{"id":52089,"date":"2014-10-14T00:09:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T07:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=52089"},"modified":"2014-10-14T00:09:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T07:09:42","slug":"know-your-food-merit-badge-intermediate-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/52089","title":{"rendered":"Know Your Food Merit Badge, Intermediate Level"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tThe adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our<\/span> Sisterhood Merit Badge program<\/a>, now with\u00a06,065 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far\u20148,688 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Wondering who I am? I\u2019m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my<\/span> former life<\/a> \u2026\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For this week\u2019s Farm Kitchen\/Know Your Food Intermediate Level Merit Badge<\/a>, I channeled my despair over my non-producing cucumber plants, my acorn squashes (the bugs found them delicious), and my frostbitten cherry tomatoes, into something less sorrowful: realizing I could use a CSA for some of my veggie needs.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a CSA, you may ask? Is it like CSI, Miami? Uh, no. Not so much. Less violence, more arugula. Less drama, more kale. Less movie stars, and more low-profile stars (like the oh-so-humble potato).<\/p>\n

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it\u2019s positively dreamy for beginning gardeners, such as Yours Truly. You support your local farmer by giving her a set amount at the beginning of the growing season, and she gives you a hand-picked bag of produce every week. While I may have grandiose dreams of perfectly flourishing gardens, they don\u2019t always come to fruition (get it? Fruition? Fruit? Gardening? hah), and I might need some professional help.<\/p>\n

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No, not that kind. Well, maybe that kind \u2026<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m working on the hue of my thumbs (while not green, they are a shade up from the black they used to be \u2026 a nice gray, if you will), I will pledge to support my friendly, local professionals. I mean, how can you possibly go wrong with homegrown, local, fresh, organic, produce? Um, yeah. You can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Did you know that most supermarket produce\u2014besides being coated in toxic chemicals and bizarre waxes\u2014lingers in trucks and boxes for up to a year in cold storage? Whaa? By that time, those brightly colored apples you\u2019re so happy to find for 98\u00a2 a pound have almost no antioxidants left in them at all. <\/em>And your orange juice (that sneakily doesn\u2019t really taste like oranges anymore) has probably been sitting in a vat for months and months, only to have some orange \u201cflavor packs\u201d stirred in. Aged wine? Yum. Aged OJ? Ick.<\/p>\n

Yikes, yikes, and double yikes. Here\u2019s where changing where you get your produce comes into play. The challenge for a lot of us is we really, really like \u201cone-stop shopping.\u201d I mean, come on, who wants to (and who has the time to) go to several different stores for different items? Can\u2019t we all just grab a cart and get it all at once at McWalShop?<\/p>\n

Well, make a small change, says I. Support your local farmers, who would love to cut you off a slice of their Golden Delicious, and who would happy to assure you it came fresh from a tree only a few hours before. You\u2019ll taste the difference, by golly, and you\u2019ll also bask in the warm glow that\u2019s the feeling you get when you do something beneficial for the community.<\/p>\n

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Once you\u2019ve picked out your very own CSA, snuggle down with a bowl of fruit and a copy of The Omnivore\u2019s Dilemma<\/em> by Michael Pollan. Your brain, your heart, and your tummy will thank you.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with\u00a06,065 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far\u20148,688 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ\u00a0 Wondering who … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gladsome_sisters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}