Christmas Urban Acres Style

Today my daughter and I picked up our first Urban Acres share. In the car on the way over, I couldn't wait to get there. It was like the anticipation before Christmas morning.

"I bet there's squash," I said.

"What about apples?" she said. "I hope there are apples!"

We got to the pick up location, walked in and they were ready for us. The bin was huge. I mean, gi-normous. I lugged that bad boy to the car (fortunately, there were some nice people who held the door open for me) and as soon as we could, we popped the lid and started digging.

(Excuse the pictures... the battery on my stalkarazzi camera died, so these are taken with my cell phone. I'm not organized enough to know where the battery charger is, I'm waiting for antibiotics to kick in and don't have the energy to engage in a full scale search and rescue mission.)

(Back to the excitement:)

Squash! And lettuce! And a huge bag of parsley and thyme. Then we found the pears (not ripe enough to eat) and, ooh, ooh, APPLES! Did I mention the bin was enormous? Just sayin'. My daughter immediately grabbed an apple and dug in.

Later when we got home, we investigated all of the different types of squash. I'd never seen some of them before and I've been exposed to lots of different types of foods. (I spent junior high and high school living outside of the United States.)

Isn't this gorgeous?

My son grabbed his own green apple to munch on and, mouth full, informed me I could bake an apple pie. At least he's excited about the fruit.

This produce is intended to last us until the next pick-up in two weeks and it cost less than what I would pay at the store for that period of time. Urban Acres is so great, the bin comes with instructions on how best to wash and store the greens, making a plan for eating everything (in the order in which they will go bad first), and a sample recipe for cooking the squash.

The refrigerator is stocked! It didn't take long to wash everything. I also chopped up some of the onion, celery and carrots and put them in the freezer for later use.

This journey is definitely exciting. I've got a skeleton of a menu for the next two weeks outlined (only took about 20 minutes) and can't wait to see what the coming weeks bring.

I spent $54 at Whole Foods and $21 at Target (on Tazo chai tea latte concentrate and soy milk). I'll start seriously tracking my budget starting November 1st, because that just seems to make sense to me.

In the mean time, I'll try to find my camera battery charger.