Zero Waste CSA Week 8

This Week in our CSA

We had zucchini, corn, tomatoes, collard greens, onions, cantaloupe, snap peas, peppers, cucumbers, broccoli, ground cherries, and a bunch of basil.

• We had a ton of sweet corn from our road trip to Iowa plus some in our CSA, so we ate some with dinner one night and froze the leftovers to use for later.]
• Zoodles— We had some friends over one night this week, so I spiralized four zucchinis and made a big batch of zoodles and spaghetti sauce. I bought this spiralizer off of Amazon last year and I LOVE it. It works really well & is an easy way use some of the zucchini’s, but you can also spiralize other veggies. I like this spiralizer too because it suctions to the countertop to keep it from slipping around, which some of the other spiralizers didn’t have. One of my friends has an attachment for her kitchenaid that she loves for this.
• I used the tomatoes for tomato sauce with my zoodles.
• Zucchini coffee cake— Super super easy! It was a sweet surprise one morning for our Airbnb guests.
• Collard greens with bacon and onions– I also used some of the homemade vegetable stock to make this.
• We ate the snap peas, peppers, and cucumbers raw with hummus for lunch a few days this week.
• The cantaloupe was the best cantaloupe I have ever had. We took it on a camping trip over the weekend and ate it all in one day.
• Ground cherries- We just ate these raw all week, but in the past I have made ground cherry coffee cake with them!
• Stir fried rice– Collin made a stir fry with rice, broccoli, celery, garlic, eggs, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame seed oil, and butter.
• Bruschetta— when I have tomatoes and basil, I always pick up mozzarella and bread. It’s an easy lunch or dinner drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette. I’m not sure if I could ever get tired of bruschetta.
• Immediately after I got the CSA this week and saw the basil, I put in it a mason jar of water and set it on the counter next to a window. Within a few days it had spouted some small, white roots. A few days later I was able to put it in a planter and it’s doing great.

Does eating healthy foods fit into my budget?

One of the main ways that you can make a CSA fit into your budget it by eating as many of the veggies raw or by themselves as possible and by using them with ingredients that you already have on hand. Many times I will substitute various ingredients partially out of my own laziness (and not wanting to hike to the store) and also because it is better for our grocery budget. Stir fries are perfect ways to do this. This week Collin combined a bunch of veggies along with things that we already had on hand to make a super cheap dinner.

The important thing to keep in mind when you are putting together a stir fry is to start with a good sauce– we always have soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, fresh garlic, and sesame oil on hand for this. Then in general you can choose any of these vegetables and try to choose a good mix of textures: mushrooms, broccoli, carrots, snap peas, onion, bell peppers, green onion, baby corn, bok choy, zucchini, and water chestnuts. Those are just our favorites to use, but there are certainly more you could try!

Cooking at home rather than going out to restaurants for lunch and dinner in general is much cheaper. Since we are just typically cooking for the two of us, we often have plenty of leftovers to take for lunches throughout the week. I used to hate leftovers, but now I embrace and love it. Plus it makes packing lunches in the morning much easier. When we are cleaning up dinner at night, we always just put leftovers in individual lunch containers to make it easy to grab and go (neither Collin nor I are morning people).

Having all of this fresh produce at home and wanting to eat it all before it goes bad is a challenge in itself. We are always eating the veggies for breakfasts, snacks, lunches, and dinners. We certainly save money eating our fresh food over buying processed snacks and junk food.

Bottom line: You don’t have to break the bank to eat well. There are so many ways to eat healthy on a tight budget.

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