Oh, and by the way…

My Johnson’s Backyard Garden CSA membership is FREAKING AWESOME! I get tons of these beautiful little vegetables in a box every week, and a half dozen of good happy grass-fed eggs for Marty, and I transfer it all into my pretty rainbow bin and bring it home and then we EAT IT!

So far it’s fairly similar to Greenling, except more of my money goes to the people who grow the food, and I have the opportunity to swap veggies if there’s something in my box I’m not crazy about. (I haven’t bothered yet, because I’m having a great time learning how to eat new things, but it’s really nice to have the option!) I also don’t have to make sure to be home watching the gate like a hawk to make sure I’m there when my delivery comes, and I have a nice four hour window to pick my food up. I rather think the veggies look better from Johnson’s than Greenling’s local box; this may be because the produce takes longer to get to me with Greenling (and is out of the ground longer), but I’m not sure. I love all the pretty colored peppers and little yummy tomatoes and gorgeous white radishes. Marty says he will be using those radishes to bonk shy-guys, but I have insisted that we EAT them. Yesterday, we made delicious vegetable stew!

I’ve also discovered that since we buy almost entirely raw produce now (wow. when did that happen?) I need more crisper space! I’m not completely clear on this crisper thing, but the greens in the crispers survive the week much better than the ones in the fridge proper, so it has me wondering if i can buy some kind of extra crisper for the upper parts of the fridge. I’m going to have to read up on veggie cold storage. I don’t want to have to cook very much of it if I can avoid it (though our plans for the stew include eating some for lunch and putting it in meal-sized bags in the freezer for easy defrost & devour once we start to run out of food).

For those of you still wondering, I have to say this: We’re eating organic produce, a lot of it raw, and we’re not buying very much packaged food (plastic, glass, paper, jars & whatnot). I am almost 100% certain now that eating a diet of organic produce is less expensive than eating almost any other typical American diet, with the possible exception of the stomach-turning Walmart diet, which I would not wish on my evilest, worstest enemy. So if you’ve been complaining about organic and natural and pesticide free being too goddamn pricy… you’re depending on packaged food way too much. Or maybe meat.

Okay, now I’ve done my food-related people poking for the day. You totally owe me a zucchini for making your life better.

Stew ahoy!

“CSA” stands for community-supported agriculture. It means that you pay the farmer, and the farmer feeds you. No stores. No markets. No middle men.

I looked for CSA programs around Austin when I moved here, but I didn’t find any; I had the CSA “blues”. But I signed up with Greenling, discovered Wheatsville Co-op, and was quite content. Wheatsville is as close as I’ve gotten to a perfect grocery—they really care, and they’re exactly the right place for me to get almost everything I need. But I still wanted a CSA.

Johnson’s Backyard Garden, a little family farm not too far from me. To my utter astonishment, I found that they had a CSA program with great reviews. I leapt enthusiastically onto their waiting list! I didn’t know when (or if!) I would get in, and I didn’t care. Mad visions of vegetable prep parties danced in my head.

This week, I got into the program. I have been doing crazed jigs of glee. I had no idea it would happen so quickly. Oh, the vegetables I shall reap! If I’m not going to garden myself, I want to put my money in the hands of the people who grow my food. I want to know who they are. I want to interact with them, value them, trust them. And this is the first step that I can take towards that goal.

I don’t know how it will go yet. I haven’t even gotten my first share! But I know that this path resonates with me and I’m going to give it the fair chance it deserves. I’m tired of encountering this weird un-food mentality where we disconnect from the things we eat and have no concept of where it came from, or how it got to us. We’re told stories about food that have nothing to do with what the food really is, and I’m tired of participating—I’m choosing something else. Something a little (a lot) more real.

These vegetables will be harvested the same day I pick them up. That’s pretty damn real.

I get my first share on Wednesday. I’m insanely excited. About vegetables. I’m still going to shop at Wheatsville, because I adore them and want to support them (and the CSA will only provide part of our grocery needs). If you need organic produce delivered straight to your door, I’d go with Greenling. But if you can… support the farmer.

That’s what I’m trying next.

Absurdly entertaining zombie concept drawings courtesy of the great Martin Whitmore.

I’ve been allergic to fruit just about as long as I can remember. Of course, I ate it anyway (for the most part) and I still do. I stay away from cherries because they’re the worst. Kiwis are pretty bad, but I like them and still eat them. But fruit, I love fruit. I eat a lot of fruit.

Apples used to bother the hell out of me. I suspended my ban long enough to be Eve in The Apple Tree. (I actually finished a lot of those apples backstage, even though I was only required to take one bite onstage near the end of the first act.) But after that, I went off apples again until very recently. The itching of the sensitive skin inside my mouth, the way my throat felt contracted, it wasn’t worth it. I never had an allergic reaction bad enough to alarm me. The discomfort would last awhile, I’d drink a lot of water, and eventually it would go away. I never went to a doctor, for instance, and definitely not the emergency room. Not a big enough deal, really.

But since we moved to Austin, I’ve been eating the occasional apple. And in the last two weeks, when I started having groceries delivered from Greenling, I’ve been eating several apples a week. The apples from Greenling are organic and they bother me surprisingly less than I’m used to being bothered by apples. Could it be I’m getting used to the fruit? Or could it be a case of pesticides, or lack thereof?

I do feel that my fruit allergies have been generally less bad since I moved to Texas. I’ve been exposed to a lot more organic food, that’s for sure. But I don’t know—the fruit here is sweeter, too. And even in Ohio, I had noticed that the sweeter the fruit (or the more sugar I added), the less my allergies complained.

To make things more interesting, I picked up a carton of blueberries from Sam’s Club last week. They were definitely not organic… and they made my allergies crazy.

None of the organic blueberries I’ve had in the last few month have done that.

What do you think of that?

Greenling Delivery has not only bested my anxiety—my that time of the month anxiety, even—but it has picked my anxiety up, brushed it off, and given it cookies. (Or, in a more literal sense, gorgeous organic groceries.)

At twenty after five I was worrying like crazy, thinking that something had gone wrong. Maybe I’d missed the call from the gate, or my information was wrong in their system, or something else had happened. I didn’t know, so I left an admittedly rambling voicemail and then sent an equally rambling email. I began the email by writing “quick run-down”. It was not a quick run-down. It was a rambling hopeful-but-worried run-down. I felt a little silly for calling them two weeks in a row, but I felt that they should know if something had gone wrong.

I’m starting to realize that my anxiety, in regards to Greenling, is pretty solidly unfounded. They’ve been on the ball for both deliveries when I was a silly, worried mess. Maybe it’s because my delivery is on Friday, or maybe I’m used to dealing with companies who don’t take very good care of me. It doesn’t matter! Because Greenling is clearly not one of those companies.

And what do I know, after two orders? Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t feel wrong, because even when traffic sucked, the guy who delivered the box was friendly and conversational and it was obvious that things had just run a little long today. He was SO reassuring. It was SO awesome. And then I had beautiful, unbelievable groceries!

So I’m done with this delivery anxiety thing. I have this feeling they’re actually going to do what they say they’re going to do. And… I feel kind of bad for overreacting. I guess if I keep getting food this perfect, I can safely assume they’ve forgiven me.

Ya’ll rock, dudes. Thank you for bringing me awesome groceries.

Quick, brief thoughts on my Friday delivery from Greenling Organic:

The apples were incredibly sweet and a little bit addictive; the pear I think was not quite ripe enough when I decided to cut it up. The banana had a creamy inside texture, wow! The lemon tea they brought is awesome; I haven’t tried the butter, but they delivered it in a great coldpack with a frozen bottle of water (which we made use of). I also haven’t tried the celery, but am looking forward to its crunchy fabulousness in some nice tuna salad… and the avocado was perfect, simply divine. Eating organic doesn’t seem to have slighted me in the least so far, and the delivery man was pleasant, friendly, and on-time.

In short, I could get used to this.