While most weeks, I focus on the magical trip to the farmers' market to get our CSA share, I thought perhaps I should talk a bit about what happens after the farmers' market - namely, our trip to the co-op to pick up the non-vegetable items and the few things we need to finish out recipes. This post will be long, heavy on photos, and high on praise!
First things first: what the heck is a co-op? A co-op, or a food cooperative, is a member-owned grocery store. You pay a certain amount to become a member of the co-op, in exchange for which you usually receive a discount from the advertised prices for things. (However, anyone can shop at a co-op: you don't have to be a member.) Our co-op includes a working membership option, where adults in the household can contribute 6 hours of work a year for an additional bit off your bill each week. The kinds of work vary from actually working at the co-op - say, helping people in the bulk section or packaging up prepared foods - to working at community farms and gardens, to packing meals for the local Meals on Wheels organization or calling bingo at the senior center. That means working membership is a great way to get engaged with your food, but also with your community. (You can learn more - and find out if you have a co-op near you - at the Cooperative Grocer Network.)
Being a member also means you get voting responsibilities and a say in how the co-op is led and what kinds of initiatives it takes on. Co-ops have relationships with local food producers and prioritize high-quality, ethical food and community engagement. (I cannot say enough good things about our co-op, and if you are also in the greater Philadelphia area, please check out Weavers Way.)
We're still new to the co-op - we haven't even done new member orientation yet - and still very much in love! I'll share a few of our favorite stops at the co-op as I walk through today's trip.
Stop one: produce. At this time of year, this is where we spend the least time, sadly. However, whatever's in season is usually on sale: we noticed fabulous sales on peaches and tomatoes this week, and we did pick up some corn. (We had roasted corn at a baseball game this week, and I am desperate to try making it at home.) A lot of the produce here is grown right at the co-op's farm, which partners with an agricultural high school in the city. Other local produce comes from nearby farms, and produce is generally signed to tell you where it comes from.
One of the revelations of the produce section has been the fair-trade bananas. Karen loves bananas, whereas I can generally take them or leave them. But not these. They stay fresher longer than the bananas we got at our traditional grocery store, tend to bruise less, and actually have a flavor. I, the fussy one, love them, and they will still be good at the end of the week when we run out of our CSA fruit - so we picked up a couple to accompany breakfast.
Next stop, time to pick up cheese and the weekly deli pickle.
Karen loves pickles, so we stop almost every week for the weekly snack pickle, which usually gets eaten on our way home. I love that there are pickle barrels, which I associate with the little grocery store near the place I grew up. Also, we recommend the "zesty" variety. Yum.
The deli will also wrap your meats and cheeses in paper, if you prefer. There are lots of gorgeous prepared foods here. I took some pictures, but mostly we resisted the treats. (At some point, I will definitely post my attempt to recreate the Moroccan carrot salad, though.) We did need lots of cheese this week - a few different varieties are required for our recipes - so we spent a while poking around in the deli area.
Even more exciting, we discovered the cheese scraps! The odd ends of cheese, left over when it is cut into slices of appropriate size for purchase, don't get wasted at the co-op. Instead, they are wrapped up and sold. This means if you need just a bit of something, you may genuinely be able to get just a bit of it. Or you can try a variety you've never had before at an incredibly low-risk price. We picked up a piece of high-quality parmesan for... $1.50. It's supposed to go in a Caesar salad recipe, but if I'm being honest, there is a possibly I'm just going to eat it.
From the deli, it was off to the meats (and seafood). We have reduced our meat consumption a lot, and the meat that we do eat comes from right here, where we can get locally sourced "happy meat," as my dad calls it. Seafood is locally sourced as much as possible, and there's a buying guide right on the top of the display case to help shoppers determine which seafood is safe and which varieties are a little less clear in origin. We didn't need anything today, but we stopped to chat with the butcher, who we met when we hit the Fourth of July sale on Wednesday. We shared tips on making strawberry shortcake, and he told us he was in the process of trying out an apple pie style shortcake in the back with the kitchen staff. After wishing him luck and telling him to let us know how it went, we were off to my favorite bit of the co-op.
THE BULK SECTION. I am in love with the bulk section. I swear we find something new every week. Given that we are trying to reduce the packaging in our house, the bulk section was a major draw to the co-op in the first place. We bring our own jars to fill with what we need. And, well, let's be honest, I usually bring a couple of extra jars, too. However, if you forget your jar (or perhaps didn't realize that you really do need those chocolate-covered pretzels), you can put your goodies in a paper bag - or buy a container right on the spot!
Many grocery stores have bulk sections now, where you can get some grains and granola (and usually a lot of candy). We can get all those grains in bulk - rice, couscous, barley, farro, quinoa, and others all in multiple varieties. There's a row of granola choices. There are two-plus shelves of dried beans and peas. And yes, there are some candy choices available. This was the week when I finally got the mini peanut butter cups I have been gazing at longingly since our first co-op trip.
But we can also get flour. White flour, wheat flour, almond flour, bread flour, gluten-free flour. Cocoa. Baking soda and baking powder. Corn starch. Popcorn kernels. Tea and coffee - and spices. Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, maple syrup, soy sauce, tahini, kombucha, a massive range of nut butters. If you want it, you can probably get it in bulk. There's even a display (separate from the bulk food) where you can get bulk laundry detergent.
Did I mention that things are actually cheaper by quite a lot if you buy them in the glorious, amazing bulk section? Today we needed panko, quinoa, onion powder, and lentils. We paid 17 cents for a cup of panko, 83 cents to fill our glass pantry jar with quinoa, $1.73 for our onion powder, and $3.73 for a quart-sized jar of green lentils. Find me a jar of any spice that costs $1.73 at a traditional grocery store. I'll wait. (And my 8 oz jar of peanut butter cups was only $2.)
Last but not least, we picked up the "normal" grocery bits. Things are priced reasonably competitively with other local grocery stores, though I will concede that some things are indeed more expensive because they're organic and/or ethically sourced. Since the co-op is smaller, you do have fewer options. Honestly, I was worried about this at first, but it's a really good thing for our family. It turns out that you don't need an entire row of tomato sauce choices, or 140 varieties of pasta. (Oh yeah, I can also get bulk pasta, though we make ours at home the vast majority of the time.) To date, we have found almost everything we need at the co-op each week. I had a little trouble finding egg roll wrappers, and they don't carry one particular kind of rice cakes that we like to snack on. I can live with it.
After picking up the rest of our grocery bits, it was off to the dairy for cream cheese and local eggs. We also snagged a can of bake-at-home biscuits that were 50% off, because I can resist neither a sale nor a biscuit.
We were checking out, packing up our bags, when our friend the butcher reappeared at the registers - to offer us a piece of apple pie-style shortcake!! The cashier told us that the butcher feeds people at the front end all the time and offered us eco-friendly disposable forks. We assured her that we had our bamboo spoons, thanked her, and were off to the car to split our unexpected free snack. It was delicious.
And if you're wondering, our trip to the co-op cost us $91. It would have cost us $67 if we'd stuck to the list. (And that includes our snack pickle.)
So what's on the menu this week? Well, stay tuned. I'm currently planning a post titled "What do vegetarians even eat?" that will give you the usual play-by-play and tell you how we used our CSA basil, onions, chard, and more.
First things first: what the heck is a co-op? A co-op, or a food cooperative, is a member-owned grocery store. You pay a certain amount to become a member of the co-op, in exchange for which you usually receive a discount from the advertised prices for things. (However, anyone can shop at a co-op: you don't have to be a member.) Our co-op includes a working membership option, where adults in the household can contribute 6 hours of work a year for an additional bit off your bill each week. The kinds of work vary from actually working at the co-op - say, helping people in the bulk section or packaging up prepared foods - to working at community farms and gardens, to packing meals for the local Meals on Wheels organization or calling bingo at the senior center. That means working membership is a great way to get engaged with your food, but also with your community. (You can learn more - and find out if you have a co-op near you - at the Cooperative Grocer Network.)
Being a member also means you get voting responsibilities and a say in how the co-op is led and what kinds of initiatives it takes on. Co-ops have relationships with local food producers and prioritize high-quality, ethical food and community engagement. (I cannot say enough good things about our co-op, and if you are also in the greater Philadelphia area, please check out Weavers Way.)
We're still new to the co-op - we haven't even done new member orientation yet - and still very much in love! I'll share a few of our favorite stops at the co-op as I walk through today's trip.
One of the revelations of the produce section has been the fair-trade bananas. Karen loves bananas, whereas I can generally take them or leave them. But not these. They stay fresher longer than the bananas we got at our traditional grocery store, tend to bruise less, and actually have a flavor. I, the fussy one, love them, and they will still be good at the end of the week when we run out of our CSA fruit - so we picked up a couple to accompany breakfast.
Next stop, time to pick up cheese and the weekly deli pickle.
Karen loves pickles, so we stop almost every week for the weekly snack pickle, which usually gets eaten on our way home. I love that there are pickle barrels, which I associate with the little grocery store near the place I grew up. Also, we recommend the "zesty" variety. Yum.
The deli will also wrap your meats and cheeses in paper, if you prefer. There are lots of gorgeous prepared foods here. I took some pictures, but mostly we resisted the treats. (At some point, I will definitely post my attempt to recreate the Moroccan carrot salad, though.) We did need lots of cheese this week - a few different varieties are required for our recipes - so we spent a while poking around in the deli area.
Even more exciting, we discovered the cheese scraps! The odd ends of cheese, left over when it is cut into slices of appropriate size for purchase, don't get wasted at the co-op. Instead, they are wrapped up and sold. This means if you need just a bit of something, you may genuinely be able to get just a bit of it. Or you can try a variety you've never had before at an incredibly low-risk price. We picked up a piece of high-quality parmesan for... $1.50. It's supposed to go in a Caesar salad recipe, but if I'm being honest, there is a possibly I'm just going to eat it.
From the deli, it was off to the meats (and seafood). We have reduced our meat consumption a lot, and the meat that we do eat comes from right here, where we can get locally sourced "happy meat," as my dad calls it. Seafood is locally sourced as much as possible, and there's a buying guide right on the top of the display case to help shoppers determine which seafood is safe and which varieties are a little less clear in origin. We didn't need anything today, but we stopped to chat with the butcher, who we met when we hit the Fourth of July sale on Wednesday. We shared tips on making strawberry shortcake, and he told us he was in the process of trying out an apple pie style shortcake in the back with the kitchen staff. After wishing him luck and telling him to let us know how it went, we were off to my favorite bit of the co-op.THE BULK SECTION. I am in love with the bulk section. I swear we find something new every week. Given that we are trying to reduce the packaging in our house, the bulk section was a major draw to the co-op in the first place. We bring our own jars to fill with what we need. And, well, let's be honest, I usually bring a couple of extra jars, too. However, if you forget your jar (or perhaps didn't realize that you really do need those chocolate-covered pretzels), you can put your goodies in a paper bag - or buy a container right on the spot!
Many grocery stores have bulk sections now, where you can get some grains and granola (and usually a lot of candy). We can get all those grains in bulk - rice, couscous, barley, farro, quinoa, and others all in multiple varieties. There's a row of granola choices. There are two-plus shelves of dried beans and peas. And yes, there are some candy choices available. This was the week when I finally got the mini peanut butter cups I have been gazing at longingly since our first co-op trip.
But we can also get flour. White flour, wheat flour, almond flour, bread flour, gluten-free flour. Cocoa. Baking soda and baking powder. Corn starch. Popcorn kernels. Tea and coffee - and spices. Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, maple syrup, soy sauce, tahini, kombucha, a massive range of nut butters. If you want it, you can probably get it in bulk. There's even a display (separate from the bulk food) where you can get bulk laundry detergent.
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Did I mention that things are actually cheaper by quite a lot if you buy them in the glorious, amazing bulk section? Today we needed panko, quinoa, onion powder, and lentils. We paid 17 cents for a cup of panko, 83 cents to fill our glass pantry jar with quinoa, $1.73 for our onion powder, and $3.73 for a quart-sized jar of green lentils. Find me a jar of any spice that costs $1.73 at a traditional grocery store. I'll wait. (And my 8 oz jar of peanut butter cups was only $2.)
Last but not least, we picked up the "normal" grocery bits. Things are priced reasonably competitively with other local grocery stores, though I will concede that some things are indeed more expensive because they're organic and/or ethically sourced. Since the co-op is smaller, you do have fewer options. Honestly, I was worried about this at first, but it's a really good thing for our family. It turns out that you don't need an entire row of tomato sauce choices, or 140 varieties of pasta. (Oh yeah, I can also get bulk pasta, though we make ours at home the vast majority of the time.) To date, we have found almost everything we need at the co-op each week. I had a little trouble finding egg roll wrappers, and they don't carry one particular kind of rice cakes that we like to snack on. I can live with it.After picking up the rest of our grocery bits, it was off to the dairy for cream cheese and local eggs. We also snagged a can of bake-at-home biscuits that were 50% off, because I can resist neither a sale nor a biscuit.
And if you're wondering, our trip to the co-op cost us $91. It would have cost us $67 if we'd stuck to the list. (And that includes our snack pickle.)
So what's on the menu this week? Well, stay tuned. I'm currently planning a post titled "What do vegetarians even eat?" that will give you the usual play-by-play and tell you how we used our CSA basil, onions, chard, and more.
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