Santa Cruz Local Foods
I've just tried out Santa Cruz Local Foods for the first time, and I'm very excited about it.
This is an interesting service that combines some of the better features of CSAs, grocery shopping, and farmers markets, letting you do an online order of foods sourced within 100 miles and then going and picking it up once a week. One of the great things about it is it's using software that looks like it's been set up to make a local hub anywhere -- so Santa Cruz is just one of the local sites. There are only a few others so far (in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and coming soon to BC), but I think this is an idea that could take off.
You shop on the site and pick out exactly what you want; unlike a CSA where you subscribe for a fixed amount of goodies per week, you can pick and choose on a per-week basis, and don't have to get anything at all. This is nice for people whose cooking schedules are more in flux, like ours. It does however cost a smidge more than I would be paying for the same food from the same farmer at the farmers market or local grocery store; there's a small surcharge for the service. What I like is that they have some things that I don't find at the farmers markets I usually go to, so it widens my range of produce. It's also a lot easier than going to the farmers market or grocery store, so I can use it as a fallback plan on weeks when I'm just too tired to go to the market. The pickup location isn't very hard for me to get to, though it does require driving (one of the advantages/disadvantages of the Wednesday market is that I can walk to it. Disadvantage because some weeks that's too exhausting for me.)
The food is just gorgeous and I'm very pleased by the quality.
Here's what I got for my trial order, all organic or grown using organic methods, if not yet certified:
* Local Mission olive oil; this is a buttery Spanish style that's different from the peppery Tuscan style I can get at the downtown market.
* Kaffir lime leaves; these babies are HARD to find. They freeze well so I will be able to preserve the excess.
* 5 pounds of "ugly" juicing Meyer lemons, for $1/lb. (This is way cheaper than the norm I see at the store/farmers markets.) I don't think they're very ugly or blemished at all, despite the unseasonal rains causing problems this year. I'll get a lot of great zest from them as well as juice.
* A pound of Bearss limes.
* 2-lb min. bag of Haas avocados -- works out to 4.
* 2lbs of grass-fed ground beef.
* 1 lb of sunchokes. (I could pick these up at the market, but I was worried I might not make it this week so wanted to hedge my bets.)
Here's the best part: the fabulous-sounding pastured chicken from Hain Ranch Organics that I've been drooling over but having trouble figuring out how to buy? They'll start selling it in spring, when the season starts. Also turkey in the fall. So now we have no excuse to eat factory-raised chicken. This will be the year where most (maybe all?) of our animal protein is coming from animals who get to roam around pastures and actually eat things growing out of the ground. All within a hundred (well, 130, in the case of Straus) miles of where we live. So woot!
This is an interesting service that combines some of the better features of CSAs, grocery shopping, and farmers markets, letting you do an online order of foods sourced within 100 miles and then going and picking it up once a week. One of the great things about it is it's using software that looks like it's been set up to make a local hub anywhere -- so Santa Cruz is just one of the local sites. There are only a few others so far (in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and coming soon to BC), but I think this is an idea that could take off.
You shop on the site and pick out exactly what you want; unlike a CSA where you subscribe for a fixed amount of goodies per week, you can pick and choose on a per-week basis, and don't have to get anything at all. This is nice for people whose cooking schedules are more in flux, like ours. It does however cost a smidge more than I would be paying for the same food from the same farmer at the farmers market or local grocery store; there's a small surcharge for the service. What I like is that they have some things that I don't find at the farmers markets I usually go to, so it widens my range of produce. It's also a lot easier than going to the farmers market or grocery store, so I can use it as a fallback plan on weeks when I'm just too tired to go to the market. The pickup location isn't very hard for me to get to, though it does require driving (one of the advantages/disadvantages of the Wednesday market is that I can walk to it. Disadvantage because some weeks that's too exhausting for me.)
The food is just gorgeous and I'm very pleased by the quality.
Here's what I got for my trial order, all organic or grown using organic methods, if not yet certified:
* Local Mission olive oil; this is a buttery Spanish style that's different from the peppery Tuscan style I can get at the downtown market.
* Kaffir lime leaves; these babies are HARD to find. They freeze well so I will be able to preserve the excess.
* 5 pounds of "ugly" juicing Meyer lemons, for $1/lb. (This is way cheaper than the norm I see at the store/farmers markets.) I don't think they're very ugly or blemished at all, despite the unseasonal rains causing problems this year. I'll get a lot of great zest from them as well as juice.
* A pound of Bearss limes.
* 2-lb min. bag of Haas avocados -- works out to 4.
* 2lbs of grass-fed ground beef.
* 1 lb of sunchokes. (I could pick these up at the market, but I was worried I might not make it this week so wanted to hedge my bets.)
Here's the best part: the fabulous-sounding pastured chicken from Hain Ranch Organics that I've been drooling over but having trouble figuring out how to buy? They'll start selling it in spring, when the season starts. Also turkey in the fall. So now we have no excuse to eat factory-raised chicken. This will be the year where most (maybe all?) of our animal protein is coming from animals who get to roam around pastures and actually eat things growing out of the ground. All within a hundred (well, 130, in the case of Straus) miles of where we live. So woot!