My first veggie box arrived! Woo hoo! Well, technically, it’s a fruit-and-veggie box, but I can be excited anyway. The boxes showed up to work this afternoon and, though I brought in my green bags to help making the haul home easier, the nice people doing the CSA for us put them in boxes with handles, so it was easy enough to carry it the 10 minute walk from my desk to my car.

I also have to note that it’s just maddening to sit at your desk, banging away at an Excel problem, while there’s the smell of farm-fresh veggies wafting at you from only a few inches away. Maddening. Mouth-watering. REALLY DISTRACTING. <cue Homer Simpson drool>

Okay, back to our story.

I brought yonder box home and these were the lovely contents:

OMNOMNOM

I decided to be somewhat clinical about the process, since I’m hoping that the CSA will get me to think about a few things that have otherwise eluded me lately. Here’s what’s on my mind:

1. Can I eat more fruit and veggies during the week (and also encourage the same behavior in the rest of the family)?
2. Can I branch out and try more fruit and veggies – incorporating stuff I don’t usually cook with and/or trying stuff that I’ve previously been kinda enh about eating?
3. Can we eat more organically and realistically incorporate more fresh produce into our weekly meal plan?
4. And, lastly: can we manage to save any money going this route rather than buying at the grocery store?

I don’t think that #1 or #2 are that hard. It’s possible that #3 will be more of a stretch and require even more planning than we currently do, but we’re somewhat resilient here and we’re used to meal planning. My sister and BIL have gotten a CSA for a donkey’s age and they’ve both mentioned that it does require that you do some meal planning – but since we’ve been on that bandwagon for years, this just means we now have a set of ingredients that are must use items.

Now, #4 is the more interesting one. As you’ll learn over the course of time, I have a bit of a geek streak. I use Excel for all kinds of things, like tracking our charitable donations and keeping a makeshift address book for the house. At work, Excel is one of my BFFs…the kind of BFF that you beat on frequently in a sadistic fashion bend to your will to make all kinds of cool things happen so that people will think you can make magic. So, this is where Excel is going to come into play. I know the contents of my veggie box down to the partial ounce – we weighed everything when we unloaded it in the kitchen. I plan to go to the grocery store and feed the prices into my spreadsheet, to allow me to calculate what my veggie box would have cost had I gotten the same produce at my store.

Full disclosure: I wouldn’t normally get all of these things at my grocery store.

While our usual store has a decent produce section, we’re lucky enough to live near a farmstand and we do frequent them as much as we can for items that we know are their specialties (sweet corn, cherry tomatoes, strawberries, etc.). Still, I’m only going to capture the grocery store price because A) not everyone has access to a farmstand like this, and B) the prices at the grocery store are almost always cheaper for the same thing. I’ll have a separate post in a day or so, talking about the week 1 price comparison, once I get to the grocery store for our weekly shopping. The veggie box CSA runs for 8 weeks, so each veggie box costs me $20 when you break it out over the entire run. Here’s the list of what I got, in case you want to follow along with this game at home. (And if you do, please feel free to post what you would pay for a similar box of goodies…I’m quite curious. Note that I’m quoting prices for Eastern MA – prices where you are may vary, so don’t forget to state your region/state/whatever-location-level-you’re-comfy-stating.)

• 1lb 3-5/8oz yellow squash
• 2lbs 8-7/8oz carrots
• 1lb 11oz green peppers
• 2lbs 6-3/4oz apples
• 9-3/4oz cucumber
• 14-1/2oz red onion
• 1lb 6-1/4oz sweet potatoes
• 2lbs 1-3/4oz white potatoes
• 1lb 13-5/8oz tomatoes
• 3 ears corn

More to come on this topic, as I figure out what the meal plan will look like, get some prices so I can see how I’m doing price-wise, and start identifying (or creating) recipes to use all this yummy goodness. And, based on the corn, carrots, peppers and apples we sampled at tonight’s dinner, yummy is the name of the game.

We’re constantly trying to be better about our eating over here. Some of it is that we’re trying to set a good example for the kiddos, and some of it is because we really truly would like to be eating better for ourselves. It’s hard trying to keep up with all of the standards – square meals, er food pyramids, er MyPlate…and what was acceptable back when we were kids is now discarded and debunked as neanderthal in design.

For years, we’ve been wanting to get into a CSA or some other form of deal where we can get fresh fruits and veggies direct from local farms – kinda sorta because it’s helping us eat better but also because it’s fresher, supports local business, and is more environmentally friendly. The locavore lifestyle takes a lot more work than we feel we have, but a CSA should be manageable, right? Work is currently offering a deal with a local farm co-op to have CSA veggie boxes delivered to work every Friday, starting September 9th, where the fruit & veggie contents come from local farms in a short radius from the office.

So, here’s where the potential barriers come in:

• What if we don’t like something? Hrm. Guess we’ll have to take that one as it comes. I’m willing to try any fruit or veggie at least once, but some things I’ve truly given up on after numerous failed attempts. (Sorry, broccoli…I just can’t stand you. It’s not you, it’s me.)
• How do we manage to eat it all before it goes bad? Planning. It’s all about meal planning. CSAs are a bit like opening presents on Christmas Day if you didn’t make a list; you have a general idea that it may be something you like or want, but you’re never quite sure until you open the box. As we say so often in our household: “We will figure something out.”
• But it’s EXPENSIVE…Well, maybe not. Some of the CSAs I’ve looked at are more expensive, but the one I just joined is $160 for 8 weeks (and really, $20 for a box of fresh fruits and veggies may be a good deal). The flavor of locally grown veggies that are fresh off the farm is different from the stuff trucked in from who-knows-where, so that alone may justify the price difference. Also, the box deal we’re getting on is supposed to be sized for 1-2 people if that’s ALL that you eat in a week, or 3-4 people if you have other things with the box’s contents.

And this brings me to my personal challenge for the next 8 weeks, starting next week: find a way to use those boxes to their fullest. Get everyone in the household hooked on it, so that we’ll easily be able to justify continuing it throughout the year (or at least whenever it’s offered). We already frequent the local farmstand whenever we can, especially when they have fresh strawberries, corn and cherry tomatoes. While DH crows about their strawberries, the entire house is in love with their super-sweet corn, and their cherry tomatoes are like small candies in red, yellow, orange and purple. HEAVEN in a carton.

Hopefully, I’ll end this experiment by declaring the CSA one of the best inventions of our time AND extolling the virtue of some new ways that I’ve found to put these things together to make tastiness that an entire family can get behind. Stay tuned…