REAL Good: Week one

After watching Food Inc. we decided to join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).   I researched a ton and decided to go with a particular local CSA because of their supply of produce, eggs, cheese and meat as well as their reasonable price!  We are super excited about this, and we will hopefully receive our first box next week!

photo credit: Harland's Creek Farm (our CSA yay!)

Budgeting was my main barrier in this transition to REAL, LOCAL, ORGANIC food.  I have $100 a week to spend at the grocery store, and sometime that is tough to maintain buying conventional food.   It is going to take some work, but I believe I can maintain the budget even with this change.  The CSA we joined will deliver 5-10 fruits and vegetables, eggs or artisan cheese, and somewhere between 2-4 pounds of organic meat every week for $41/week.  This leaves me $59 a week to buy everything else we need.  I had a trial run week before we joined this week.  I went to the huge Farmers Market downtown and bought blueberries, strawberries, potatoes, beets, peaches and eggs for $25.   Not bad. The next day I went to the HT and bought organic milk, a whole "smart chicken", organic lemonade, organic apple juice, white whole wheat flour, chocolate chips (not giving those up!), canned pumpkin, pistachios, pull ups, and Triscuits and spent $54.41 (and the pull ups were $10)!  Thank you HT for your sales and specials on organic products!  After this week, I'm beginning to believe this thing is possible.   Hooray!   I have had a pretty well stocked pantry, but its wearing away, so I will have to restock some things soon.  I will be doing some research on what pantry staples to buy organic (oats, rice, couscous, etc).

Here is a very helpful site that I am taking notes from: http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/

Here is a list of the "Dirty Dozen" and "Clean 15" if you cant buy all organic: http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/

If you are interested in joining a local CSA go to : Local Harvest to find a participating farm in your area!