Local Harvestry

I'm reading this book. It's rocking my world. And it's got me paying more attention to what I'm eating and how I'm cooking it.

It's also caused me to jump into the local/organic food game. The world of eating well is decidedly complicated-- so many strong opinions and attitudes. It's also crazy that eating food with less ingredients, handled by less people, is so much more expensive.

Anyway, I'm in the process of searching for a balance between eating healthier, more nourishing food and staying within a budget that also includes having a big community dinner once a week and dinner guests at least once or twice a week. (Not to mention the occasional meal for a new mom or sick friend.)

This quest has led me to join a local food co-op. There's a market about a mile from our house called Local Harvest. They have a weekly grocery program that provides you with all kinds of local, organic and homemade goodies. It's a cool program, but every now and then, you end up with a bunch of stuff that you really don't know what to do with. (example: radish shoots. I know they're usable, but I really don't care to use them.)

I'm going to make an effort to post the haul from the week and then mention a couple of recipes that came from the bounty. To recap, here's are the pics from week one:

Week 1: (all local/organic) Spinach, fair trade mid-roast coffee, jasmine rice, sweet potatoes, cabbage, acorn squash, swiss chard, havarti-esque cheese and ground lamb. 

Week one was a challenge, but I went in with a plan. Half the cabbage, the lamb and about a quarter of the rice became a Greek take on an old Polish staple-- guwumpki, or stuffed cabbage rolls. They came out good, but honestly, I'm just not a huge cabbage fan and lamb is one of the few meats I don't really care for. Oh well. I also ended up making a sweet potato/acorn squash mash. I roasted the squash and boiled the potatoes, mashed them all up and added a tic of brown sugar. Delish. Finally, the chard married some pecans from our Thanksgiving trip to Texas and turned into an incredible pesto. I'll definitely make that again. I also used the rest of the cabbage to make cabbage soup and froze it. It's okay. But it could use about a pound of corned beef. 

The munchkin with a giant head of cabbage.

Week 2: Didn't get a pic of the haul, but it consisted of: locally made fresh whole wheat pasta and organic spaghetti sauce, homemade meatballs made of pork from a local farm, baguette from a local bakery, farm eggs, spinach, butternut squash, radish shoots, *minutina, purple onions and cara cara (pink navel) oranges.

Woooo! This week was awesome. :) You can probably infer that we made the most incredible spaghetti of our lives using the pasta, sauce, meatballs and spinach. I should've taken a pic of it, but it was too delicious to waste time photographing it. I also grabbed the cheese from last week and some Trader Joe's avocados along with the spinach and minutina to form a magnificent omelet. Twice.

And the best discovery of the week? Cara cara oranges. Wow. I mean, my first bite of that orange turned my whole afternoon around. I have since purchased 19 more. (Five of which were to give as a gift.) No lie. I'm hoping they will help me fend off the flu season. I recommend you try them immediately.

I got this week's box today and it's full of weird stuff. :) I'll keep you posted.

*a cold weather salad green prized in Italy for its mild nutty flavor and crunchy texture. Grown in IL, it looks like grass, but is excellent tossed in salads.