WIAW: My First CSA Delivery

Happy What I Ate Wednesday. Last week I missed WIAW in order to share a recipe instead. But today I decided that it would be cool to share some of my recent Whole30 eats. Yesterday I posted an update on how I have been feeling on the Whole30 so feel free to check that out if you’re interested. And don’t forget to check out the other blogger entries over at peasandcrayons.com

First off, I wanted to say that I ordered my very first CSA box. For those of you who are not familiar with this, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Instead of buying your produce from large chain grocery stores, you order directly from local farmers. And instead of having to go to the farmer’s market, your box of veggies is delivered directly to your door. It varies from program to program, but typically the farmers pick whatever fruit and veggies are their best to deliver. So it’s a fun surprise every week or two weeks to see what you get. I’m planning on writing up a full review of the program I used next week. I wanted to wait until I get my second delivery from them on Thursday. Especially because I’m thinking of using them to deliver meat as well as my veggie box.

To supplement my delivery, I picked up a few things at the grocery store. Mostly protein. I normally buy my fish from Costco but didn’t get a chance to go this week. So instead just bought it at Jewel. Still trying to figure out which is cheaper. Tilapia was on sale this week for only $6.99/lb at Jewel so that was nice. Also the grass-fed beef I bought was on sale for $5.99/lb. Which was great until I looked at my CSA. I can order grass-fed beef from them at $5.49/lb. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve been doing a ton of meal prepping for my lunches this week. I’ve pretty much decided that cooking a ton of fish at once plus a vegetable side is the way to go for me. I just pick whatever fish is on sale and cook it using the method from my “Cook a week’s worth of lunches in under 2 hours.” Right now my favorite is still the Spicy Catfish Salad with Dijon Dressing I blogged about last Thursday. Made it for lunches this week using Tilapia instead.

This past week has definitely been the week of kitchen experiments. One of the plus sides of getting a CSA delivery is you get items that you might not normally pick yourself. For example, I got cabbage and turnips. I’m pretty sure I’ve never had a turnip in my life. Some of the things I’ve made so far:

Chicken Sausage and Curried Cabbage

Fried Egg with Turnip and Sweet Potato Hash

Bunless burgers with Parsley Butter and Sweet Potato Fries

And the best part is all of them turned out pretty good! I’m not completely sold on the turnips but Jake said he liked the different texture that it added to our usual sweet potato hash. I am planning on writing up the recipes this week, so check back for them on Thursday.