Week 10 is shaping up to be another phenomenal week of fresh produce.
Members of the Central Brooklyn CSA, Week 10 is shaping up to be another phenomenal week of fresh produce. As of noon Tuesday, we expect
Please note that this list is likely incomplete, we hope to be able to update it closer to harvest time!
There are a whole lot of great places to find recipes here, just as there are a great many ways to prepare our amazing CSA produce.
Did you realize there are three places to find great tasting recipes on the Central Brooklyn CSA blog?
There are a whole lot of great places to find recipes here, just as there are a great many ways to prepare our amazing CSA produce.
Eat well.
Did you know that there is a Planning Team which works on tasks involving the direction, and day-to-day running of the CSA? If not, we invite you to attend our next meeting on Thursday, August 5th. We’ll be meeting at 7 PM at LaunchPad, a meeting space at 721 Franklin Ave (on the corner of Park Place). At this meeting we will be discussing the direction of the CSA, including newsletter design, event planning, volunteer coordination, farmer communication, and community building.
Getting involved with the Planning Team is a great way to fulfill your volunteer hours if you are unable to volunteer at distribution. If you have any feedback on your experience with the CSA, or if you would just like to be more involved, please consider attending! Any questions can be fielded to Maia at CentralBrooklynCSA@gmail.com, or to J.T. at jtcrockett@gmail.com.
For our first Central Brooklyn CSA Blog Meal we made garlic scape pesto and spaghetti, served with a farm fresh fried egg, garnished with fresh cilantro and black pepper: it tastes as awesome as it sounds!
Many of us who picked up our first week of vegetables from Central Brooklyn CSA had the same question: “what in the world is a ‘garlic flower’ and what do I do with it?” Alas, there is nothing to fear, garlic flowers (or, as they are sometimes called, “garlic scapes “) are delicious and just happen to be the centerpiece of our first Central Brooklyn CSA Blog Meal (feel free to help us come up with a better title for the blog meal, too)!
Garlic flowers are members of the Allium family, along with onions, leeks, and scallions. And, yes, as the name implies, these curvey tubes are in fact part of the garlic plant. Famers cut the superfluous stems and buds off of garlic bulbs (or heads, as we call them once harvested) to focus the plants energy on the bulb and not the stalk and flower.
Don’t worry! In addition to the great tips and recipes you’ll get from your fellow CSA members, NPR put out a great list of cookbooks highlighting easy to prepare and delicious recipes focused around eating locally. Check it out here.
We are happy to announce that next Wednesday, May 26th from 6 – 8 PM will be our Farmer Meet and Greet, with Martin and Gaudencia Rodriguez of MimoMex Farm. This is your time to introduce yourself to the people growing your food, to get to know them, and to ask them questions about the farm!CSA’s help you make personal changes that will likely positively affect more than just you. What a way to begin to make a difference.
A lot of the news I read and watch tells me that we all need to try harder to live within our means. Whether that means, sticking to a budget, or making more Earth-aware decisions, or even watching what we eat so that we can enjoy life and avoid costly trips to the doctor. There is no one thing any of us can do that will improve every aspect of our lives, but for my money, joining a CSA is a great place to start.
Spend Differently
The membership fee in most CSA’s goes directly to the farmer as seed money, and Central Brooklyn CSA is no different. The reasoning is simple: by knowing whom they are planting for and how much they need to harvest, farmers are able to budget better and ultimately save money. CSA memberships can help members apply that same logic to their personal finances. By pre-paying for a season’s worth of produce, members can better plan their grocery budgets, save money week-to-week, and not have to worry about the price of carrots or lettuce going up every time they go shopping.
Buy Differently
Buying food from local farmers is literally investing in your own community. Spending money in your neighborhood keeps business in your neighborhood and encourages those businesses to provide the products and services you like. But buying food from local farmers is also an investment in our global community. Not only does buying from a local farmer reduce the gas used to ship food by as much as 90%, but often, as is the case with our farm MimoMex, CSA farmers refrain from using petroleum-based fertilizers, which also reduces the use of (and harmful by-products) of fossil-fuels. Did you realize that 1 in every 6 gallons of oil used in America is used for agriculture? By joining a CSA and buying locally-grown foods, you can help change this.
Eat Differently
If making a change can help you live a more healthy and productive life, isn’t that a change worth making? Sometimes the most important change we can make is within ourselves. For some folks, the hardest part of joining a CSA is committing to eat fresh vegetables and fruit. Cooking at home and eating produce everyday is different if you are not used to it, true enough. Replacing chips, crackers, and sugary snacks with fresh produce can reduce your risk of diabetes, high blood-pressure, obesity, and cancer. What is more, the Central Brooklyn CSA is committed to helping our members find new, delicious, and healthy ways to prepare their produce!
CSA’s help you make personal changes that will likely positively affect more than just you. What a way to begin to make a difference.
Our good friend Cathy Erway wrote a great piece on the Central Brooklyn CSA… There is still time to sign up, but hurry! Shares are moving fast!
Becoming a member of the Central Brooklyn CSA is a great way to meet and connect with neighbors, support local business, make a positive impact on the planet, save money and get incredible food at an incredible price!
If you are keeping count this is the fourth installment in our “Why Should I Join?” series. If you want to read the earlier posts here is the intro, part 1 and part 2!
Do Something in Brooklyn
If you are like me, and you ride the train or bus to work, you may feel like very little of your life gets spent in your neighborhood, not inside your home. For me, one of the most fulfilling parts of a being a CSA member has been the fact that I get to meet and work with people in my neighborhood who almost always have at least one thing in common with me.
There are so many things to do in Brooklyn, it is often hard deciding which one is the right thing for you. Becoming a member of the Central Brooklyn CSA is a great way to meet and connect with neighbors, support local business, make a positive impact on the planet, save money and get incredible food. It may seem too good to be true, but it is the real deal!
Every adult member is expected to put in at least four (4) hours of volunteering over the course of 22 weeks, but you can put in as much as you desire. So if you find that you enjoy compiling and testing recipes with a new friend from Crown Heights, or working on our blog with a neighbor in Clinton Hill, or participating in nutrition workshop in Stuyvesant Heights, or just hanging out and cracking jokes with other members at Hebron SDA Church on distribution days, becoming a member is all it takes!
We would love for everyone to join the Central Brooklyn CSA, and even though we cannot make that happen, we are doing our best to make sure everyone who is interested at least has an opportunity.
Great news: due to the incredible response over the last week, we are extending the deadline to join the Central Brooklyn CSA! We are proud of the opportunity our CSA provides for members of our community to eat well for less, and want to make sure everyone that is interested in becoming a member has a chance to. Having said that, vegetable shares (standard memberships) and fruit and egg shares are going fast, so if you would like to become a member, we urge you to move quickly.
We have made a commitment to make at least 40% of our shares available to members making less than $35, 000, and we are keeping that commitment. However, in fairness to all potential members, we are accepting applications on a first come, first serve basis. (In other words, if you are planning on joining, you should know that the availability of shares is impacted by your income level.)
We would love for everyone to join the Central Brooklyn CSA, and even though we cannot make that happen, we are doing our best to make sure everyone who is interested at least has an opportunity.
If you are interested but have questions or financial concerns, please contact us (no need to panic!). If you sent in your deposit and membership agreement and want to make sure we received it, email us at CentralBrooklynCSA@gmail.com and we will get back to you right away.
Eat well, until we meet again!
