First Day in The CSA

I picked up our first "share" in our CSA with Terrie's Berries Organic Farm today. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. You agree up front to pay for your share whatever that might be based on what they actually produce. That may be a lot or less depending on the farm's yield. We have signed up for Spring shares -14 weeks and Summer sampler 21 weeks. The total for 35 weeks was less than $700 - $20 per week. We chose the Summer sampler because we grow so much already that we will be more supplementing than anything else.

I picked up red potatoes, parsnips, Jerusalem artichoke, carrots, Romaine, Swiss Chard, cabbage, apples, pears and onions today. While I was there I also bought some limes and lemons, a bulb of fennel and 2 heads of celery for our juices.

Our two juices each day contain the following ingredients:

1.5 Lbs Carrots
1 English Cucumber
1 Medium Lime
1 Medium Lemon
2 inches of Ginger Root
1 Beet with greens
1 Granny Smith Apple
.5 Lbs Chard
4 oz Kale
4 oz Celery
3 cups of Spinach

Including cleaning up after it takes about 30 minutes to make the 2 juices (4 servings).

These ingredients make 32 oz (2 servings) of our Morning Juice and 28 oz (also 2 servings) of our mid-afternoon juice. I was looking around on some nutrition sites and there is tons of good things for you in them. Surprisingly, there is a lot of Calcium. I'm new to this whole nutrition stuff, but the powers that be say that the calcium from these sources is the easiest  for you to digest. I heard a statistic that in countries that rank highest in dairy consumption the incidences of osteoporosis are actually higher.

Pam has been fighting a sinus infection and has lost 2 more pounds, bringing her total to 14 lbs and I have nothing to report. Damned weather! Damned Foot!

I made a tactical error and asked what pigeon-toed people are supposed to do for snowshoes when we were at REI earlier in the month. My luck, the guy knew his stuff and I now have snowshoes and NO EXCUSES! One day maybe I'll learn to quit complaining! We went on a great snowshoe up at Paradise the next day and the things worked well. No more hiding and watching football.

I've been thinking a lot about weight loss. It is hard to go anywhere without someone asking about it. I have one big conclusion that I hope helps others as it helped me. Here it is. You don't TRY to lose weight anymore than you TRY to go to work or TRY to take care of your children or TRY to mow your lawn for that matter. You just DO IT. You make whatever changes are necessary to your diet and exercise routine and keep on living life. If that isn't possible for you to do, find a therapist and talk it out.


The only other thing to change is the idea that eating food that is bad for you is "treating" yourself. I'm not saying never eat cake again, but just don't lose sight of the fact that your slice of cake equals some extra amount of work that you will then need to do. I hate to admit this, but I agree with Richard Simmons on the issue of unhealthy snacks who says "A sliver is a slice is a slab is a slob." He should know since he lost over 100 lbs at least twice.


Be well!