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Will they wipe your chin too?

by Leah Koenig · May 28th, 2007
Community Agri., Cooking, Farming, Featured, Rant!, Tuv Ha'Aretz

tomato.gifCSA advocates will tell you that joining a Community-Supported Agriculture project is the next best thing to growing your own food. You support a farmer for a whole season, and every week you get to pick up locally grown, organic, just-picked produce that still radiates life and earth. But what happens if you’re just too busy to cook for yourself? Over the course of the season the vegetables can start to pile up in the fridge. You start to feel guilty throwing away the soggy bok choi in the back of the vegetable crisper, and dread the next influx of fresh vegetables that will be piled onto last week’s unused produce.

Sweet Deliverance, a new business run by a Natural Gourmet Institute grad, Kelly Geary, offers a solution for busy New Yorkers. You pay for a CSA share. Geary will pick it up for you, prepare wholesome fresh meals, and deliver them to your door at a time that works for you - for an extra weekly fee of $250. Local food, and home cooked meals, with no work by you! It’s the ultimate in no-fuss, locally-grown convenience. And honestly, it creeps me out.

I’m thrilled that the CSA being supported through the Sweet Deliverance CSA is the Garden of Eve, the same farm that supplies Tuv Ha’Aretz in NYC and Long Island. But one of the primary purposes of CSA is to get people more engaged with their food. To encourage them to learn how to cook, and to think more deeply about where their food is coming from. Although I see the appeal of a service like Sweet Deliverance, I think it actually does a disservice to members (although, granted, it still supports a farm - and gets customers eating healthy, local meals instead of takeout). But ultimately, it feels to me like a perversion of the CSA concept, turning it from a model which tries to empower members into yet another opportunity for people to continue the fast-paced, disconnected routines.

I’d love to hear other readers’ thoughts about this…

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14 Responses to “Will they wipe your chin too?”

  1. Aaron Desatnik Says:
    May 29th, 2007 at 12:11 am

    Leah, I think your critique is so important. It seems to be intimately connected to the issue of “supersizing organics.” In some ways, more people are getting healthier foods and for lower costs, so class issues are at the least addressed. On the other hand, the standards are lowered and the quality of the food (in lieu of lower standards) decreases. I guess I don’t think there’s a black/white answer here.

    Ideally, Wal Mart would encourage organic production in the U.S. using conservation tillage and composting systems. But that’s not the reality. From my perspective, and my lifestyle, I do what I see that I can afford. And a lot of that has to do with priority (to buy that nice new pair of shoes or go to the local market this week for food). Luckily, prioritizing food doesn’t always equate to higher costs, and local food (usually organic or less chemically-laden) is often comparable in price.

    So I guess, since I have the resources (time and money) to buy local and organic food and to cook it myself, I will. But for people in different situations (less time, more money, for instance), perhaps this is the best alternative. And it’s not up to me to judge, I s’pose.

  2. Gluten-Free By The Bay Says:
    May 29th, 2007 at 10:01 am

    I’m with you all the way. This is antithetical to the idea of a CSA

  3. Carly Says:
    May 29th, 2007 at 11:12 am

    Wow. As soon as you dumb anything down that much it’s never good. Think about USDA organic. People have no idea what it really means and it’s just not a really good standard, which is why so many of us are looking more to locally sustainable food.

    But — that being said, the more we make it easy for those who don’t prioritize their food source the better.

  4. Aviva Allen Says:
    May 29th, 2007 at 11:28 am

    You make a good point, Leah, but I think that it’s a great service that they’re offering. As you said, at least they are eating healthy food and supporting local farmers. Some people need to make changes gradually and while they may be ready to join a CSA, they may not be ready to change their schedule or lifestyle just yet. This service can be a good way for people to ease into it, start making the connection and eventually make time to prepare healthy meals themselves.

  5. Richard Says:
    May 29th, 2007 at 11:31 am

    Leah
    I can empathize strongly with your views here, but I end up disagreeing with you. Someone willing to pay a home chef service is going to pay a home chef service, and is possibly LESS likely to be a CSA member as a result.

    Providing this service has several great benefits
    1) the buyer is supporting local/organic etc etc
    2) the buyer is EATING local/organic
    3) the buyer is further supporting the local economy with the chef service (as opposed to Annies Organic, or Birds Eye Frozen, in some distant state)
    4) the buyer is indeed now thinking about local food chains and more involvement in food … perhaps the first step towards … coooking!
    5) the buyer is exposed to the great fresh flavors, prepared in imaginative ways and delivering (we hope, for that price) great dishes… perhaps the first step towards … cooking!

    So don’t knock it. It seems like a great way to reach affluent consumers who would otherwise never participate in a CSA, and it may get them onto a new track, too.

  6. Leah Koenig Says:
    May 29th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

    Thanks for your comments everyone!

    Aaron, Gluten-Free, and Carly, I agree. It is so difficult to watch a grassroots movement get watered down or “supersized.”

    Aviva and Richard, you make good points. I still feel uncomfortable with the idea, and also the unchecked privlege around it (shouldn’t those people who are shelling out an extra $250 a week to get their meals cooked put that money towards subsidizing a lower-income family’s CSA share instead?). But I hope you’re right that a service like Sweet Deliverance might be an entry point into a deeper and more engaged relationship with sustainable food and cooking.

  7. Alix Says:
    May 29th, 2007 at 6:38 pm

    As a newly-certified personal chef, I have to say I thought it was a great idea when I first heard about it, and even considered doing such a thing myself. There are some people who simply won’t cook, period. And if this service gets them thinking more about where their food comes from, I think it’s a step in the right direction. Leah, I happen to know from previous posts that you really enjoy cooking. So do I. But there are many to whom it just does not come as easily. This is not to say that those people should never try, but people simply have different priorities. I have a doctor friend who is a client of mine, for example, and for her, treating patients is a higher priority than spending time in the kitchen. I can’t say she is wrong for doing so…

  8. Rabbi Shmuel Says:
    May 29th, 2007 at 8:17 pm

    Great rant! You know that we gave up that type of life to have more time to be involved in our lives and food sources, etc. - that being said, Richard raises excellent arguments in favor of that arrangement as opposed to the alternative - a local grower not having enough shareholders to make the CSA economically viable - Yes industrial organics is an oxymoron but ask yourself whether its not better than the alternative!

  9. Phyllis Bieri Says:
    May 30th, 2007 at 10:02 am

    Cooks have been for hire throughout the ages. I actually thought $250 was kind of cheap, on a per hour basis in New York City. Think about what other professionals charge. I understand you don’t like the outsourcing feel of it, but it does boil down to who is spending time in the kitchen versus the office. And whoever is in the kitchen might as well get paid for it. The subject has feminist undertones, about women’s work and its value. My Sicilian secretary once said, “A home doesn’t feel like a home unless it’s cooked in.” Better to hire a cook than not have one at all.

  10. Leah Koenig Says:
    May 30th, 2007 at 10:16 am

    Thanks Alix, Rabbi Shmuel, and Phyllis - all interesting points. I agree that for some people, hiring a professional chef is a necessary part of life, and that the chef might as well be cooking local, organic foods. Perhaps a happy medium would be for the company to offer cooking classes or recipes to its members, as well as the food.

  11. Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus Says:
    May 31st, 2007 at 10:21 am

    Leah, I am likewise creeped out by the idea of paying someone to pick up and cook your share of produce from a CSA. It seems to me that the point of getting food at a CSA, especially for us city-dwellers, is to involve ourselves more physically and emotionally in the process of bringing food to our tables, so that the joys and satisfaction of this personal engagement with good food will motivate us to social activism for morally responsible and environmentally-aware use of our natural resources. But this is a subjective benefit that is supposed to lead to a more general “objective” social and environmental benefit: smaller, local farms growing a variety of organic vegetables and humanely treated domestic animals as economically viable alternative to the monocultural agro-business mega-farms that are shoving corn down our throats and contaminating our spinach. So it’s hard to disagree with Richard, Aviva, and Rabbi Shmuel’s arguments that businesses like Sweet Deliverance are contributing toward this end, not to mention the opportunities it provides chefs like Kelly Geary and Alix, who are committed to sustainable food, to make a living from it. That’s my my head tells me. But in my guts I’m still creeped out. The people who will rely on Sweet Deliverance have made certain lifestyle choices that preclude them from engaging in the creative ritual activities of cooking and hosting others at meals (the value of which you’ve stressed, Leah). It’s my gut feeling that the more stages of the process of bring our food from soil to the table to our company we’re involved in directly, physically, emotionally - the stronger and deeper our commitment to sustainable activities is likely to be.

  12. KELLY GEARY Says:
    July 11th, 2007 at 5:30 pm

    Hi Leah-
    I just now saw your mention of my business. I just wanted to say, in my defence I guess, that it was definately in my thoughts when I started Sweet Deliverance that I was in fact eliminating the relationship between the farmer and my clients.
    My brother-in-law has an organic farm/CSA program in Virgina and this subject was discussed in great length.
    As it turns out my clients are mostly new mothers or mothers with young children and careers, some of them are teminaly ill and can’t cook for themselves. They really do care about where their food comes from and hiring Sweet Deliverance has been a step in the right direction for them. If they didn’t hire me they would hire a chef that would buy asparagus from Peru instead. It has actually been inspiring and amazing how excited my clients have become in realizing they are making a difference in the local economy and in the environment. Some of them can’t wait to tell me how they just finished “Animal Vegitabe , Miricle” or “Omnivore’s Dilemma”.
    I love to cook!That’s why I started my own business and am not in a resturant anymore making other peoples recipes. I wanted to offer a service for people that encompassed my personal values and hopefully passed some of them on. I really think that at least some of the people I work for will eventually join a CSA on their own now that they have discovered the excitement of what it means to really know and be involved in where their food is coming from.
    Being “connected” is definatly a lifestyle choice and I think that for New Yorkers whos lives are going a million miles an hour it takes baby steps. I’m just glad to help open a few eyes!

  13. Leah Koenig Says:
    July 11th, 2007 at 9:58 pm

    Thanks for your note Kelly - the dialogue around this question has been really fascinating, and I’m really glad to hear your side of the story. Best of luck in your work.

    L

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