I spoke too soon.
As difficult as it is to believe with this ridiculously hot weather, we've actually had a pretty cool/damp spring, with frost warnings in the Free Bird Farm area as late as last weekend, according to our lovely farmers. Since everything's growing a little behind schedule, our CSA has decided to push back the distribution by a week. I recall seeing something similar at the Madison farmer's market. Other than piles and piles of asparagus and morel mushrooms (apparently this is a very good year for morels), there was noticeably less variety than I would expect in farmer's market this close to June.
Of course, I'd love to see produce next week, but one week delay isn't a big deal. I just hope we don't run into drought or flood issues this season!
Friday, May 31, 2013
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Countdown + Madison
1st pickup scheduled for June 4! I'm really excited because the weather just turned super hot, which means I'm veering away from heavy comfort foods and searching for lighter summery noms. The first few shares last year were full of salad greens, green things, leafy greens, green... And green things are wonderfully light and refreshing, so I'm pretty happy.
Just got back from a trip to Madison to see the family and while we were there, we stopped by the farmer's market. Amazing! Madison might be smaller than New York, but it sure does have a farmer's market that can rival the best of New York's farmer's markets. There's a great sense of community, a history of farming, and UW Madison, which is a land-grant university and therefore maintains a strong focus and commitment to agriculture. Kind of like Cornell, but located right in Madison, instead of somewhere far away upstate.
Anyways, it was really great to see another food ecosystem all up close and personal. It's fun to see the commitment to local food in Madison. I was mostly struck by the sense of community and it was pleasantly surprising to see such visible ties between all the small farmers, producers, consumers, and restaurants. Also, we got to eat at L'Etoile, which I've been dying to do, and it was everything I hoped it would be!
The food was nothing groundbreaking, but it was well prepared and comfortable, in line with New York's locavore offerings and devoid of all the gimmicks and downright rude service that you sometimes get in the city (Rosemary's I'm looking at you). Stars of the menu included asparagus and morel mushrooms, as well as the last of the last batch of chevre from a local producer who had decided to retire. Apparently this is the best goat cheese in the region, so L'Etoile bought up all of the remaining stock once they caught wind that the woman who makes the cheese was going to retire. I sampled a little of my brother's plate and I have to say...I agree. Madison is practically synonymous with cheese, so I guess I should stop being so surprised by the quality of the cheese every time I visit.
The highlight of the meal for me was the amuse bouche, which was a lovely creme fraiche preparation with roasted asparagus, pepitas, and a drizzling of some sort of savory reduction, topped with a little tiny edible viola. I was so excited by the amuse bouche because that morning, I had stopped at a booth in the farmer's market, completely taken in by the little boxes of fingernail-sized edible violas that were on display. I gazed wistfully at them, snapped a photo, and grabbed a bunch of salad turnips instead. I thought they'd be fun to sprinkle over a salad for a whimsical summery touch, but I didn't know how my family would react to eating flowers for dinner. I was already pushing the envelope by picking up several greens they'd never seen before and I didn't want to scare them with too many new things all at once. So I gently closed the door on the idea of seeing those violas appear in my food...and then like magic, they reappeared as a delicate little garnish in the amuse bouche! L'Etoile is literally right in front of the farmer's market and I could identify so many items on my plate that I had seen just that morning, just one block away, which was all sorts of awesome. Fun times! Added bonus - my parents are now fans of farmer's markets and have decided they'd like to go every Saturday morning! I'd be jealous if I wasn't so happy :)
Just got back from a trip to Madison to see the family and while we were there, we stopped by the farmer's market. Amazing! Madison might be smaller than New York, but it sure does have a farmer's market that can rival the best of New York's farmer's markets. There's a great sense of community, a history of farming, and UW Madison, which is a land-grant university and therefore maintains a strong focus and commitment to agriculture. Kind of like Cornell, but located right in Madison, instead of somewhere far away upstate.
Anyways, it was really great to see another food ecosystem all up close and personal. It's fun to see the commitment to local food in Madison. I was mostly struck by the sense of community and it was pleasantly surprising to see such visible ties between all the small farmers, producers, consumers, and restaurants. Also, we got to eat at L'Etoile, which I've been dying to do, and it was everything I hoped it would be!
The food was nothing groundbreaking, but it was well prepared and comfortable, in line with New York's locavore offerings and devoid of all the gimmicks and downright rude service that you sometimes get in the city (Rosemary's I'm looking at you). Stars of the menu included asparagus and morel mushrooms, as well as the last of the last batch of chevre from a local producer who had decided to retire. Apparently this is the best goat cheese in the region, so L'Etoile bought up all of the remaining stock once they caught wind that the woman who makes the cheese was going to retire. I sampled a little of my brother's plate and I have to say...I agree. Madison is practically synonymous with cheese, so I guess I should stop being so surprised by the quality of the cheese every time I visit.
The highlight of the meal for me was the amuse bouche, which was a lovely creme fraiche preparation with roasted asparagus, pepitas, and a drizzling of some sort of savory reduction, topped with a little tiny edible viola. I was so excited by the amuse bouche because that morning, I had stopped at a booth in the farmer's market, completely taken in by the little boxes of fingernail-sized edible violas that were on display. I gazed wistfully at them, snapped a photo, and grabbed a bunch of salad turnips instead. I thought they'd be fun to sprinkle over a salad for a whimsical summery touch, but I didn't know how my family would react to eating flowers for dinner. I was already pushing the envelope by picking up several greens they'd never seen before and I didn't want to scare them with too many new things all at once. So I gently closed the door on the idea of seeing those violas appear in my food...and then like magic, they reappeared as a delicate little garnish in the amuse bouche! L'Etoile is literally right in front of the farmer's market and I could identify so many items on my plate that I had seen just that morning, just one block away, which was all sorts of awesome. Fun times! Added bonus - my parents are now fans of farmer's markets and have decided they'd like to go every Saturday morning! I'd be jealous if I wasn't so happy :)
Thursday, March 28, 2013
chickening out of eating chicken
kay so one definite downside of educating yourself about what you eat is that you actually notice what you're eating and you know what's probably in it (or not in it, as it were).
In the past, I've ordered chicken from a number of restaurants with no problems at all. Recently, I've noticed that food from my old standbys just doesn't seem as good anymore. I highly doubt that the food from all these places radically worsened at the same time, so the problem is probably me. But seriously, it's a problem. The chicken is weird. It tastes funny. It sometimes crumbles (yeah, I know right? that is not something meat should do, ever, except maybe ground meat but that's a totally different story and we won't go there today.) The chicken doesn't hold up to close inspection and it generally does not appeal to me. There are exceptions, of course, and I've started taking notice of which places serve food I actually want to eat.
Bored and curious, I googled these exceptions and discovered that interestingly enough, the places serving food I like tend to source free-range, hormone and antibiotic free, and sometimes organic chicken. It could be that a place willing to buy quality chicken probably invests in other high quality ingredients, generally leading to higher quality dishes. It could also be that they put in more effort to cook the chicken well. Whatever the reason, I've become more picky about what meat I choose to eat. Being picky is usually seen as a bad thing, but I think this time, the offense is forgivable.
(It's not just chicken, by the way, but inferior chicken has been the most obnoxious offender to my newly vigilant tastebuds.)
Alsoooo...it's still freezing. Spring, hurry up!
In the past, I've ordered chicken from a number of restaurants with no problems at all. Recently, I've noticed that food from my old standbys just doesn't seem as good anymore. I highly doubt that the food from all these places radically worsened at the same time, so the problem is probably me. But seriously, it's a problem. The chicken is weird. It tastes funny. It sometimes crumbles (yeah, I know right? that is not something meat should do, ever, except maybe ground meat but that's a totally different story and we won't go there today.) The chicken doesn't hold up to close inspection and it generally does not appeal to me. There are exceptions, of course, and I've started taking notice of which places serve food I actually want to eat.
Bored and curious, I googled these exceptions and discovered that interestingly enough, the places serving food I like tend to source free-range, hormone and antibiotic free, and sometimes organic chicken. It could be that a place willing to buy quality chicken probably invests in other high quality ingredients, generally leading to higher quality dishes. It could also be that they put in more effort to cook the chicken well. Whatever the reason, I've become more picky about what meat I choose to eat. Being picky is usually seen as a bad thing, but I think this time, the offense is forgivable.
(It's not just chicken, by the way, but inferior chicken has been the most obnoxious offender to my newly vigilant tastebuds.)
Alsoooo...it's still freezing. Spring, hurry up!
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
eenteresting...
From Fast Company's website. I truly believe America could use an attitude readjustment towards how and what it eats. I was going to ramble about it some, but this basically sums up exactly how I feel plus pretty pictures.
A few reflections from me:
A few reflections from me:
It's human nature to be afraid of not having enough food. I get that. But in our quest to eradicate hunger, we've taken a blunt force approach, focusing our efforts primarily on making as much food as possible, as cheap as possible. Nowhere is this more evident that here, in the resource-rich U.S.
I liken our approach to heating a freezing house by lighting a bonfire in each room. Effective? Yes. But goodness, is that the best solution we can come up with? Central heating or even radiators would be far more efficient. Plus, there's the whole burning the whole house down on accident thing to consider. Even a fireplace would be an improvement over open bonfires. Besides the house burning down, other, more insidious problems like soot and smoke are byproducts of the blunt-force heating approach. Similarly, it's not just obesity we're fighting; it's also lethargy, attention problems, loss of the collective pool of farming knowledge, loss of topsoil, pollution of the environment, waste of resources (e.g. burning corn instead of a eating it or dumping milk down the drains because it's cheaper than selling it), etc.
I liken our approach to heating a freezing house by lighting a bonfire in each room. Effective? Yes. But goodness, is that the best solution we can come up with? Central heating or even radiators would be far more efficient. Plus, there's the whole burning the whole house down on accident thing to consider. Even a fireplace would be an improvement over open bonfires. Besides the house burning down, other, more insidious problems like soot and smoke are byproducts of the blunt-force heating approach. Similarly, it's not just obesity we're fighting; it's also lethargy, attention problems, loss of the collective pool of farming knowledge, loss of topsoil, pollution of the environment, waste of resources (e.g. burning corn instead of a eating it or dumping milk down the drains because it's cheaper than selling it), etc.
My point is, we have proven capable of producing enough food for ourselves, which is a great step in the right direction for our country. Now that we've managed to heat the house, let's figure out how to do it better. After all, penny-wise, pound foolish never made anyone wealthy.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
2013 CSA Season
I signed up last night! I know, I know. It's already mid-March. Hey, at least I eventually got around to doing it right?
I signed up for a partial vegetable share, a poultry share, and a farm visit. I'll be splitting part of the vegetables and poultry with my friend and roommate. I plan on eating the bulk of the produce and I'll be doing the volunteer shift and picking up the produce, which is perfectly fine with me if it means more people are exploring the CSA experience. The whole concept of a CSA is fantastic, but I honestly don't think it's for everyone. I would rather see someone have a fulfilling CSA experience by piggybacking and "just trying it out" instead of seeing a dissatisfied customer walk out of a CSA from a clash in expectations and what can sometimes be an overwhelming amount of produce (remember the deathbylettuce episode last summer?)
I'd like to get more involved in my CSA this summer, but I'm not quite sure how. Perhaps I'll email Cara and see if there's something I can do to help out the team.
Also, I've been doing a lot of reading and research on topics like sustainable agriculture, small to mid-size family farms in the U.S., programs that focus on supporting agriculture, soil enrichment and care, methane pollution (especially from dairy farms), monoculture crops, permaculture, biodiversity, conservation of the environment, fertilizer runoff, pesticide/hormone/antibiotic use, the involvement of government and large corporations in next-step R&D, technology in agriculture, the trend towards local eating, and American attitudes towards food and the consumption/production of food. It has been fascinating to see the different opinions and views people have across the country in regards to all of these topics. I don't know that anyone is wrong, exactly, but there'a lot of people who see the world through opposite lens, and that is making the discussion of America's food supply awfully polarizing.
I brought up the whole idea of local, sustainable agriculture to my dad last night and my goodness. I realized we see it completely differently. He's an engineering professor and believes wholeheartedly in scale and efficiency. For him, concepts like organic or local sound warm and fuzzy and make people happy. But it's only a matter of time before it scales into mass production, which is the most sensible and cost-effective way to feed people. My dad is not at all a romantic idealist and believes very much in the pragmatic, the quantifiable, and the efficiency of science and research.
I inherited my practical side from dad, no doubt about it. But between my day to day job, which affords me the opportunity to examine myriad businesses and their structures and modus operandi; my years in college; and my experience as a young consumer living in New York (one of the most food forward environments I've come across)...
I see a very different picture. While I do not believe that small family farms are the ONLY solution to feeding America, I do think they should play an important role in the food ecosytem. There's nothing wrong with having multiple ways of growing, processing, and distributing food to Americans. What I do believe is that the ecosystem has room for improvement. I do believe that America should pay closer attention to how it eats and where its food comes from. I do believe that consumers, farms, conservationists, shareholders/investors, corporations, and restaurants all have different responsibilities to each other. And I do think we all need to do our part to ensure we have a competitive, cooperative, secure, and healthy food ecosystem in the U.S.
The part of this equation I'm most interested in right now is increasing awareness of and advocating for programs like CSA's, farm-to-table, sustainable agriculture, and paying closer attention to what we put in our bodies. So in my own way, I try to do my part. I educate myself and do my own research, I spread the word, I sign up for a CSA, and I continue to look for ways to help balance the equation. I've helped introduce the concept of a CSA to a few of my friends and I'm fully prepared to hold their hand through their first season with a CSA to ensure they have a wonderful and enjoyable experience. It may not be much, but I like to think every drop in the bucket counts.
More than anything, I think awareness is key. As we were signing up for a share last night, my roommate turned to me and said, "You know, they should market this better. I never heard of this until I saw you with your shares and neither did my friends until you told them about it." The inherent problem with a local CSA is that it's local and it's small. Marketing is obviously going to be less polished than a company like Whole Foods or Gristedes. CSA's rely more on word of mouth from farmers' markets and happy customers than anything else. Feeding America cannot be solved through a one-size-fits-all approach and I think people should be free to decide what they want to eat when they want to eat it. Having said that, I do think people cannot be expected to make a good decision if they are uninformed or can't see all the pieces of the puzzle (or don't even have all the puzzle pieces to begin with!) If we educate people, market various approaches to eating, help adjust attitudes towards food, I rather suspect interest in CSA's would skyrocket.
I signed up for a partial vegetable share, a poultry share, and a farm visit. I'll be splitting part of the vegetables and poultry with my friend and roommate. I plan on eating the bulk of the produce and I'll be doing the volunteer shift and picking up the produce, which is perfectly fine with me if it means more people are exploring the CSA experience. The whole concept of a CSA is fantastic, but I honestly don't think it's for everyone. I would rather see someone have a fulfilling CSA experience by piggybacking and "just trying it out" instead of seeing a dissatisfied customer walk out of a CSA from a clash in expectations and what can sometimes be an overwhelming amount of produce (remember the deathbylettuce episode last summer?)
I'd like to get more involved in my CSA this summer, but I'm not quite sure how. Perhaps I'll email Cara and see if there's something I can do to help out the team.
Also, I've been doing a lot of reading and research on topics like sustainable agriculture, small to mid-size family farms in the U.S., programs that focus on supporting agriculture, soil enrichment and care, methane pollution (especially from dairy farms), monoculture crops, permaculture, biodiversity, conservation of the environment, fertilizer runoff, pesticide/hormone/antibiotic use, the involvement of government and large corporations in next-step R&D, technology in agriculture, the trend towards local eating, and American attitudes towards food and the consumption/production of food. It has been fascinating to see the different opinions and views people have across the country in regards to all of these topics. I don't know that anyone is wrong, exactly, but there'a lot of people who see the world through opposite lens, and that is making the discussion of America's food supply awfully polarizing.
I brought up the whole idea of local, sustainable agriculture to my dad last night and my goodness. I realized we see it completely differently. He's an engineering professor and believes wholeheartedly in scale and efficiency. For him, concepts like organic or local sound warm and fuzzy and make people happy. But it's only a matter of time before it scales into mass production, which is the most sensible and cost-effective way to feed people. My dad is not at all a romantic idealist and believes very much in the pragmatic, the quantifiable, and the efficiency of science and research.
I inherited my practical side from dad, no doubt about it. But between my day to day job, which affords me the opportunity to examine myriad businesses and their structures and modus operandi; my years in college; and my experience as a young consumer living in New York (one of the most food forward environments I've come across)...
I see a very different picture. While I do not believe that small family farms are the ONLY solution to feeding America, I do think they should play an important role in the food ecosytem. There's nothing wrong with having multiple ways of growing, processing, and distributing food to Americans. What I do believe is that the ecosystem has room for improvement. I do believe that America should pay closer attention to how it eats and where its food comes from. I do believe that consumers, farms, conservationists, shareholders/investors, corporations, and restaurants all have different responsibilities to each other. And I do think we all need to do our part to ensure we have a competitive, cooperative, secure, and healthy food ecosystem in the U.S.
The part of this equation I'm most interested in right now is increasing awareness of and advocating for programs like CSA's, farm-to-table, sustainable agriculture, and paying closer attention to what we put in our bodies. So in my own way, I try to do my part. I educate myself and do my own research, I spread the word, I sign up for a CSA, and I continue to look for ways to help balance the equation. I've helped introduce the concept of a CSA to a few of my friends and I'm fully prepared to hold their hand through their first season with a CSA to ensure they have a wonderful and enjoyable experience. It may not be much, but I like to think every drop in the bucket counts.
More than anything, I think awareness is key. As we were signing up for a share last night, my roommate turned to me and said, "You know, they should market this better. I never heard of this until I saw you with your shares and neither did my friends until you told them about it." The inherent problem with a local CSA is that it's local and it's small. Marketing is obviously going to be less polished than a company like Whole Foods or Gristedes. CSA's rely more on word of mouth from farmers' markets and happy customers than anything else. Feeding America cannot be solved through a one-size-fits-all approach and I think people should be free to decide what they want to eat when they want to eat it. Having said that, I do think people cannot be expected to make a good decision if they are uninformed or can't see all the pieces of the puzzle (or don't even have all the puzzle pieces to begin with!) If we educate people, market various approaches to eating, help adjust attitudes towards food, I rather suspect interest in CSA's would skyrocket.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Forgetting to do shit
I still haven't signed up for my CSA share. I know, I know.
I would complain that life is too hard and how the fuck are you supposed to remember all the little things that adults are supposed to do every day, but now I sound like every other whiny 20-some year old in NY.
Anyways, I suck and all my reminders and notes on scraps of paper and in my notebooks and on my phone and scribbled in the margins of random earnings releases are clearly not doing the job. So maybe venting about my own inability to remember to do one small thing on a blog would help? Yes, not logical. Sometimes the illogical solution is actually what ends up working. Couldn't hurt right?
Unrelated note: I am so obsessed with Ailee's OST for Yawang (Ice Flower, roughly translated). I do really hope she becomes the first KA to make it big as a singer (Psy does NOT count).
I would complain that life is too hard and how the fuck are you supposed to remember all the little things that adults are supposed to do every day, but now I sound like every other whiny 20-some year old in NY.
Anyways, I suck and all my reminders and notes on scraps of paper and in my notebooks and on my phone and scribbled in the margins of random earnings releases are clearly not doing the job. So maybe venting about my own inability to remember to do one small thing on a blog would help? Yes, not logical. Sometimes the illogical solution is actually what ends up working. Couldn't hurt right?
Unrelated note: I am so obsessed with Ailee's OST for Yawang (Ice Flower, roughly translated). I do really hope she becomes the first KA to make it big as a singer (Psy does NOT count).
Thursday, February 14, 2013
FRIENDS! and chickens and eggs
I can now claim to have convinced not one, but TWO people to sign up for a CSA because of me! One in California and one here in New York. I am so pleased, I'm grinning like a Cheshire cat.
I'm worried, of course, that they won't like it. That I've been hyping it up to everyone. But honestly, I'll just let the produce do the talking, and I'm sure it'll be fine.
I was hoping to pull my roommate into sharing my CSA with me this year, but it looks like my roommate may or may not be with us this summer. So...I've decided that instead of being overly ambitious, I'm going to sign up for just one partial share ($375 for 22 weeks of a larger-than-half-of-a-regular-share) of vegetables. I wanted to try the eggs, fruit, or chicken because it looks so good and I want to support Free Bird Farms. But I didn't know what the best option would be and I was scared being overwhelmed by Foodmageddon again.
I can polish off fruit quite happily and easily on my own, but I like the idea of free range, organic (not certified, but raised organically) chickens and eggs, and I wanted to give it a go at home, rather than relying on super duper expensive fancy places that I like to think about eating at because heaven knows I'd never be able to take myself there without feeling awfully guilty about how I'm prioritizing my spending. T_T
I digress. I ended up deciding on the chicken share. Why? Eggs are perishable but these chickens are frozen. Plus, they seemed like a slightly better deal. $90 for a dozen eggs a week comes out to a whopping $4.09 per dozen eggs. That's a lot and I am not quite sure the difference in taste and quality would be worth it. I snooped around and the prices for free range, organic eggs are anywhere from $3.50 to $5.50 per dozen in NYC. Regular eggs are $$2.00 - $3.00 a dozen. While it would be nice to have eggs with beautiful, rich, nutritious orange yolks, I just don't want to commit to a full season right now. I guess the humane treatment of chickens is another factor, but on this point, I'm indifferent, since chickens raised for meat also face the same issue of humane treatment. The deciding factor for me was just that I don't eat a lot of eggs to begin with and they are fairly perishable.
On the other hand, I can get 12 chickens for $180, which comes out to about $15 a chicken, or $3.75 a pound. Although pricey, I did some investigating online and in stores, and this is actually fairly reasonable for a free-range, organic chicken. Normal chickens go for a lot less - something like $4 to $8 per whole 4lb chicken. The price markup for free range and organic chicken is a lot higher than it is for eggs. Why do I bother buying free range and organic then? It freaks me out that I'm eating chicken meat laced with antibiotics and hormones. I don't know. I don't like it. Plus, I've seen the chickens being raised for meat and eggs at Free Bird Farm and I can definitively say these chickens were raised happily. I can't say the same for the chickens I buy at the store, free range and organic or not. Finally, chickens can be frozen. They will keep for up to a year in my freezer. This gives them a significant advantage over eggs.
And I know $15 per chicken is a lot, but I know how to stretch my chickens. I can easily, easily, make at least 5 or 6 meals out of one chicken. Roast chicken for two meals with a side of veg, chicken over rice or chicken with pasta or even chicken salad sandwiches can make another two meals, and the leftover chicken bits and bones makes for at least two meals of chicken soup. I can add noodles, rice, or potatoes to the soup to instantly make it more filling. The price breakdown comes to about $2 to $3 per meal for the chicken. Rice, vegetables, noodles, potatoes, and pasta are super cheap, so the total cost of a full meal would break down to less than $5. That's a price I'm willing to live with, especially since I don't actually eat meat that much anymore, meaning my other meals are much cheaper than that. And I can rest easy, knowing what I'm putting into my body, how the chickens were raised, and who I'm supporting with my $. This makes me happy.
*Caveat: I don't know how "green" or local my chicken is, since I presume Free Bird Farm had to take the birds to be processed and frozen at a butcher plant, and I have no idea how far away that plant is, but I'm okay with that. This is a better option to me than what I can find in my supermarkets.
Why didn't I opt for both chickens and eggs? Quite simply: I can't eat that much. I think it's better to buy only what you need than to oversupply and waste food. Less food, more quality. In fact, I think 12 chickens is more than I can handle, so I convinced my friend to share some of the chickens with me. In exchange for buying 3-6 chickens off of me, I've agreed to teach him how to cook the chickens and pass along any excess produce, which I'm more than happy to do. Community building with CSA food! :)
All this thinking about local, organic, free-range, etc. made me wonder about all the other food I eat. I want to live better and I am considering kicking off a month of clean eating, where I restrict myself to only eating sustainably produced/harvested food, with an emphasis on organic produce, free range and hormone/antibiotic free meats, and wild-caught fish. And, of course, trying to support local farmers where and when I can.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of restaurants and grocery stores that are quietly (or not so quietly) sourcing local, free-range, sustainable foods. I think it would be fairly easy to pull off a month of clean eating in the city. I'll chew on this idea a little longer, but it's definitely something I want to pursue.
I'm worried, of course, that they won't like it. That I've been hyping it up to everyone. But honestly, I'll just let the produce do the talking, and I'm sure it'll be fine.
I was hoping to pull my roommate into sharing my CSA with me this year, but it looks like my roommate may or may not be with us this summer. So...I've decided that instead of being overly ambitious, I'm going to sign up for just one partial share ($375 for 22 weeks of a larger-than-half-of-a-regular-share) of vegetables. I wanted to try the eggs, fruit, or chicken because it looks so good and I want to support Free Bird Farms. But I didn't know what the best option would be and I was scared being overwhelmed by Foodmageddon again.
I can polish off fruit quite happily and easily on my own, but I like the idea of free range, organic (not certified, but raised organically) chickens and eggs, and I wanted to give it a go at home, rather than relying on super duper expensive fancy places that I like to think about eating at because heaven knows I'd never be able to take myself there without feeling awfully guilty about how I'm prioritizing my spending. T_T
I digress. I ended up deciding on the chicken share. Why? Eggs are perishable but these chickens are frozen. Plus, they seemed like a slightly better deal. $90 for a dozen eggs a week comes out to a whopping $4.09 per dozen eggs. That's a lot and I am not quite sure the difference in taste and quality would be worth it. I snooped around and the prices for free range, organic eggs are anywhere from $3.50 to $5.50 per dozen in NYC. Regular eggs are $$2.00 - $3.00 a dozen. While it would be nice to have eggs with beautiful, rich, nutritious orange yolks, I just don't want to commit to a full season right now. I guess the humane treatment of chickens is another factor, but on this point, I'm indifferent, since chickens raised for meat also face the same issue of humane treatment. The deciding factor for me was just that I don't eat a lot of eggs to begin with and they are fairly perishable.
On the other hand, I can get 12 chickens for $180, which comes out to about $15 a chicken, or $3.75 a pound. Although pricey, I did some investigating online and in stores, and this is actually fairly reasonable for a free-range, organic chicken. Normal chickens go for a lot less - something like $4 to $8 per whole 4lb chicken. The price markup for free range and organic chicken is a lot higher than it is for eggs. Why do I bother buying free range and organic then? It freaks me out that I'm eating chicken meat laced with antibiotics and hormones. I don't know. I don't like it. Plus, I've seen the chickens being raised for meat and eggs at Free Bird Farm and I can definitively say these chickens were raised happily. I can't say the same for the chickens I buy at the store, free range and organic or not. Finally, chickens can be frozen. They will keep for up to a year in my freezer. This gives them a significant advantage over eggs.
And I know $15 per chicken is a lot, but I know how to stretch my chickens. I can easily, easily, make at least 5 or 6 meals out of one chicken. Roast chicken for two meals with a side of veg, chicken over rice or chicken with pasta or even chicken salad sandwiches can make another two meals, and the leftover chicken bits and bones makes for at least two meals of chicken soup. I can add noodles, rice, or potatoes to the soup to instantly make it more filling. The price breakdown comes to about $2 to $3 per meal for the chicken. Rice, vegetables, noodles, potatoes, and pasta are super cheap, so the total cost of a full meal would break down to less than $5. That's a price I'm willing to live with, especially since I don't actually eat meat that much anymore, meaning my other meals are much cheaper than that. And I can rest easy, knowing what I'm putting into my body, how the chickens were raised, and who I'm supporting with my $. This makes me happy.
*Caveat: I don't know how "green" or local my chicken is, since I presume Free Bird Farm had to take the birds to be processed and frozen at a butcher plant, and I have no idea how far away that plant is, but I'm okay with that. This is a better option to me than what I can find in my supermarkets.
Why didn't I opt for both chickens and eggs? Quite simply: I can't eat that much. I think it's better to buy only what you need than to oversupply and waste food. Less food, more quality. In fact, I think 12 chickens is more than I can handle, so I convinced my friend to share some of the chickens with me. In exchange for buying 3-6 chickens off of me, I've agreed to teach him how to cook the chickens and pass along any excess produce, which I'm more than happy to do. Community building with CSA food! :)
All this thinking about local, organic, free-range, etc. made me wonder about all the other food I eat. I want to live better and I am considering kicking off a month of clean eating, where I restrict myself to only eating sustainably produced/harvested food, with an emphasis on organic produce, free range and hormone/antibiotic free meats, and wild-caught fish. And, of course, trying to support local farmers where and when I can.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of restaurants and grocery stores that are quietly (or not so quietly) sourcing local, free-range, sustainable foods. I think it would be fairly easy to pull off a month of clean eating in the city. I'll chew on this idea a little longer, but it's definitely something I want to pursue.
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