Grow Alabama CSA

Warning: This post may sound preachy! My bad!

Tyler and I have recently picked up a new obsession. Our country's food system. After being brain washed by a few documentaries such as Food Mattes and Food Inc. Tyler and I have finally started to realized that a lot of what our food industry is pumping into our bodies is not real food and has no nutritious value. Now don't get too excited, we are not going hard core organic or anything like that, we do have a budget after all! But we are going to try to shell out the few extra cents to buy local/natural/organic when we can. Our first step has been joining the Grow Alabama CSA program. We purchased the Bronze box for $24.75 per week (it's cheaper if you commit to a whole year) which feeds 1-2 people and yesterday I was so excited to receive our first week's box!

I picked up our box after work at Peppertree Steak and Wine but there are about 4 or 5 other pickup locations around Montgomery plus numerous others around the entire state. Almost everything is grown in Alabama with exception of a few items that are grown in the southeast due to demand. Apparently every year they lower their dependence on non-Alabama growers so it should dwindle to zero soon.

The box changes every week and you can even customize it if you hate cucumbers, like myself. Since I plan on doing a lot of growing this summer I will just customize my box to exclude those offerings that I already have in my own garden.

In this week's box:

• 2 heads of broccoli
• 1 large grapefruit (Tyler doesn't eat grapefruit so I don't have to share!)
• a bunch of carrots (this was a pleasant surprise as it was not listed on the site)
• a bag of fingerling potatoes
• 2 zucchinis
• 2 green bell peppers
• a large bunch of red Russian kale ( which was delicious in my smoothie this morning)

Please consider joining Grow Alabama, they service the entire state and after adding up the cost of everything I recieved it was actually not that much more expensive than Publix plus it doesn't contain all the hormones and sprays that the grocery store stuff has. I'm not knocking Publix because it is definitely my grocery store of choice and I will continue to shop there but I will also try to do what I can to support our local hard working farmers!

Remember, you vote every time you go through the checkout line!

PS Grow Alabama is also on Facebook and FYI this does not mean that you will never see me eating crap food!