Wow! Dr. John’s Mini Gardens look REALLY cool and perfect for container gardeners like us with minimal space. If we hadn’t already bought a bunch of pots for our plants, I would be seriously considering this! *takes another look* *emails page to husband*

We’ve been trying to find a good CSA to join in our area, but we’ve been put off by a couple of factors. First, it’s a large sum of money for us to cough up (between $400–$600 for the season) all at once. In addition, we would have to drive to pick up the boxes every week, which wouldn’t be so terrible, but for the ones we were considering, the pick-up points are rather far away and at inconvenient times.

So, imagine my glee when, while reading 5280, I discovered a service called Door to Door Organics! It’s a similar sort of service, where you pay a weekly subscription fee and receive a box of organic produce. But the pros are numerous: you can receive mixed boxes of fruits and veggies (most CSAs we’ve found are entirely, or majority vegetables), you pay by the week, with no obligation to continue (so no large up-front cost), the service is year-round (CSAs only tend to run from mid-May through October), and the box is DELIVERED to your door!

While the food is seasonal and MOSTLY local, the only real drawback (if you can even call it that) we could find is that some of the produce is from other states. For example, this week, the boxes contain bananas — definitely not a Colorado crop. But when we thought about it, we decided that we were pretty likely to buy bananas (or apples, or whatever) anyway.

Deliveries in our area are on Wednesdays. Since we’ve already done our weekly shopping, we will probably try out this service next week. Stay tuned for a review!

What a great weekend we had! The weather was gorgeous (sorry to anyone in the Northeast!), and on Saturday we went to the Boulder Farmer’s Market. Apparently, that is like the hot spot of the world up here, because I saw one co-worker and his wife and found out today that another co-worker was there as well! (Note to self: remember not to look like crap when going to the farmer’s market!)

It was really fun, with all kinds of cool booths. Not a whole lot of produce yet, but we did end up buying some salad greens, carrots, a parsnip, some fresh mushrooms, some goat cheese, and some peanut butter! Lurrrrrvely.

After stowing our purchases, we took a nice walk along Boulder Creek, which runs right through the middle of town. We were hungry when we got back, so we went to the prepared foods area and got lunch! Such cool stuff. Brandon had an ENORMOUS gyro very drippy with yoghurt sauce, and I had chicken and veggie dumplings in a soy ginger sauce that were AMAZING. We shared a fresh lemonaide and sat on the grass in the sun to eat. That’s when we saw the “Step It Up” National Climate Action Day parade go by, complete with a polar bear in water wings! 😦 There were people from the Sierra Club and lots of other eco-action groups set up to talk to you about changes you can make. (We felt smug, knowing all our power now comes from the wind!)

I thought the other very cool thing about the Market is that it’s designated a “trash-free zone” — instead of trash cans, they have recepticals for compostibles and recyclables. No trash! Very cool.

Sarah-Louise, a third-year journalism student Chester University in England, writes:

I am currently writing articles for a campaign, to encourage people to eat locally produced food and as such I am looking for anyone, living in or around Chester, who would like to take up the challenge of eating only local food for at least two weeks. If anyone would be interested in helping with this feature, I would really like to hear from them.

If you fit the criteria and are interested in taking on Sarah-Louise’s challenge, you can email her at 04163038 (at) chester (dot) ac (dot) uk –– replacing the parantheticals with the correct punctuation, of course.

Cheers, Sarah-Louise! And good luck!

So, hailing from the land of Weight Watchers many moons ago, I am a big proponent of the office snack drawer. I’m a major snacker. When I’m bored, I snack. And I tend to also get legitimately hungry between meals. I’ve never been a big fan of vending machines (although, there are always times when a craving strikes…) and there isn’t on in this office anyway, but I have been known to bring nothing but high-carb, high-sugar, high-fat snacks to work.

No longer! At lunch today I hopped over to the Vitamin Cottage near my office –– a local health food store here in Colorado. I wandered the store for a good 45 minutes and came up with some good stuff.

First and foremost, Bare Fruit 100% Organic Bake-Dried Fuji Apple Chips are awesome! They are something between crunchy and chewy with awesome apple flavor and –– best of all! –– they have only 29 calories and NO FAT per serving! This is just what I need for the mid-afternoon slump boredom munchies. Guilt-free goodness.

I got some Soy Crisps in sea salt flavor. They’re… OK. They taste a lot like the Quaker rice snacks I used to nosh all the time on WW, but these have something of a strange aftertaste. HOWEVER! I got them to fulfil my chips-with-sandwich addiction, and I think they would probably be rockin’ with salsa (assuming they don’t disintegrate in the liquid…), which I intend to investigate ASAP.

I also got some Santa Cruz Apple Apricot Sauce for those times when I’m dying for something sweet come 3 o’clock. (It happens!) I haven’t tried these yet, but I like apple sauce; I like apricots. Where’s the bad? Also, these come in individual servings, so they’re easy to stash in the desk drawer.

Finally, I couldn’t resist the Good Health Natural Foods Peanut Butter Filled Pretzles. I am such a sucker for these, man. At least they come in a small bag and are all-natural. Hey, it could be worse! I could’ve picked up a bag of Have’a Chips! Mmm… Remind me of the shake shack in Laguna Beach, which, alas, is now a Ruby’s diner. 😦

OK! Back to work! Better break out those apple chips…