Food, glorious food!

We picked up our first of (at least) three monthly baskets today. We are hoping that it makes us enjoy cooking again, and helps us be more creative in the kitchen than we have become lately. Everything in the basket looks great, and we have already planned our weekly menu around all the great produce. Here is the complete list of what was in our basket:

• Milk, 1/2 gallon (organic, low-fat)
  
• Raw-milk Colby cheese
• Bacon
• Rice
• Shiitake mushrooms
• 3 bags of purple hull peas (like black eyed peas, but with a purple bit instead of black)
• A bag of basil
• A bag of spring salad mix
• 3 smallish Japanese eggplants
• 1 or 2 pint box of grapes
• 1 or 2 pint box of peppers, several varieties
• 5 sweet potatoes
• Loaf multi-grain bread
• Watermelon
• 1 jar grape jelly
• 1 jar honey

The basket is $60/month, which breaks down to $15/week. This is a little bit steep, perhaps, but I know that we would spend more than $15/week if we could go to the Austin/Sunset Valley farmer's market, or the Seattle University District Market. Now, most of what is in the basket will be gone at the end of this week, but not all of it. We are putting two of the bags of peas in the freezer for use at a later date. I might put the bacon away too, if I can resist its lure at breakfast time. The honey and jelly will last for quite a while. And we can supplement with the other CSA-type program I found, which is delivered every other week. Anything to make cooking (and eating) fun again!

Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah

Last night was the opening game of the football season here at UCA. We sort of knew it was happening, since several campus parking lots near us were closed all day, but apart from that didn't pay much attention...until the loud boom that we took to be a cannon went off. Being curious folks, we sauntered outside to see what a game here looks like.
It turned out that it wasn't a cannon - just fireworks that went off at the beginning of the game, anytime UCA scored, and at the end. The ones at the end were quite nice, but the others were just noise. They sounded like a cannon because they were being set off in the baseball field, which is even closer than the football field - a five minute walk away.
We weren't sure if we would be allowed top watch the game from outside the fence - at UT I am pretty sure you wouldn't be allowed to, if there was an empty end of the stadium. Here, however, we could have watched the entire game from outside. Yes, the angle towards the field and all the milling students (see top two pictures) meant that you missed anything close to the ground, but as demonstrated in the bottom picture, this didn't seem to bother the hoardes standing outside. I think most of the people in this picture are students, probably from the frats and sororities, since many of them had Greek t-shirts on. Anyway, it was a fun party atmosphere, and the students in the stands (top picture) were enthusiastic. The band was rather good - lots of complicated cheers and drumming. The adults - alumni? - were rather more subdued. I guess they needed some thunder sticks, like the students all had.

We didn't stay all that long, but do intend to actually attend a football game - unlike UT tickets are affordable, and we wouldn't have to worry about parking!

Oh my gosh!

I got a comment from Julie Zickefoose! I feel like I have had a brush with a celebrity - seriously! I love her blog - the writing is great, the pictures are awesome...and she commented on my last post!

Hoo. Now that I have calmed down a little bit, on with the regular business of this blog - talking about me . In our search for local, organic food here in Conway, we have had some great suggestions from various members of Benjamin's new department. As a result, while we don't have a really good farmer's market, we have found not one but two CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) groups. One provides subscribers with a mixed basket once a month, and another lets subscribers order from the products on hand and then delivers them every other week. I have signed us up for both, and we will be picking up our first basket this weekend. I am really excited about it. The basket comes from the same people who do the one organic market in Little Rock, but we don't have to spend an hour driving there and back (in our poor car with no A/C), and it is steady support. That is what these small, local groups need - our support. Critics argue that there is no way organic agriculture can support the entire population, and that such programs are elitist and out of reach for the poor among us. Yes, they are a bit more pricey than going to the grocery store, but the produce and other food tastes so much better for not having been trucked to Arkansas from California. And no, such small local movements cannot, as they are now, support large numbers of people - but with our support, the amount of land and food devoted to such causes can grow, and the number of people that can be fed can grow, and the prices can come down. No product or business can reach its maximum potential unless it has support. Do you think Whole Foods could have gotten so big without people using and buying its products? Of course not. Not that I want all these little local producers to get as big as Whole Foods - that isn't the point (and it ruins some of the joy of it), but I would like the farmers to be able to support themselves with their labors, and I would like the amount of land that is farmed in sustainable ways to increase. I realize that I am mostly preaching to the choir here, since y'all who read this tend to agree with me about such things, but it never hurts to repeat such sentiments for the few people who stumble across my blog and don't know such things.