I am still pretty new to the world of Paleo. Even still it is amazing how much I have learned. Lately I have been looking over ways to save money. Currently we are spending 600 a month on food for our family of four. I suppose in many ways this is not a lot for organic meats and vegetables. However, for a single parent income it is a lot. I am working on finding a balance between spending and not having the kids feel like they are without food - they are not. Yet, J is currently eating his body weight in food every day. Someone recommended that I buy him a loaf of bread to eat (a loaf a day) and give him some peanut butter and jelly to go with it. What a horrible thought. I like my solution - let him finish off the tub of lettuce, move on to the chard, and top it off with some carrot orange ice cubes - this was all after we finished dinner.
Honestly I do not know what we would not have done without our new found CSA. I am turning vegetables into snacks, side dishes, or just eating them raw. There are so many vegetables in our fridge that they feel like they can eat until they are full - and I do not foresee any of them going bad. The best part - they are all organic.
I started by doing a web search for local CSA's. I did not have much luck finding CSA's specifically this way, but I did manage to find the greatest CSA list on the web http://www.localharvest.org/csa/. This is a one stop shop for locating CSA's in your area - there are also listings for meat, grocery co-ops, farms, and even restaurants.
I went from no options to five reasonable options to choose from.
The first thing that I did was take a look at each of the listings on Local Harvest, as well as their website. This helped me to become familiar with the CSA culture in my area. I learned that there were options where it was delivered, as well as where I picked it up. I learned that what was included was different, some CSA's were more flexible on what was put in the basket, some had no flexibility.
Next I made a mental list of what was important to me and my family. I will include my list - but your list will be different. So think about what will best help your family.
1. I did NOT want food delivered to my door - it would either not be there when I got home, or my manager would yell at me. In truth it would probably be both.
2. I needed a convenient pickup time and location - there was a promising co-op that I may have joined, except pickup in my area was on Sunday. Other CSA's were located too far into Los Angeles for me to want to drive there every weekend.
3. I like extra stuff - vegetables are nice, but the more I can get the extra stuff we need then then the less I will go into a grocery store and overspend.
4. My kids like fruit - I have said it before, you do not get fat on fruit. I would much rather they take an extra orange then pick up a candy bar.
I ended up selecting a co-op that is a collection of several farms purchased by one company and then delivered a few minutes from my work. I take a late lunch, and grocery shopping is done. While I knew the selection was a lot more vegetables then fruit I had the option to throw on seasonal fruit in addition. I also can get raisins, organic nuts, grass feed meat, and many other items.
So far we are looking at one run for Costco, one for Ralphs (for L's almost paleo junk food), and the rest from our local Co-op. It is easier, cheaper, and much more food. It is not perfect yet, but it is one step better.
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