Back again

I know I'm horrible at posting. This will certainly be my new year's resolution but until then I had to share this:

Awesome mashup video

My CSA!

I LOVE my CSA. For those of you who don't know, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It pretty much works like this: you pay them an amount of money ahead of time for a weekly produce box of goodies that come from their farm. Many CSAs are different lengths, prices, sizes and contain different items. Mine goes from June-October for a total of 20 weeks. Here is an example of a weekly share: basil, peppers, radishes, cucumbers, and tomatoes.

Not only do CSAs give you local, seasonal, and most likely organic produce, but you are helping the farm out too. In fact, I signed up and got a discounted early bird rate- which the farmers said helped them buy seeds for their crops! You are supporting them through thick and thin though- if there happens to be a drought (like there was this year) you face the risk of getting only what the farm has to offer. So, if the farm loses their crop of spinach, broccoli and cauliflower to the really hot temperatures, you don't get those ones. Even though most of the midwest was in an actual drought this summer, my CSA didn't seem to cut back on what they included for us weekly.

The Local Beet is a great website to find out more information about which CSAs are available in your area.

Over the course of my 20 week CSA (I'm on Week 16) the produce has varied widely. Lately I have been getting a ton of hot peppers! I don't know what to do with all these!

The farm my CSA is from is called Grass is Greener Gardens. They are located in Monroe, WI and are at a couple farmer's markets here in Chicago including the Green City Market on Saturdays in Lincoln Park. The awesome thing about them is that they blog every week about what will be in your share.

I will definitely enroll in a CSA next year and recommend it to everyone who wants local, seasonal produce all summer long.

Do you have any experiences with CSAs? Where do you get yours from?

Body Care

So I deal with a lot of acne problems that I wish 80% Paleo would solve, but unfortunately that's not the case.

Some things I've read that irritate acne:

Dairy
Nuts
Gluten in general
Flouride

So I'm on a quest to clear up my skin and hopefully I can help someone else along the way. Thus far, I receive most of my skin care advice from Liz at CaveGirlEats.These are a couple of my favorite posts:
WAP me Pretty
Cleansing, redefined

Also read Chris Kresser's series on skin health

I'll add to this post as I experiment.

Do you have any tips or tricks to control acne?

Pumpkin TREATS

So fall is just around the corner and my love of pumpkin foods is in full force! I realize these are treats, but I've been to 2 potlucks this week and needed to make a dessert so it's been a heavy treat week.

Pumpkin bars/cake from The Clothes Make the Girl- the bars didn't rise as much as I hoped they would, not sure what happened. I didn't make the frosting she included because I didn't have maple syrup on hand so I made this honey cream cheese frosting from Martha Stewart instead which was pretty good (if you are eating dairy).

Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies from Frisky Lemon- these were really good! One of my first experiences baking with coconut flour (a work in progress). Someone asked if they were no-bake cookies, so they definitely don't look like your traditional cookies but are still delish. I may have added too many chocolate chips so I'll adjust that next time.

Pumpkin bread from Joyful Abode- this is my go-to pumpkin bread recipe. So good!

Other pumpkin recipes I hope to try soon:
Pumpkin pie mousse
Homemade pumpkin chai lattes
Pumpkin walnut muffins
Pumpkin Cake Bars

I'll update as I try them. Do you have any delicious paleo pumpkin recipes you'd like to share?

Favorite websites

I love finding new websites and blogs to follow [favorite podcasts will be a separate post] . Here are some of my favorites that I read most days:

Balanced Bites
Primal Palate
Cave Girl Eats
Mark's Daily Apple
Robb Wolf
katie did
Joyful Abode

Am I missing any of your must-read paleo blogs?

Introductions

Hi everyone,

This is my first blog post! The goal is (like many other blogs) to organize paleo resources in one place- specific to the great city of Chicago. There are tons of blogs that seem to be based on the west and east coasts but not many that I know of based in the Midwest. Thus, this blog is born!

A little about myself: I'm twenty-something, avid primal/paleo blog reader who works in research. I discovered paleo a little over a year ago and would say I go back and forth between 80/20 and Whole30-type eating.

Since there are SO many resources out there, I prefer to link to the those I find the most valuable, rather than regurgitating the information here. Other people have been doing this way longer than I have, so why recreate the wheel?

Feel free to post questions and comments to collaborate even more. Thanks for reading!