CSA

I'm all excited about trying a CSA -community supported agriculture- for the next growing season. Our garden is just in the beginning stages and while I hope to have it up and running next year there is no way it'll be fully functional. The twin cities are so advanced in sustainability issues! CSA is, basically, hiring a farmer to grow your food for you. If the eggplant crop fails you don't get any eggplants, but maybe you'll get a double amount of beans. It is paying someone else to do your vegetable farming for you. I want to eat the way I believe. I don't get to do that at the grocery store. I'm not ready to be a total vegetarian but after having raised chickens I really want the animals I eat to have a good life and a quick death. The CSA I'm choosing also has some meat available. I don't need much meat, but I do like to use some, it really adds a lot of flavor to food (meat as a condiment).

stay at home

I am having a really hard time talking myself back into substitute teaching. I love being home and taking care of this and that. I have tons of stuff to keep me busy without subbing. This week was food co-op week and I've been organizing and packaging everyone's orders. The sisters at church seem to really appreciate having the food co-op. I was at the regular grocery store last night and noticed a can of olives of the exact same brand as I bought at the food co-op. The food co-op price is less than half of the grocery store price. It's hard to know what to buy for the co-op. Last time I bought 50 lbs of milk chocolate chips (GOOD quality!!!!!) and repacked them into one pound bags. They sold ok. This time I bought white chips and could've sold tons more but I ran out. I guess I'm in the grocery business now and that's the way it goes. I'm having fun with this.

food co-op

A friend found a restaurant supply store and together we set up a food co-op for interested people. It's mainly for people from church, but anyone is welcome. We were amazed by how easy it was for us to be restaurant level purchasers. The savings are amazing. We're saving about 50% on most items. Now they don't have everything we might want, but what they have is really a good deal. Example-- Gheridelli (sp?) brand chocolate chips for $1.20 a pound. The cheapest Aldi's chips (which aren't near as good) are $1.99 a pound! Spinach was $2 for 24 boxes (yes, you read that correctly, about 10 cents a box). The idea is for me to buy in bulk and portion things out so people can buy reasonable amounts off of me. I guess I'm acting as the middle man. This is pretty cool. We decided to put in an order once a month so none of us feel overwhelmed by all this. A big order means they drive it over here and we don't even have to drive downtown and pick it up. Huge plus.