Thursday, June 26, 2014

I'm cheap.

Cheapy cheaperson, here. Yes, tis true. If I were a hip hop artist, my name would be "Thrifty Cent". I'm frugal as they get. I'm not cheap in the gratuity sense, but cheap in the "if I can find a way to do this myself instead of spending money, I will" way. If I spend a dime on myself, I writhe in guilt for days. When you've lived an entire life of financial struggles, you end up this way. But, this fact is what triggered me to start this blog in the first place. Being broke has its perks. For one, you know every free spot in town. You enjoy every moment of just laying in the grass under a tree with your kid. You become thankful for every bite or a full fridge. And, you learn how to DIY. And I am stubbornly DIY now. I actually like my creations so much, that, if I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd still make them instead of buying them. Lastly, you find a use for every last thing that you do buy ... or grow. 

When I began the NovaNalu blog, I wanted it to cover 3 things: Eating, praying and loving. So, I want to spend the next few posts talking about the "eat" part and how to obtain foods on the cheap. Namely, produce. Why? Because produce is the most expensive part of a grocery trip, aside from meat. 

I want to give you ideas of how to use every part of your produce, even the extra bits you'd normally throw away. I'll even throw in some snack food ideas, to keep you from buying pricey snack foods too. NN is NOT a foodie blog. So, if you're not into this sort of thing, stay tuned, and I'll give you some love in the next post or two.

For today, I will talk about CSAs. For those not familiar, CSA stands for "community supported agriculture". In a nutshell, it's locally grown foods from smaller farms that produce a variety of items for you to pick up each week at a specified location. CSA season is now through summer and a little into fall. There are a few CSA options out there. LEAF has several options. Fresh Fork is another local Cleveland CSA. Some offer only veggies and fruits, some have meats and dairy included. We do the City Fresh CSA available through LEAF. 

City Fresh has a single share (feeds 1-2) for $15/week and a family share (feeds 3-4) for $28/week. Also available is a "limited income" option for those of you (us) who aren't as financially blessed. The limited income option is only $9/week for the single and $16/week for the family share. It doesn't take much to qualify. We didn't even have to prove our income. They just basically have an honor system and go on faith. And I like that. It makes me feel like we are a community, and we are taking care of each other. And it gives those less fortunate an opportunity to feed their family nutrient rich foods for pennies. Beats the ramens, anyday! 

Here's a sneak peak into our share for the week. We got: kale, broccoli w/leaves, kohlrabi w/leaves, snap peas, dill, beets w/greens, onions, lettuce, garlic scapes, a qt of strawberries, apple butter ... I think that was it. I didn't get them all in one shot, because I was super ambitious in creating things with it. But here's some of what we got. 
A few of the goodies from CityFresh this week.

These snap peas could fit into the "love" category instead of the "eat" category...and the "dessert" category instead of the "veggie" category. 

Kale. King of greens. Can I get a witness?

So, you see, we got plenty of eats for one week. Not bad for $16. And even at $28, it's a steal. 

Over the next week (CSA goes from Thurs to Thurs) I'm going to share a few tips on how to use each bit of these yummy greens. 

With a happy belly, 
Steph

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