I saw this van over the weekend. I can’t for the life of me figure out why someone would need that many ladders and I also wonder if the van sways when it is driven. It was one of those things that you really can’t believe unless you take a photo, so I did.
I have done a ton of canning this year. Well my kitchen has a bit more counter space then what you see in this photo, but not much more (basically what is over a dishwasher). So I have had issues with figuring out how to store the jar rings so I can get to them, without them flying all over the kitchen. About a month ago I thought of this. It is my meat tenderizer. I put the weight at the bottom and it stands straight up. Now I have a place to put the rings and they are all happy! Best of all, I didn’t have to get another device for my tiny kitchen!
We are coming to the end of our CSA and I thought I would give you an idea of some numbers. Tony is all about numbers and data so here it goes. I know many people would cringe at the price of CSA’s so here is the long term numbers. We have paid about $15 a week for our veggie CSA. Yes we have got some fruit (raspberries and strawberries, and couple of watermelon) but mostly it has been veggies. With that we have frozen, canned and preserved what we couldn’t consume in the week and I will be honest and sadly some of it made it’s way to our compost heap. Our CSA is organic and honestly getting only $15 of organic veggies in Whole Foods wouldn’t get you very far at all.
Tony also figured out that our meat that we got cost us about $25 a week for how long it lasted us (this is just beef, pork and chicken). This is organic grass fed beef, pastured pork and pastured chicken (not free range… there is a difference). Just the organic grass fed hamburger in Whole Foods (if you can find it) is about $6-$7 a pound! So you can see if we could find the pastured pork or pastured chicken we would be paying a premium. I have yet to see either of those in Whole Foods.
So we are paying about $40 a week for our veggies and meat every week. This brings our normal grocery budget to well under $100 a week (often well under $80) for all the other stuff that we need. So as you can see that could be quite a savings especially when you think of how much we have preserved of the veggies that wouldn’t be included in that $15 as we will consume them after we finish the CSA.
You can find meat farmers here: http://eatwild.com, CSA’s can be found here: http://www.localharvest.org I highly recommend what we have done this year.