This crazy weather is surely to bring something good our way. One of Thor’s predictions is that we will have an insanely green summer. That sounds great if you have a giant lawn, but to me it sounds even better if you are into produce, fresh and locally grown, mouth watering produce.
We can go to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings….OR we can have farm goods delivered in bulk to a stranger’s house on a weekly basis as part of a local CSA (community supported agriculture). I have never done this but am always jealous when I hear fellow villains talk about this week’s plundering…and so I want to take the plunge. I feel like a high school virgin though…who should I go with and what are the merits. Either way you make a 4-6 month long commitment and I want to make sure I have it right. Here are the two I am looking at right now:
- Best of What’s Around (influenced by DMB song): they have a pretty cool produce growing/delivery schedule AND they include free range eggs (not pasture raised like the one below offers for an extra charge…)
- Horse and Buggy: I have heard so much about these guys anytime someone mentions the term CSA in cville. Are they the CSA mafia or are they just that good? Their basic subscription does not include eggs (although they offer pasture raised eggs a la Polyface and we all know how delicious those are), and they have other subscriptions for beef, lamb, fish, granola, etc…The one consistant comment I hear about Horse and Buggy is that sometimes (often?) you receive a weekly drop that is comprised of almost entirely one thing. Chew on this: how many different spinach dishes can you make in 14 days in a row? That could be appealing if you have a party coming up…but the nature of fresh produce is that it will spoil
Ok…that is the extent of my research. Are there others to consider? Comments/Praises/Criticisms for the above or new ones discovered in the commentary below? I want my produce and/or fish/eggs/meat but want to make sure I am getting it right from the get go.
Related posts:
We’ve just started with Horse and Buggy and have been very pleased so far. What we’ve gotten has been very high quality and pretty generously sized. It’s early in the season so I can’t really speak to the variety issue. Whether it’s a CSA or not I’ll let other people argue about (it’s really more of a farm collective), but the hope is that this will translate into higher quality. We did Innisfree last year and it felt great supporting that wonderful community out there, the produce was of mixed quality.
Horse and Buggy ain’t cheap, but they will deliver foods until the end of November. They also give you an idea of what’s coming ahead of time so you can sort of plan your other shopping. You can also supplement your regular order with additional items at the pickup site.
So, we’ll see how we feel at the end of the year but at this very early point, a big thumbs up.
This is good to do if you’re into taking one ingredient and seeing what you can make with it. Kinda like Iron Chef.
Recc. reading: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s about one family in rural Virginia eating completely seasonal, from their garden and the farmer’s market. For one year, they didn’t eat anything not local. And don’t worry, it’s not all vegetarianist, they kill their own chickens and turkeys.
I had friends highly recommend Appalachian Star, but so far I’ve been unable to join. Apparently their shares sell out really quickly. There are more around here. Page 3 of this newsletter has the local-ish (some in Louisa, etc, but deliver to C’ville) CSA’s:
http://www.buylocalvirginia.org/bfbl/guides/BFBL_Cville_08.pdf
i couldn’t tell from the website–is it possible to avoid inedible and guy-harmful foods (in deliveries) such as broccoli, brussels sprouts, squash of any kind, radisches, kale, okra, cabbage, beets, yams, cauliflower, etc.?
10 bucks a week for a bachelor seems extremely reasonable.
that was for Horse & Buggy. I’d love to join David’s group, but i couldn’t find a price-per-week for membership.
what do you mean guy-harmful?
It’s otterdungese. Who knows.
Bad news, pickyface. You’re gonna get whatever is in season. My broccoli is coming up right now!
i mean that healthy ‘normal’ males don’t eat any of those things I listed.
It’s the steroids, excessive testicular squeeze of spandex bicycle-shorts, subbliminal indoctrination of ‘men’s health’ magazines (read: borderline gay-porn) and over-exposre to body-fumes from gyms that make otherwise healthy normal males think that broccoli is a foodstuff that performs any nutrient function other than making them want to watch OC/Desperate-Housewives or causing them to buy pasta-extruders or know what a chafing-dish is.
isn’t everything always in season, Shenanigans? Don’t we still own Mexico and California?
“The cruciferous or brassica family contain broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, collards, kale, mustard seeds, mustard greens, turnips and many more. They are a rich dietary source of DIM which promotes the 2, hydroxyestrogen”
i can hear you doubting. a quick set of nutri-historical fer-instances will help you to understand:
french under Napoleon–ate canned meat and potatoes–conquered all europe, twice
french under everyone else–legumes, veggies, etc.–ass kicked by germans, twice
germany as Holy Roman Empire–meat and potatoes–invaded everywhere won everywhere
germany under Hitler–AH was & promoted vegetarianism–ass kicked by everyone.
italians under anyone–fresh veggies & virgin olive-oil–ass kicked by everyone, over & over.
russians under most–meat and potatoes–kicked everyone’s ass
russians under birthmark-guy–meat-shortage, ate cabbage and beets–ass kicked by Reagan, Afghans
greeks under Pericles—meat and potatoes—kicked Sparta and everyone else’s ass
greeks under everyone since–grape-leaves–ass kicked by Romans, Germans, everyone else
Brits–meat and potatoes–kicked everyone’s ass the world-over
Americans under most–meat and potatoes–kicked everyone’s ass everywhere
Americans under hippies—collective veggie farms–ass kicked by commies until strategic withdrawal
Fabulous — Exactly.
Awesome – if you value your self worth by “kicking ass”.
Poor insecure little thing, must not have gotten enough hugs as a baby. God bless its pointed little head.
The crossfit folks are some tough guys and I’ve seen a number of brassica family items in their recipes. If you’re not a troll, then I think you need to reevaluate how your diet relates to your gender identity.
Why? Do trolls have unique nutritional requirements?
Well their meals do have to be “under the bridge” ready to eat
Vitamin D deficiency from lack of sunlight?
evidently a high-veggie diet is severely depleting of sense-of-humor in trolls of all kinds (bridge, web, etc.)
to the crossfit guys in their dayglo tennis-shoes and spandex, the steroids mgiht make up for the brassica? in fact, the brassica’s estrogen probably helps with the shrunken testes caused by eating all those ground-up bull testes and deer-penises.
Zimage – Glad to hear you know about CrossFit. We’ve got our affiliate approved for Charlottesville and are thinking about opening a gym in late summer.
Floozy – CrossFitters do some serious workouts, but the base of a healthy human is nutrition and for CrossFitters, they’ve found that the Paleo Zone Diet with modified fat intake produces the best performing athlete. Paleo essentially means things that are raw/natural/found in nature. Check out these articles: http://journal.crossfit.com/2004/05/zone-meal-plans-crossfit-journ.tpl http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/15_03_Nutrition_Full_Issue.pdf .
When you focus on making fat your main source of energy and eating an appropriate ratio of carbs/fats/proteins, you have better overall performance, you don’t have dramatic spikes in your blood sugar and you have less of a tendency to overeat. It might sound counter-intuitive, but the results and research are there to support it. People assume that fat = bad because that’s what’s been marketed, but it’s overeating carbs, particularly processed carbs (corn syrup) that causes most of the obesity epidemic. I’m not saying that you can eat fat all day long and be healthy, because it’s about balance and intake levels based on your activity level and body size.
heya—that’s cool, thanks!
Paleo Diet is hunter/gatherer food. awesome. not a lot of broccoli growing in the paleozoic era. there were dudes and chicks around then?
the paleo-diet must have followers in cville, as i HAVE seen plenty of guys at ACAC and GNC that look like this:
http://zenpundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/forensic.jpg
People also describe the Paleo as the “edge of the supermarket diet” because it includes most things that are perishable, i.e. fresh produce, meats, eggs, fruits, nuts, etc.
People?
hell–sorry, Kyle—i didn’t see it was you, or i never would have been snarky. though i remember with some anguish you admitting to wearing spandex on the Cvillain Bike-Race thread.
hunh—a quick search reveals that Tom Cruise does crossfit-training. Are there ties between crossfit and scientology? i suppose the aliens could have taught Paleo Manhow to hunt mastadons and stuff?
“Small nomadic bands of Paleo people in groups of ten to twenty, subsisting mainly on a diet of meat…”, whence Kyle’s tartare?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet
That’s pretty much how I eat. Yeahhh paleo-zone!
“Small nomadic bands of Paleo people in groups of ten to twenty, subsisting mainly on a diet of meat…”
you’re healthier than that, Shen.
Don’t forget that MEAT covers about 1/3 of the ‘edge of the supermarket”.
Yeah and I eat seafood.
Even after seeing Finding Nemo?
I don’t watch cartoons
That is just wrong. Not watching cartoons shows you to be way too serious. This explains so much
Surry. I meant I don’t watch those Disney Pixar Films. Uck.
Ahahahahaha OH SNAP
@21 was @14
My GF and I were members of JMD Farm (http://www.newhopejmdfarm.com/) for two years. We enjoyed their food, but now we have our own garden.
do you recommend them over the other two listed in this post based on foods/services they offered?
I’ve recommended JMD to friends. I don’t have any experience with any other CSA in town, so I can’t really compare them though.
More local CSA links
http://delicious.com/zimage/csa+Virginia
I went with Horse and Buggy last year and this year and have been really happy with the quality and variety of the food.
We’ve always gotten at least 3-4 types of food each week, more in the summer. That said, they extended the season this year to eight months, and I’ve noticed that they’ve padded the early season deliveries with things like honey, apple butter, etc.
I looked at other CSAs, and eventually decided to stick with Horse and Buggy for these reasons:
1. The subscription season is the longest, at eight months.
2. The fruit was fabulous last year, and it seemed other CSAs wouldn’t have the same variety.
3. They have multiple drop spots and times in Charlottesville, which comes in handy if you can’t make your usual time for the week.
wow! i’ll try them this year. thanks!
Retailrelay.com basically has a “roll-your-own” CSA program now. They pick up fresh produce from area farms based on orders placed earlier in the week. Avoids the tyranny of 3 weeks of rhubarb…
I agree with NF. When we moved here (late spring) last year we were able to sign w/Horse and Buggy when shares at other CSA’s had sold out. Their produce is AWESOME, the best I’ve ever eaten. I love when they include extra “goodies” like shitake mushrooms and honey and apple butter AND maple syrup (yum). I dreamt all winter about the peaches they gave us last summer. They are SO damn good. Should I go on?
I think the complaints about “getting one thing every week” are due to last spring’s wet spring which led to late winter/early spring greens being especially prolific. This wet weather we’ve had the past few weeks MIGHT lead to the same thing, but guys. Come on. You think Brett and April have a secret line into Mother Nature? They offer what she offers people!
Besides a huge bag (about a pound and a half) of spinach doesn’t last over 14 dinners if you cook it down. It cooks down to MAYBE four servings? Or two huge ones :0) Add a little sea salt and crushed red pepper and olive oil and you’ve got a big ol’ plate of healthy.
this is super-helpful, FBG, thanks. i will definitely try Horse & Buggy, and assuage my locals-only guilt by giving extra support to David M. through other of his outlets (Bama, etc.). You had me at ‘peaches’.
Wow, this is an excellent example of Cvillain at its best.
I’ve been spending all my foodstamps on salad bars, now there’s a MUCH better way to get my daily fresh veggies that I hardly knew about, and through sensible informative debate [and ignoring all the pointless totally off-topic snark and all the talk of what the alleged 'cavemen' (cavewomen excluded) allegedly 'ate' and how primitive man used his Soloflex for a perfect Spandex Body], I was not only thoroughly informed, but also persuaded to an immediate course of action towards the solution that suits me best. Helps me, helps the business profiled above.
Thanks FBG and thanks Cvillain! I’ll live to be 100 !
There’s a list of CSAs here:
http://www.betterworldbetty.com/directoryF.html#F
The info above about cruciferous vegetables is backwards. It’s an antagonist. And potatoes are a new world crop.
@46
colfer—yup! people never check cited internet ‘facts’.
basically, they reduce negative estrogens, and some studies say they can dramatically diminish likelihood of female-specific cancers. they also tend to promote testosterone production (parallel processing), and in both men AND women, tend to make both men and women thus more aggressive and to develop more masculine traits.
this is in part why most ‘raw food’ hippie veggie-vegan chicks tend to be really nasty to me all the time, also why many of them have to shave their legs/pits and bleach their moustaches more often than girls who also eat flesh/fish, or who use broccoli only in moderation, filling in with rice, quinoa, soy-proteins, etc.
in males, the problem is more complex, ‘cuz, rather than being a mainline of estrogen, the over-intake/over-production of testosterone caused by excessive use of these veggies throws off the body’s own regulation of testosterone production. so, either the body stops inciting itself to make it at the regular rate and compensates by slowing production—then you get your diminished sex-drive, emotionalism, will-to-spandex; or the body accepts the massive dose on top of what it already makes, and you get shrunken testes, pattern balding, deadening of creative thought and general dominance of the lizard-brain.
So, as i said before: brassica are very good for, and should be taken regularly in moderation by, women. Men who produce adequate testosterone do not need them, do not crave them, and should not use them.
Good catch, Colfer!!!
Hey OD,
You should check out a friend of mine on Facebook. Beth. She went from blonde UVa sorority girl to vegan goddess. She was the person who influenced me, big meat eater, to go vegetarian. She packed up everything and moved to Panama where she now runs a raw food retreat, is in perfect shape, and needs no reason to “kick ass”. She’s not religious, just eats healthy and lives life to the fullest everday without coffee, cigs, booze, or pills. She might alleviate some of your jadedness toward “hippie-vegan types”.
Ha! She sounds totally awesome, Shen. In real-life i LOVE hippie-vegetarian types, i’m just screwing around here. I’m on the edge of veggie myself these days and getting moreso (poverty and ultra-training)–whence my desire to Horse & Buggy.
An aside. In the awesome new local magazine FLAVOR, i read an article that mentions paw-paws (i think it said that Geo. Washington used to love paw-paws and ice cream) and suggests that they grow well in Virginia. Anyone on here ever had a paw-paw, or does anyone know where i could get a paw-paw (I.Y.? Whole Foods?) to try before i invest in a half-dozen paw-paw trees/bushes for my orchard?
paw-paws are very banana-ish, soft and sweet when ripe. i used to live further south and the locals made paw-paw bread which was, as far as i could tell, indistinguishable from banana bread. paw-paw seeds are largish smooth brown things and might be worth planting just so you get to hold them in your hands for a minute. they are kind of like little river rocks.
“way down yonder at the paw-paw tree…”
“use of these veggies throws off the body’s own regulation of testosterone production. so, either the body stops inciting itself to make it at the regular rate and compensates by slowing production—then you get your diminished sex-drive, emotionalism, will-to-spandex; or the body accepts the massive dose on top of what it already makes, and you get shrunken testes, pattern balding, deadening of creative thought and general dominance of the lizard-brain.”
As a vegetarian-for-over-18 years and male, I find your ideas faulty. I have heard so many meat and potatoes eating men brag about how great they are in bed, when in reality after having all night multiple orgasmic sex (for both of us) with women who left them, I hear their meat and potato eating partners usually only last a few minutes in bed. Eating meat can make you big and be able to lift a very heavy item once or twice. Eating a vegetarian diet usually builds stamina. Something most women appreciate in bed.
I’ve never read that vegetarian diet builds stamina. Outside of the moral issues, our bodies were made to eat mainly lean meats, fish, nuts, fresh vegetables and fruits.
Here’s a really good (although somewhat heated) answer to the performance question by Rob Wolf, a expert on performance nutrition:
Found here: http://robbwolf.com/?page_id=121#paleo3
Posted 6-29-2006 by: Michael Forge: As for the health/fitness limitations it involves, you say that you are comfortable eating dairy (a point that Garrett invariably ignores in his routine anti-vegetarian screeds), and I’m assuming egg. Given that, you will have absolutely no problem being healthy and achieving your fitness goals. I’ve been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for 20 years and at 39 I run a sub five-minute mile, bench 280, squat 375, and can post respectable performances in all Crossfit workouts. My body fat level is 6-8% and I very rarely get sick or injured.
So don’t let the paleo zealots around here scare you. You can indeed be perfectly healthy and exceptionally fit without killing animals to do it.
Response by Robb Wolf
Michael-
So Michael, We “Zealots” are guilty of advocating a natural, unprocessed health promoting diet. Shame on us. If it’s all pseudo science who don’t you eat the way Ron is suggesting? Eat only vegetable sourced foods with no processing. No protein powders, no tofu, no tempeh, milk etc. In essence a whole food diet
based around plant foods as they actually occur in nature. Are you willing to take that bullet for your morality? What you are doing right now is emulating a meat-based diet with concentrated plant sources. Your first post was a trumpeting declaration that vegetarianism is just as good as a mixed diet.
Why don’t you approach it the way the zealots around here approach the paleo/zone: Natural foods with little or no processing? Give it a go for two months and lets see where your numbers are.
Michael-
This can’t be done in a way different than what I’m advocating for many people. Stick all these folks on a grain, legume, dairy, and egg diet and watch the fun:
http://www.glutenfreeforum.com/
These folks express a susceptibility to these Neolithic foods the same way everyone else does, simply to a greater degree. They are literally the canaries in the coalmine.
My old roommate had a 2.2xbw bench press, could do a planch pushup his first try and when he did standing back flips he did a gainer nearly 7 feet in front of where he started. His diet? Vegetarian…in that he did not eat meat but his supper frequently consisted of jalapeno poppers from jack-in-the-box,
Arizona ice tea and popcorn. He has about 5% body fat and the beginnings of cardiomyopathy due to his constantly elevated insulin levels. He is 28. His father had his first heart attack at the age of 32. Second at age 45. I know this in no way emulates your diet but my point is that sometimes genetics can mask a diet that is at odds with health.
Who invited me? Doug did when he asked if it was possible to do right by his health and be vegetarian. Because YOU have no overt signs of pathology is an anecdotally valid point but you seem to imply that my experience, both as a researcher and someone with celiac gives me no insight into this. Additionally
you have absolutely no basis to judge what you are doing compared to a paleo approach until you DO the paleo approach. Would your blood lipids improve? Inflammatory cytokines? Recovery? You dismiss this and say what you are doing is “good enough” but that skirts the issue of what’s “best”.
We have some hard, factual ways to assess this but you bow out on this. Fine, but don’t claim a better product unless you have proof. This is the essence of CrossFit, free markets and many other things most everyone here holds near and dear. This is the point that’s buggaring me. You won’t do a
comparison; yet claim to have the same thing. And for some reason because I advocate this as a superior nutritional approach, and base it not only on my own experience but also on the foundations of evolutionary biology and genetics…you can dismiss it all with your sample of one…and no direct
comparison. What I’ve always advocated is try both approaches, have an objective set of criteria, and see which one delivers.
I know that since you are an unswayable rugged individual this will carry no weight for you but Keith Thomas was vegetarian for 15+ years and fit, strong and healthy. He went paleo and became more so.
Give it a read if you like: http://www.evfit.com/
He even has an interesting look at vegetarianism:
http://www.evfit.com/vegetarian.htm
…
Michael, you are trying to make two points: 1-vegetarianism is=paleo diet. It’s not. You are also trying to make the point that vegetarianism is a moral high ground. Again, it is not. As both Mark and I have pointed out you choose to distance yourself from the carnage and call it a day.
I know this is ****ing away an enormous amount of time and if I have stepped over the line and made this personal I apologize, but there are hundreds if not thousands of websites devoted to vegetarianism, Triathalon, yoga and the like. There is ONE site where you can find the best in elite athletics and nutrition and I’ll be damned if I’m going to roll over on this. If the act of basing my arguments on fact, personal experience, epistemology and the foundations of logic places me in the category “Zealot”, I guess I’m ok with that.
Here are some more resources:
http://www.thepaleodiet.com/published_research/
I think you should give your Crossfit propoganda its own thread instead of clogging up a CSA thread.
I agree this is lame.
Everyone, please feel free to eat whatever the hell you want. If you can support local farmers, that would be great. Eat their veggies, eat their meat, be young, don’t drink Pepsi.
TL/DR.
I think over-analyzing and micro-managing one’s diet, no matter what the physical result, and no matter what the conclusions or motivations, is a neurotic behavior pattern.
And albeit anecdotal: my 16 year old son, who has never eaten meat (outside a few bites here and there to see what its like) could outperform almost anyone on this blog in any physical task, especially in endurance. Yes he is that ripped. And no its not *because* he is a veggie, but its also not from planning his meals with excel and a gram scale.
/my fat ass’ out of shape two coppers
i LOVE that he was able to directly tie ‘crossfit diet’ to ‘free markets’.
There’s gold in dem dar hills. Thanks, Kyle!
Mixing up “hippies” with free markets? Sounds like gold; plays out like gold.
um, shutup.
Thanks to these stupid threads, nobody can tell who you’re telling to shut up
that would be Kyle
Oh well, in that case, carry on!
i hate hippies
really?
the young ones selling hemp necklaces and twirling to jam-bands usually smell bad and pester the shit out of you for spare change, but generally they’re pretty sweet. Take the Trees on Fire guys–a great bunch, i’d introduce them to anyone, write them a job recommendation, let them house-sit for me—they’re all the nicest kids, extremely polite, and are really civic-minded, but not offensive, preachy or phony. But they fit within the broad rubric of ‘hippie’, just because they are vegetarian, earth-concerned, tend to have long hair and are a jam-band that plays festivals. They are the good. And there are lots like them around here (we send the smelly coin-begging ones to Asheville, typically, like convicts to Botany Bay).
i think the bad and ugly are the sneering old hippies at Whole Foods who talk about their colons in public, are balding but wear pony tails, but still pull down six-figure salaries. Their poor kids are poisoned from birth: mistrustful of society, stunted-in-growth from poor diet, socially awkward because they can’t do/watch/eat what other kids do, grow up with no real american role models (who wants to be Abbie Hoffman or Charles Manson or Jim Jones when they grow up?)–and THAT is what’s unforgiveable. Some kid just wants a couple gummi bears and a Coke at a Bruce Willis movie, or wants to know what McDonald’s tastes like because his school pals all eat there… and this kid is brainwashed against all that or denied it on pains of whatever an evil-hippie punishment is (karmic threats?).
No, not really.
is “rhymes with orange”
a guy?
god! I’m a purple kumquat with pointieness.
y’all rock, cvillain.