One of the first deliveries Swiss Chard, Mushrooms, Bacon, Eggs, Grass Fed Beef, Radishes, and Eggs
Farm Fresh-Delivery Service
There is nothing like farm fresh ingredients and supporting local farmers for some amazing seasonal produce and meats, straight from the farm to your table. Growing in popularity, many farms are offering farm fresh delivery services that comes straight to your door with their CFC programs. Let me share about our local farm and all the wonderful ingredients we have received this spring and summer.
Purchasing From Local Famers
The great thing about being here in Northern Alabama is the easy access to some delicious fresh farm ingredients and a plethora of farmers markets loaded with fresh produce and grass-fed meats.
Currently, peaches are the hot commodity and truly in season and they have been spectacular this season! Oh, so juicy and delicious beyond words! Zucchini has been another and they are so great on the grill.
After relocating from a bigger city a few years ago, I definitely feel spoiled. Nothing like acquiring ingredients locally that just have a slight edge on taste than your local grocery stores.
Not only buying local allows for optimal taste but incredible freshness too. There is no long-term process of transporting food to your grocery store and no middleman involved! Picked straight from the garden to your table. Simple as that!
Farm to Table
Speaking of farm to table, one of my first inspirations was back in Washington D.C. where I spent 16 years in a suburb outside of the city. I must share of a really great “Farm to Table”, farm fresh restaurant that we loved going to frequently. Founding Farmers, located right by George Washington University, in Foggy Bottom.
Can I say the food is just fantastic. So good in fact, you feel like you are sitting at your grandmother’s table. Stick to your ribs, delicious, and great tasting food is their signature farm fresh flare. Highly recommend if you visit DC. Be sure to make a reservation as it is so popular!
Oh btw, breakfast is definitely something you should try. Their brioche French toast and Uncle Buck’s Beignets are quite memorable. A must try! Hint: Three sauces accompany each beignet order (chocolate, raspberry, and caramel), you can thank me later 🙂
Farmed Fresh Delivered to Your Door
Duncan Farms is a local farm here in our area that does farm deliveries twice a month straight to your door. You provide the cooler at your front door every other Friday; they provide the delicious farm fresh ingredients. In my book, they have Amazon beat!
CSA Program
CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs are subscription-based offerings from farms that offer an assortment of ingredients from their local farms straight to your doorstep. I love the fact they deliver!
Duncan Farms delivers every other week a cooler full of a variety of farm fresh ingredients from their local 60-acre farm. Most of what you receive is based on seasonality. The great advantage here is the freshness and variation of super nutritious foods you get to try!
Farm Fresh Promise
They pride their farm by offering no chemicals, synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, hormones, or antibiotics! Love it! They desire to provide you the cleanest food possible and take care of their soil giving it the highest nutrition possible.
All their animals are graze on their open land and are closest to the wild they can be.
Admittingly, I never had grass-fed meat till I moved here and boy what a difference in taste and deliciousness! Not sure I can go back now! Gives new meaning to “Farm fresh.”
Fresh Delivery to Your Door
Each week I get a cooler full of farm fresh:
- Eggs
- Protein (grass fed beef and chicken, bacon)
- Seasonal Veggies
- Seasonal Fruits
- Greens
- Unique Item (cheeses and jams)
I almost can’t wait when delivery day arrives. My friend and I compare notes on recipe ideas in how to use all the ingredients each delivery.
Additionally, they send an email letting you know a few days before what you will be getting in your delivery and even recipes to boot! Yeah!
Some Favorites
Pasture Raised Eggs
Picking a favorite is so hard, because I love everything, we have gotten in our farm deliveries! However, one ingredient that shines through, provided in every delivery is pasture raised eggs. Wow, they are absolutely delicious and even look more nutritious. The yolks are super orange and so rich and full of omega 3’s. Definitely a game changer in my morning scrambled eggs.
Not only in how they look, but definitely in the taste department! Incredibly creamy and delicious. I love sauteing chopped veggies first than incorporating the eggs in for a great veggie scramble. Quiche is another great use for these guys, and you can throw just about anything in there.
My go-to foundational recipe for quiche is as follows:
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup cream
- 1/2 cup cheese
- sauteed veggies (I like mushrooms, spinach, swiss chard, onions, tomatoes, and of course… bacon)
Bacon
Are you a bacon lover as much as I am? Well, I thought I had good bacon until I tasted some of Duncan’s straight from the farm style. Wow, I cannot describe how awesome this stuff is. Cooks up differently than the bacon I buy in the store. The flavor is so incredible and my whole house smells amazing for days afterwards! Added plus!
Food Marketing: What Does It All Mean?
With all the new terminology out there with food labeling and advertising with dairy and meats, initially had my head spinning at one point. Do I buy organic, free range, pasture raised? Which one is best and what does it all mean?
Here is a brief run down on terms for a simple mental cheat sheet
- ORGANIC: The feed animals get versus GMO related feed (usually in the form of grain)
- FREE RANGE: (Poultry only) animals have access to eat in the outdoors but not on pasturelands
- GRASS-FED: Animals graze and eat only in a pasture, round the clock consuming mostly a grass diet
- GRASS-FINISHED: Animals that primarily eat a grain diet but do not receive any grain prior to processing (usually 30-90 days before) but instead eat grass-fed diet at the end
- PASTURE RAISED: Animals have access to pastureland where they consume grass, bugs, and insects as their diet
Shout out to these amazing hard-working farmers in feeding our communities and offering up the season’s best ingredients.
Here are a few other posts with farmers market finds:
Peach Cherry Pies-Farmers Market Inspiration
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