Harvests from Home: Where do sweet potatoes come from?

Two summers have passed since I was first introduced to the idea of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). For various reason, I hesitated to participate in the program - the upfront cost; uncertainty of my ability to incorporate the lesser-known produce items into meals; commitment to utilizing all of the goods before they go bad (i.e. fewer evenings dining out just because I'm not in the mood to cook).

I recognized that the idea behind CSA - ensuring local farmers have buyers for their harvest, and that customers have locally grown produce - is a positive thing for my community and is an easily accessible change I can make to help our environment. So, when I came across the opportunity to participate in a winter CSA with Grasshoppers Distribution, I knew that the time to hesitate was through!

After conferring with Rob, my boyfriend, we gauged our food needs as well as our typical weekly grocery expenses. Grasshoppers offers a wide array of local item in addition to produce - from milk and butter, to meat and eggs. We settled on the following:

One produce share (3-4 fresh produce items)
One loaf of locally baked bread
Mixed meat (appx. 3 lbs. of local meat, rotating variety each week)
Dozen eggs, biweekly
Quart of soup with local ingredients

For 13 weeks we will pick up our share on Thursdays at a church one block from our home. In choosing our items, we knew that this alone will not feed us for the entire week. However, based on what we normally spend at the grocery, we still have money left over to supplement our bellies with a small weekly trip to Whole Foods.

Much to my relief, Grasshoppers provides a weekly newsletter with a recipe that incorporate the not-so-common produce items! Also included in this newsletter is the name of the farm from where each item came. Below is a shot of week #1. Description and detailed account of how we used each item to follow.