we have tomatoes. Of course I rubbed it in when I told my husband about them. He wouldn’t believe me a tomato plant was growing in our garden and now there are 4 tomatoes growing on the vine. Still no watermelon. Still no cantelop. The cucumber is still giving us cucumbers but not many and the plant looks as if it doesn’t have much left in it. It is either the bug or the weather that is weakening the plant. Either way it served its purpose and now we know we can plant cucumbers next year. The spearmint is taking a while to grow, but it is growing.

Oh! I also found a Health Food store near where I live, but I will chat more of that later. I need to finish cooking dinner.

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