Have any of you cooks and foodies out there ever considered what it would be like to go to your local grocery or market and NOT choose what you pay for? You’d just come and pick up what someone else has packed for you? What’s this? Some kinda scary ‘drugstore delivery’ sci-fi mix-up?

Actually I’m about to introduce you to a Co-op family of three that does just that. By contracting for a weekly CSA share from two different Tuesday Growers (Affinity Farms and the WSU Organic Farm), Valeri Schillberg, Trenton Smith and their 4^th-grader daughter Semolina “subscribe” to a season of produce (times two, actually) but the only “control” they have is knowing it’s fresh.

When I recently saw Valeri pushing a wheeled cart at the market loaded with two or three pretty large boxes of produce, I assumed she was “going canning.” But no, she replied, “Actually, we’ll eat most of this in one week. If there’s really too much, we’ll dry or freeze it.”

Trenton and Valeri estimate more than 85% of the food and drink they consume (meat, eggs, bread, veggies, fruit) is local or near local. Wow! Seems to me like these people are a little below the national average in the Food-to-Table-Fossil-Fuel-Consumption-Ratio. Humm…

What is the biggest difference in this lifestyle that Valeri calls “The CSA Way"? “Well, we basically plan our meals backwards. We receive the food, and then we decide what to make with it, instead of thinking of what we want to cook, and then going to get the ingredients.” This creates a delightful paradox: “We have fewer choices of ingredients at any given time, but we now enjoy more ways to prepare and eat them.” Most importantly, “The food tastes better. It’s always fresh, or else we process it at its freshest (drying or freezing). We eat seasonally. And we eat a lot more vegetables.” I guess so! “We’ve learned to love lots of new vegetables we’d never met before.”

How did this all start? And especially why did Valeri, an architect, and Trenton, an assistant professor in the School of Economic Sciences at WSU, start buying this way?

Seattle-born Valeri started to eat differently during a high school exchange year in Japan. Her host mother cooked with beautiful and fresh ingredients she bought daily from local vendors. After marrying Trenton and moving to Santa Barbara, they joined the now-famous Fairview Gardens CSA, where Trenton’s keen interest in food kicked in and Valeri eventually became a board member. (Check out "On Good Land: The Autobiography of An Urban Farm" by Michael Abelman for a timely and inspiring read!)

“But at first, it wasn’t easy. We remember our first year when we split a full share with our neighbors and found ourselves wracked with guilt week after week when we failed to find a way to eat everything. Our compost pile was well fed! Then for two to three years, we depended on the accompanying newsletter.”

Now, 11 years and three moves later, they are much better at “eating the basket” and have honed their cooking “chops.” Their favorite cookbook, a signed copy of Deborah Madison’s "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" is dog-eared and lovingly worn. And they now edit the WSU Organic Farm’s newsletter, sharing their own favorite recipes and tips, and helping “newcomers.” It’s a classy family act, complete with Semolina’s artful vegetable and fruit drawings.

For the record, canning is the one preserving method they don’t do much of. But since they also purchase 1/4 of a cow, 1/2 pig, or six to eight chickens at a time from nearby farms, their chest freezer really earns its keep. Trenton also bottles both beer and sparkling water, which takes care of everybody’s favorite beverage. And they occasionally barter a brother for some homemade wine.

They do shop the Co-op for their grains, oils, nuts, dairy and cheeses, and usually buy in bulk. But that’s it, folks. It’s unlikely you’ll see them dashing back into any store to grab some forgotten or exotic item.

As I sat at the dining table in the Smith-Shillberg’s comfortable and artsy home, tasting the squash gratin they were having for supper (good timing, eh?) I asked if there were any other “CSA-style” differences they could think of.

“Well, you need a chunk of money up front, so the cash flow is a little different…"

"Probably the biggest challenge is time. We spend more time cooking and processing, but it’s family time… We also give up control of choosing what we eat. But the flip side of this is the resulting freedom…”

“It’s really one giant experiment… and our freezer isn’t big enough!”

“We just like good food. Not particularly fancy, but with fresh ingredients.”

“After 11 years of this, it’s definitely a way of life. And every year it gets easier.”