What we are doing here…

For the past year I have been writing the newsletter communications for the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group. I am a big supporter of CSA’s and I know that joining one changed my life to a degree that is very positive and palpable. And while I readily admit that the end result is a girl with a thousand new recipes up her sleeve, a much healthier diet, and a smaller carbon footprint, the transition was challenging and there were mishaps along the way. (Lots and lots of rotting fennel in the fridge…)

In the first few years as a CSA member I struggled alone with my fear of fennel, the experiments with new types of kale, and a new found love of winter squash. When I became a member of the core group of the GWCSA I believed that one of the main ways I could help in organizing the group was to aid in communication and share the things I had learned from myself, friends in CSA’s, and other members I would talk to at distribution. I started writing a weekly newsletter to help people understand what they were actually signing up for (ie, not the Costco of organic foods), giving advice on how to prepare for the life transitions that CSA membership will involve (like receiving food you would really never buy), offering up new recipes for unfamiliar vegetables and fruit, and acting as a conduit of information between our members and our farmers. It was a job that I loved and I really got into writing these weekly guides to CSA living. Due to random life circumstances, I am no longer a part of the GWCSA core group and therefore not writing the weekly communications, however, I still wanted to keep writing my little diatribes…

…and so was born the “if Yo can cook” blog.

Yo Lim is my boyfriend and partner in all things CSA. And believe me, if he can survive CSA membership, anyone can.

The first year I joined, he willingly (and rather naively) jumped on board with me and my roommate Phil as we purchased our first share. We had decided that the MegaCombo share (with its weekly vegetable, fruit, egg and flower deliveries) was the best deal but we kinda wanted/needed another person to share it with. He wasn’t a real big cooker, eating out regularly, but it seemed like a good idea to him. Little did he know that he would be swimming in vegetables and expected to actually cook bok choy on a regular basis.

The first year was “easy” with 2 couples splitting the loot and our more adventurous roommate Phil tackling the fennel and kohlrabi. However, the next year Yo and I decided to buy our own share and soon found ourselves struggling with some parts of CSA membership. That year we never quite used everything (celery root be dammed!) but we made major steps to really embracing a local, seasonal diet and began to use all of our share on a regular basis. 4 seasons later we have become a rather good team in cooking up our CSA shares in delicious (and maybe even nutritious) ways, rarely adding more than cooking scraps to the compost pile. We have expanded our repertoire, learned a lot about the Northeast growing season, experienced the pitfalls of small-scale organic farming, and developed some new opinions about eating green.

This blog will be our sounding board for all things food related. A sort of survival guide to the Greenpoint-Williamsburg CSA, a how-to guide on living green in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and our own take on personal sustainability. We hope you enjoy.