Where my food comes from...

If you've ever read this blog or talked to me for very long about food, you know the last couple of years have been a journey toward eating more whole and, recently, more locally grown food. It's been an interesting and educational ride and in the last couple of months, we've moved to getting our food from more farms and I'm so excited about it.

I realized the other day that I get most of my food from places other than the grocery store now. I used to read blog posts about people who got all their food from farmers markets or local farms and think, yeah right, but now I understand how feasible it really is to eat mostly locally grown, whole food.

So here is where I get my food:

Fruits, Veggies and Eggs: Grow Alabama-This is a local CSA. A CSA is a way to support local farmers by paying, for us, a monthly fee and eating a certain number of fruits and veggies from local farmers for that month. We get 10 servings of 5-7 different fruits and veggies as well as eggs per week. This organization is awesome because you can choose all your fruits and veggies online and they are delivered to a central location once a week for pick up.

MILK-I finally found a source for raw milk and I'm still working on drinking my first two gallons that I picked up. I keep two quarts at a time in the fridge and the rest is frozen until we can drink it. In Alabama it's illegal to buy raw milk straight from the farmer, so you buy a share of the cow and then you can do whatever you want with the milk, including drink it! :) It's delicious and I think the health benefits of that combined with eating the grass fed beef have really beefed up (no pun intended) my immune system. Usually by this point in the school year I've had a couple of colds and this year not one so far. I have to believe it's a drastic change in my diet and getting plenty of sleep. I am feeling a little under the weather right now, but my husband has had walking pneumonia and I can feel my body fighting it off. For someone who used to run out of sick days every year at work, the fact that I'm fighting off walking pneumonia and not totally grossly sick right now is a BIG deal.

Bread: I've made my own bread a couple of times and want to keep doing that. I found a great recipe from Musings of a Housewife that makes four loaves at one time, but I just haven't had time to do it in the last few weeks. When I get some time off from work, I want to make several batches and freeze it. So right now we get the bread with the least offensive ingredients from Publix.

BEEF: We've started ordering all of our beef and butter from US Wellness Meats. This site is AWESOME! They have 100% grass fed beef from different farmers all over the country. They ship it to you frozen in a cooler that keeps it frozen even if it sits outside because we're not home yet. You have to order $75 of food at a time, but there's only a $7.50 shipping and handling charge no mater how much you order! We finally got an extra freezer and so we order in bulk now (20-25lbs.) and freeze it until we're ready to eat it. We've bought mostly ground beef and the hamburgers we're making in our cast iron skillet with the beef are AMAZING. Best burgers I've ever had.

Miscellaneous: I still get our chicken from Cost Co. They have organic, but I'm going to ask my milk guy soon about getting some of his free range chickens. We also get Larabars from Cost Co. They are awesome for snacks and have only whole food ingredients. And I drink a good supply of unsweet tea that sometimes we make at home and sometimes we buy Milo's Unsweet Tea at the grocery store. It only has water and tea in it.

I think that's pretty much it. I'm sure I missed a couple of things, but that's the majority of our food right now. I know to some people it's completely crazy to venture outside of a perfectly good grocery store for food or to drive over an hour to get milk, but I really think it's worth it. If it wasn't, I wouldn't do it. I'm so excited I'm getting back to eating the way people used to before processed food and high fructose corn syrup!