Co-op Rescue

Oct 9, 2015

I hate to waste food. Any food apparently. So rather than allowing myself to be sabotaged by overbuying snack foods from the snack aisle at Costco, I can instead use it to my advantage by over buying/preparing veggies. This comes in particularly handy during the holiday when I can use any help I can get to crowd out some of the holiday treats fighting for shelf space.

One of the most health motivating, veggie-lifestyle enhancing and hand-forcing actions one can take is to join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture – aka Co-op). Every week delivered to your door is a box of fresh seasonal, local, organically grown vegetables and fruits. We have a local CSA called Door-to-Door Organics that has been supplying homes in the area for years.

Every week delivered to your door is a box of fresh seasonal, local, organically grown vegetables and fruits. Not only do you have a whole box to figure out how to consume, but it also helps you to eat seasonally as we did for thousands of years.

We have a local CSA called Door-to-Door Organics that has been supplying homes in the area for years. You can set preferences and customize your orders weekly. Take a look at the website for details on sizes and content of boxes.

If the smallest box is still to big for you, try sharing it with a friend or family member. Perhaps you can even have a day where you cook together. I sometimes do that with my dear friend Lisa and it makes a chore into a fun and mojo inducing event, not to mention takes care of my advance veggie prep for the upcoming week. This is truly my greatest insurance for staying on track, not my “Nutritionist” status. Anyone who sees me in my off time will attest to the fact that I stay on track by pre-staging an on-track environment, not by being born a nutritional goodie-two-shoes.

The challenge for many of us however, is figuring out exactly what to do with the sometimes odd assortment of produce! My dear friend Gala’s daughter joined a CSA in LA and started a website (thedelightfultable.com) that, among other mostly veggie recipes, shows you how to use that weekly food box in easy and creative ways. Her site is a veritable storehouse of creative and apparently intentionally easy vegetable recipes. Read her heartfelt and inspiring story in Why CSA? and My CSA Box: The Early Days. For tons of creative recipes, check out these other areas of her site: Side Dishes and Vegetarian, for starters.

For all the on-going debate in nutrition, this is the one food category that is never under dispute and ideally would be the center pin of every plate of food we consume. If everyone who came through my door embraced this one recommendation – made every plate of food they eat one third to one half non-starchy vegetables – I would be out of business in a week!