Posted on

Food Drive and Just Food Visit

On the second Tuesday of each month, we try to do something a little special at distribution. This month we have two small but highly relevant events:

OLS Food Drive
Our Lady of Sorrows food pantry is a full partner in our CSA — each week, any food left unclaimed by members gets collected by OLS volunteers to be distributed at their food pantry the next morning. They help ensure that none of our fresh food goes to waste.

Many emergency food organizations are dealing with cuts in funding and donations at the same time that even more families rely on their services. Please clean out your pantry of non-perishable food items and help us fill a box to complement our leftover veggies. We’ll have a box set up near the front of the amphitheater. If you’d like to add something to your shopping cart to donate, here is a list of suggested items:

brown/white rice, dried beans, cereal, oatmeal, peanut butter, canned meat or fish

Just Food Visit

Just Food is the non-profit that helped get us started — over the years, they’ve helped over 100 NYC neighborhoods connect with local farmers to create an extensive network of CSA throughout the city. They also take on issues of food justice, and help promote affordable, fresh foods in a variety of other ways.
This year, they’re formalizing their relationship with all the CSA members who have benefitted from their help by creating an CSA Network that each one of us contributes to — $5 of your membership fee goes to Just Food to help them build new CSAs and promote their mission, for a total of $580 from Grand Street CSA.

Just Food staff members Paula Lukats and Jessica Cortes will be joining us at our distribution this Tuesday to meet members, talk more about Just Food and answer questions about the new Just Food CSA Network. Be sure to take a minute to say hi when you pick up your share.

Posted on

Green Superheroes this Tuesday

This month’s Second Tuesday event features The Anthropologists, “company of artists dedicated to the creation of investigative, socially relevant, and engaging theatrical work.” They’ll be presenting their work, “Green Superheroes,” from 5:00 to 7:00 at distribution, and they need your help:

If the most awful evil confronting humanity today is the threat of climate change, who will do something about it? Where is Superman when we need him?

Join The Anthropologists on Tuesday, September 14 from 5-7PM and create your own superhero alter-ego! Actors will work with Grand Street CSA members to create eco-superheroes and design costumes from recycled materials and “clean trash” (e.g. paper towel rolls, packaging materials). Participants can invent a superhero character with special powers to help accomplish “green” goals, can complete a “Superhero Identification Card” and can even create a video podcast in character!

Community members are invited to contribute their own clean trash to this project!

Here they are in June at Go Green Day in the Bronx:


Go Green Day! from the anthropologists on Vimeo.

Posted on

Grill-a-Chef Recipes

Josh Stokes had a hand-out at distribution on Tuesday with a few very nice recipes, including the kale kimchi and zucchini relish that he had samples of. If you didn’t grab a piece of paper, here’s the PDF:

Posted on

Grill-a-Chef at Distribution this Tuesday

I’m really excited that the core members who organize our Second Tuesday events have pulled Josh Stokes down to Grand Street this week. Josh is a chef and a friend to farmers market addicts (and CSA members) who die a little at the end of the week when they have to throw away some veggies that just didn’t make it to the plate in time.

He’s put together this project called Grill-a-Chef, which is, unbelievably, a free kitchen advice service for you and me. He’s got a great blog, with recipes and other advice. He hangs out at the Union Square Greenmarket every Wednesday morning, 9am – 12pm, just to answer questions you may have about all the good stuff for sale. He does the same thing at Chelsea Market every other Friday, 12pm – 4pm.

But he’ll also just answer any question you email to him or post on his Facebook page. And he does this all for free (at least until someone in NYC puts him on TV or something).

Anyway, as noted previously, he’ll be at our distribution on Tuesday until 7:30, and he’s ready for any question you have related to the CSA or anything else going on or blowing up in your kitchen. So come prepared!

Posted on

2nd Tuesday!

Too much zucchini on your hands? Chef Joshua Stokes of Grill a Chef will be with us at the pickup this Tuesday from 5:15-7:30 to answer any kitchen questions you might have about how to make the most of your share via new ideas, different techniques, or just general info. So bring your culinary quandaries, whatever they might be and hopefully he can help you sort them out.

Grill-A-Chef personally guides cooks through their own kitchens, in order to encourage cooking and eating well. It offers free advice in the form of tips, recipes, fundamental techniques and simple demos. Use an unfamiliar ingredient, try a new style… Grill-A-Chef hopes to inspire creativity in the kitchen and to help your ideas to the table. See the latest newsletter here.

Posted on

Second Second Tuesday: Bake Sale!

On the second Tuesday of each month, we’re bringing a different event to our regular vegetable distribution at Abrons Arts Center. This week, we’ll be hosting a bake sale to benefit Share Our Strength,  a national organization working to combat childhood hunger. All proceeds from the bake sale will be going to support programs and services aimed at eliminating childhood hunger from the U.S.

Goods will be on sale from 5pm to 7pm, or until the last treat is sold.

Brings small bills ($1s and $5s) to purchase … or bigger bills to donate. (You can also donate online.)

Some, but not all, items will be organic. And we’ll have some gluten-free goodies, too.

Tell your family, co-workers, friends and foes!

Posted on

Announcing 2nd Tuesdays

This year, on the “2nd Tuesday” of each month, the Grand Street CSA will hold a community event during distribution, with the dual purpose of increasing our members’ knowledge about cooking, eating, and food AND giving us all an opportunity to hang out and get to know each other. We’ll have music, a topic table with helpful CSA-related information (“How to Care for Your Share” is the first one on June 8), cooking demos (we hope), and … whatever else you can help us with!

Please use the form below to let us know if you can participate.