Hello everyone, I have an awesome announcement! As of yesterday I am the Director of Marketing for Chow Locally. This does not mean anything will change at inCYST…in fact, this means great things for our organization.
Chow Locally is what is known as a regional food hub. that means that it centralizes distributton of organic, locally grown food. I love farmer's markets but sometimes what I want is distributed across several markets. If I schlepped to every one that I needed to in order to get everything I wanted…it would drastically increase the carbon footprint of my purchase. Same thing if the farmers try to be at every market.
Chow Locally centralizes the process. It is like an online farmer's market. You place your order online, we tally the orders for the farmers who simply deliver to one place, and we bring your order to three different pickup locations. If our pickup locations are not convenient, and you can organize enough committed customers for an additional location, we can set that up.
One of Chow Locally's newest products is a weekly box which showcases what is in season. we predetermine the food based on what our farmers tell us they have in abundance. It's a lot like a CSA, but one major difference is that you don't need to shell out several month's worth of grocery money like you often have to do with a CSA. I used to love my CSA but being a small business owner with erratic cash flow and a busy travel schedule it didn't work for me to commit my food money that far in advance.
I immediately thought of all of you with these new weekly boxes because I have seen how paralyzed you often get at the thought of changing your food habits. One of the reasons I believe many of you have PCOS in the first place is perfectionistic, all-or-nothing thinking that perpetually has you bouncing back and forth between extreme and rigid dieting, and eating anything and everything when you get confused or don't see results quickly enough.
The Chow Locally boxes can be a way to shift your thinking. Instead of being paralyzed at the"what should I eat?" step, you can get a prepared box of foods that are healthy, and focus on the"how can I fix this?" step. I know I was more likely to fix fennel when it was staring at me from the vegetabLe bin than if I had to bring ho e something funky from the store that I was not quite sure about. I had so much more variety in my eating when I got these boxes!
Still not confident you can do this? we've got a great colleague who is both a dietitian and a chef helping to develop recipes which will come with each box. And I'll be sharing my box adventures here. Even if you're not in Phoenix you can learn more about seasonal eating and cooking and perhaps be inspired to try new things.
If you ARE in Phoenix and you would like to be involved, check out our website, www.chowlocally.com. And try out a box! We really want to hear from our customers about how they use our locally grown and produced foods!
That beautiful photo, by the way, was taken by good friend, talented photographer, and major foodie Julie Zagars, who test drove a box for us. Thanks Julie, hope you enjoyed the goods!