Read This: The Urbivore

I've discovered a new blog--The Urbivore's Dilemma.

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Prediger at Urbivore's Dilemma.

I was turned on to it by the folks over at GOOD. (Check them out if you're not already familiar.) It chronicles a New Yorker's experience of switching from a diet consisting of mostly take-out to one of primarily local produce from her new CSA share.

Since this is my first year as a CSA shareholder (I've bought into an Urban Farm Project), I immediately understood the dilemma. The challenge of a CSA is not only adjusting to a vegetable-based diet, but of learning to cook with whatever food is fresh, in-season, and available. The first few weeks of my CSA were hard to navigate--lots of lettuce and greens, beets, and turnips. (I froze a lot of the root vegetables, hoping to figure out what to do with them at a later time.) But the past few weeks have been much easier--carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, etc. It's been a relief to use the vegetables in meals I would normally cook, but still gives me a little room to experiment. The familiarity of the more recent produce makes my investment seem more reasonable.

I'm excited to follow along with the Urbivore's experiment in changing her diet and maybe get some good ideas for my own local produce experiment. Does anyone else want to share their experience of learning to eat local, in-season produce? Recipes? Funny recipe failures?

Urban Gardening--In a dumpster?

I came across an interesting post on Apartment Therapy's Re-Nest blog.
Has anyone heard of Dumpster Gardening?

(Photo courtesy of the brilliant minds at Apartment Therapy.)

Click here for the link.

The idea, I suppose, is to transform abandoned trash dumpsters into planters for urban gardening. It seems like a good enough idea for someone like me with a couple empty parking spaces in my lot, but not a single blade of grass. But, are there really a multitude of abandoned dumpsters hanging around in your city?

Let me know if you spot one!