On Strawberry Pickin' — Cecelia Reilly

This is part 4 in a longer series of how we are taking 7 months to assess our lifestyles & try to be more intentional with our time and resources. If you are just joining us, you can start your binge here and this will all make more sense.

One Week In: Overjoyed at our first unplanned day after a very busy 2 busy months, William and I decided to make zero plans & turn off all notifications for the day. There have been several ups and downs with our local food experiment this first week, so we were ready to seize the day and go to one of our absolute favorite spots in Georgia: Dickey Farms. Dickey Farms is about an hour and a half from the city and 100% worth the drive. They sell the freshest fruits, a plethora of Georgia Grown produce & food products, and have a long porch filled with rocking chairs where you can rest and enjoy your goodies.

Relieved that we could eat almost everything in the place, we oohed over their vast selection of jams, salsas, flour mixes, oils, and farm fresh veggies! We settled for 4 r.i.p.e. tomatoes, 2 onions, local honey, and PIMENTO CHEESE!! Local cheese has not been an option this past week, so you better believe we paid $7 for that glorious, homemade pimento cheese!! We also treated ourselves to dessert instead of a proper lunch. William got a strawberry ice cream cone and scrumptious gooey strawberry brownie. I got homemade strawberry short cake topped with homemade whipped cream and peach ice cream.

After “lunch,” we walked the puppies under the oak trees and enjoyed watching them play in the shade. Then we grabbed a bucket and picked 5 lbs of the freshest strawberries. Honestly, we couldn't believe how big they were! Remember how last Saturday we paid $8 for a pint? Well today we got 5lbs for $14! Not only that, picking them straight from the farm allowed us to ensure we were getting the freshest ones available and we made friends with the famers. We washed a few on the way back to the car and William said, “It just melted in my mouth!”

As much as I’d like to live off of strawberries for the week, we also needed to head to Dekalb Farmers Market to purchase this week’s groceries. This particular farmers market gets very busy on the weekends, so a lot of the produce gets picked through and they even run out sometimes. Going on a Friday meant there was an even bigger selection! From Holland to Costa Rice to Italy to Venezuela, this market has every type of produce you could ever imagine, which makes it especially hard to stick to local foods. I've also decided that California is a locavore's dream--they have it all!

Between Dickey Farms and the Dekalb Farmers Market and a quick stop to Kroger, we loaded up this week! Our bags were loaded and we spent half of what we paid last week at the Freedom Parkway Farmers Market, hallelujah!

When we finally got home (after 7 hours of grocery shopping all over the state), we made leftover steak and roasted potatoes & radishes for dinner. Radishes are not a veggie we are familiar with, but that is one of the parts about this experiment we are thoroughly enjoying--discovering new dishes & foods. After dinner, we made my favorite homemade salsa and boiled peanuts for the first time.

Our bounty for this week is:

Tomatoes (Dickey Farms, GA), small potatoes (GA), cucumbers (GA), onions (Dickey Farms, GA), corn of the cob (FL), radishes (Freedom Parkway Farmers Market, GA), strawberries (Dickey Farms, GA), blueberries (Kroger, GA), jalapeños (FL), broccoli (GA), watermelon (FL), sweet potatoes (Kroger, from previous to experiment), green peppers (FL), alfalfa sprouts (NC), green beans (GA), tilapia (FL), shrimp (GA), ground beef (Kroger, GA), pimento cheese (Heaven), lettuce (Rise n Shine CSA, GA), grits (Rise n Shine CSA, GA), cornmeal (Rise n Shine CSA, GA), pita bread (GA), peanuts (GA), pancake mix (NC), honey (Dickey Farms, GA), Vidalia Salad Dressing (Kroger, GA), apple butter (Kroger, GA).