Local eating

Since my post yesterday I have done some digging into local eating.  We have a couple of farmers markets in Calgary, not close to where we live and are only open on the weekends at which time they are a zoo to get in and out of.  So doing some online searches and I found http://www.spud.ca/about/whatsnew.cfm and http://www.freshorganics.ca/.  Both of these companies deliver bins of fruit and vegetables to your door, both seem to be the same cost.  Spuds also has organic and home products, bakery items, just about everything you would find in a store.  Farm Fresh Organics is a bin delivery service with Family Fare, Bachelor Box, Fruit basket and Salad bowl options.  I have tried Farm Fresh Organics before, but this was when it was my husband and myself and I found that we just didn't eat the produce fast enough before it went bad.  Now that we have a family of four, it just might work. 

Here are the options for both:

Spuds:  you need to register with the site, then you "go shopping", pick your produce for your harvest box and checkout.  You can set your preferences for your harvest box, how often you want it delivered and how much you want to spend and you can edit your selections at any time.  One options I like is that you can choose variety before local, local before variety or local only.  If you are looking to support local farmers this is a great option.  There is a calculator to help you determine how much produce you will need and how often, also a great feature.  I also like that this company will deliver other groceries as well.  This is a company out of California.

Farm Fresh Organics:  this is the service we used before, we liked it, but as I said didn't eat it fast enough.  Their website was down for some options, so I will go by what I remember.  You had a bin deposit, I believe $20 and the produce was $35?,then choose how often to have it delivered.  You filled out a form, told them what you didn't want in the bin (celery, yuck!) your top 3 vegetables and top 3 fruits.  What I liked about this service is you never really knew what you were going to get, which made us try new fruits and vegetables.  The bins always contained something I had never heard of or never cooked with before, I liked that idea.  This is a local company out of Calgary.

I am going to do a bit of crunching and see if this is a budget friendly option for us.  It would seem that $35 every two weeks for fruits and vegetables would be a good idea, but will it be enough to feed the family?  I will keep you posted.

So here is what I have been eating lately, a couple of nights ago the rest of the family had beef dip and I had seitan dip with gouda cheese and yams fries, I made a veganiasse dip with dijon mustard and garlic for the fries and the seitan dip.  I also added a tomato slice after I took the picture.

Last night I made Pasta with Enlightened Alfredo Sauce from Nava Atlas, The Vegetarian Family Cookbook.  The alfredo sauce was made from soft tofu, my husband, who is not a fan of cream sauces at all, liked this and when I told him it wasn't a cream sauce he was quite surprised.  I topped the pasta with left over tomatoes from the seitan dip, to add some colour and a different flavour.  This is our daughters dish, this picture turned out better.

Tonight's dinner is Herbed Cheese Ravioli with Wild Mushroom Sauce from 1001 Low Fat Vegetarian Recipes.  The ravioli is made from won ton wrappers, I will let you know how they turn out, sounds interesting