Up Your Access to Fresh Food 8 ways

My garden & my CSA share are starting to feed my family.  I just love this.  The color, the energy and the taste of fresh uber fresh organic produce raised with love elevates everything.  We all need to eat whole fresh plants.  Here are 6 ways to increase your access to fresh food.

Back in the day, people ate fresh food everyday and they built strong healthy bodies as a result.  Now  most of us eat  their food out of boxes with multiple year shelf life.  I feel really privileged to have access to fresh naturally raised plants on a regular basis.

Unfortunately box food is much more accessible and cheaper than fresh produce.  Most of us have very little time to source and prepare our foods, less time to read and analyze all the labels. Do you see this happening in your house?

8 Ways you can get more Fresh Food on your plate

I divided these into two big categories, shopping and farming.

Change the way you Shop

• Prioritize Food dollars on Fresh Produce, skip or buy the boxes and processed stuff on sale in bulk. You are what you eat and digest.  Fill your body with the best nutrients you can access.
• Buy Whole Foods rather than partially prepared and save money. For instance zucchini versus zucchini pasta or a Whole Cauliflower versus cauliflower rice will save some money.  There are you tube videos you can use to process food with your kids for a fun project.
• Shop Sales and Warehouse Stores and divide with Friends. I go to Costco or BJ’s and buy big bags, then split them with a friend.  Pretty easy to share fresh produce and savings.
• Farmers Markets
  1. You can use food assistance programs at many farmers market, check this link for the details of the SNAP program.
  2. Get a job at a market or a farm stand.

Farm to Connect with Nature

• Grow Fresh Stuff
  1. Dig a small garden with your kids or partner and grow food. Start with easy grows like perennial  herbs which come back year after year, or low maintenance greens, that practically grow themselves.
  2. No land where you live?  Window boxes and pots with herbs can really punch up the freshness and nutrition in your meals.
  3. Community Garden plots are cheap in many towns. $25-100 bucks for the season  Water included.  For the cost of seeds and a little labor you can eat all summer.   I did this in graduate school when I was trying to live on a teaching assistant stipend.  The Garden helped a lot giving me fresh veggies from June through October.  Four of us split the labor and there was plenty to eat.
• Eat the Healthy Weeds There are a surprising number of edible weeds.  Make sure the place you collect has no heavy metals or pesticides.  Curious about what you can eat?  The Wild Wisdom of Weeds is a great book to start with.
• CSA Workshare Many CSA offer work shares.  Mine will trade labor one day a week for a vegetable share.  So if you have time but no money this can be a good deal.
• Use everything you can.
  1. Soups are a great place to use up quantities of veggies from the garden.
  2. Dehydrate Greens and herbs for later use. Click this link to get some information on dehydrating.
  3. Use stalks and peels to make broth. Make sure you trim off and dispose of anything bad or moldy.  Cooking with Veggie broth adds a lot of flavor.  Click this link for a left over veggie broth.

Get Creative & Keep it Simple

Share ideas and food with friends to add the cleanest freshest nutritionally dense food you can to your dinner table. Most of the ideas listed are pretty simple. Come up with ones that work for you.  Scroll down and add a way you use to increase the fresh food in your diet.  We literally build our lives from the food we eat, build a vibrant healthy life.

“Health is the First Wealth” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The information provided on this website is not a substitute for professional medical care, treatment or advice. All the material here is for information purposes only. Always share strategy and work with your health care team.