Full & Simple

Eating Local Made Easier

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Market Wagon sponsored this post, but all opinions, experiences and photographs are my own. I only share products and services that I truly believe in.

We did it!!!  The Bent Arrow Challenge 2018 has come to an end and we did pretty well.  Eating local wasn't as hard as we thought it would be, but a big contributor to it being easy was Market Wagon.

Market Wagon's mission is to "enable food producers to thrive in their local and regional markets."  When I talk to friends about Market Wagon, I simply say, "Think about a state-wide farmers market that you can shop online."

Producers all over the state of Indiana have signed up to have their products offered to buyers via Market Wagon.  All you have to do is go to the Market Wagon website, choose what you would like to purchase and Market Wagon will either deliver directly to your house or to one of their free pick-up locations.

This service allowed us to purchase from dairies that made cheese and yogurt, things I thought we might have to do without, during the challenge last month.  We also were able to enjoy salads since our lettuce was no longer producing in the heat and no vendors at our community farmers market had any to sell.  Many things I thought just weren't an option for us, suddenly became accessible because of using Market Wagon.  It was amazing!

Now you're wondering how exactly you can start using Market Wagon for yourself, and I'm happy to tell you!

How to Get Started

Visit the Market Wagon website and shop, adding things to your cart just like you would with any other online store, BUT you can be so excited knowing that your products are coming from a local maker or farmer!  Just make sure that you place your order before midnight on Tuesday to get your products that Thursday.

Farmers and producers will take Wednesday to prepare your items and deliver them to the Market Wagon distribution center Thursday morning.  Talk about fresh!  Then Market Wagon drivers will either deliver to your door for a small fee or to one of their pick-up locations for free.

If you choose the free pick-up option, you just head to the location during the window of time given and get your items.

We just tried these brats from Bent Arrow Acres too. You won't find a brat like this in any grocery!

Where Is Market Wagon Available?

Market Wagon services quite a few areas, and not just Indiana.  I shop the Central Indiana Market, but you can find out if your area is serviced by going to this page on their website and typing in your zip code.  The Central Indiana Market contains 14 counties!

My county actually is NOT serviced by Market Wagon.  So how do I use the service?  I use the free pick-up option.

Honestly, I didn't think that I could use Market Wagon for the longest time because my county isn't listed.  But I'm only a 40 minute drive to the nearest pick-up location in Bloomington, IN.  We visit Bloomington a lot for check-up appointments and at least once a month for some sort of errand.  Now, I just try to plan to make my trip up there on Thursdays and I can get my Market Wagon order too!

A tomato basil chicken (from Bent Arrow) and pasta ended our #bentarrowchallenge2018

What Are Your Favorites?

We are still relatively new to using Market Wagon, so I have not tried everything by any means, but we have already found a few favorite items that you might like to try too.

Bent Arrow Chicken

Claire and I went to Purdue together and have become good friends through blogging and our mutual love of local food.  Being able to purchase pasture-raised chicken from her without the 3+ hour drive is AMAZING to say the least.  Last fall, I was able to tour Claire and Adam's setup and feel very comfortable with their farming practices.  While we have friends close by that raise beef and pork, we don't know anyone nearby that raises meat chickens, so I love having Bent Arrow available to us.

Wildflower Foods Company Energy Bites

These rarely last past Friday at our house.  They are sooo good!  We buy the Chocolate Sea Salt, and I think they taste pretty close to a chocolate no-bake cookie except they are so much better for you!  My daughter loves it when I send a couple in her lunch on Friday and my son and I usually eat the rest....or sometimes I  just finish them myself!

Greener Side Gardens Lettuce Mix

I buy multiple bags of this lettuce each time because it is so good!  It's always fresh AND lasts for several days after pick-up.  I had been missing salads after our lettuce bolted in the heat and have been having trouble getting any new lettuce to sprout, but now I can have my salads without worries of an E. Coli outbreak!

Traders Point Vanilla Yogurt

There are several things I love about this yogurt.  First is definitely the taste.  So yummy!  The second is that this comes in glass instead of plastic, which if you know how we're trying to decrease our waste this will make sense to you.  And third, its organic!  Yippee!

Twilight Dairy Cheddar Cheese

Guys, I honestly didn't know if we could make it the whole month without cheddar cheese.  Adding cheese makes just about any veggie edible to my two kids, so finding a local option was a HUGE success in my book!  We did still eat less cheese over the course of the month, but at least we didn't have to do without thanks to this local option!

I almost ate all of these before I snapped a picture to share with you! They are delicious!

Local Food. Delivered.

I know that after reading this, you are going to want to try out Market Wagon for yourself.  Thankfully the CEO, Nick, gave Full & Simple readers a promo code to use!  Just use FullAndSimple at checkout for $15 off your first $40 order!  YOU GUYS!  That's almost 40% off!  What an amazing deal, but its only good for the next 90 days!

After you get your first order, leave me a comment about what your favorite purchases were so I can check them out too!

 

Erika

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Bent Arrow Challenge 2018: The First 10 Days

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August is basically over and I have yet to update you all on what we've been making to eat local  (unless you're following along on Instagram).  I will do three posts, ten days each, of what we ate with links to the recipes if they weren't an original creation.  I do hope to upload some new recipes sometime in September and October as well.

If you are looking at some ingredients and wondering how in the world they are local, make sure to check out my first post on what our freebies were.  We also allowed ourselves to eat anything that was already in the house so that we didn't waste food and allow it to spoil.  These already bought items show up especially in the first ten days.  Another thing to note is that we do make our own mayo and sour cream regularly, so those were homemade using items from our freebie list.

Also, some of the meals are what I ate and not the kids.  I tried to avoid things like American cheese slices on my burgers even though we let the kids have them on theirs because the slices were already in the fridge.  However, for the most part, the kids ate what we did.  I caved once or twice for things like bananas and raisins when they were shopping with me for their snacks.

Alright, here we go!

August 1

Breakfast

  • Eggs with tomatoes & basil

Lunch

  • Arby's (lunch out with my Dad before our oldest started kindergarten)

Dinner 

August 2

Breakfast

  • Toast with jam
    • Both were homemade.  All bread was either homemade or locally made unless otherwise noted going forward.

Lunch

  • Chick-fil-A (lunch with my mom before my oldest started kindergarten)

Dinner

  • BKT (bacon, kale, tomato) sandwiches
  • grilled corn on the cob

August 3

Breakfast

  • Toast with jam

Lunch

  • Big Brick House Pasta linguini with roasted red pepper sauce
  • peaches from the farmers market
  • green tea with lavender syrup (made with my dried lavender)

Dinner

  • Mississippi roast
    • pepperocini peppers were some canned last garden season we were using up
  • Mashed potatoes
  • Corn on the Cob

Snack 

August 4

Breakfast

  • Homemade biscuits with sausage gravy
    • We had a local hog butchered to put in our freezer this summer.

Lunch

  • Pesto over pasta
  • Peaches

Dinner

Snack 

  • Stopped at a local coffee shop for an iced coffee and also grabbed a can of Mountain Dew (not really a freebie but technically I'm allowed to eat out and they had it......LOL!)
  • Cilantro hummus from the farmers market with some tortilla chips we had in the pantry

August 5

Breakfast

  • Leftover biscuits with sausage gravy

Lunch

Dinner

  • Fresh homemade bread with butter and jam
  • Watermelon
  • Spoonful of Revival Almond Butter

(NOTE: Because of how late our church lets out, we usually eat lunch between 1-2 on Sundays, so our "dinners" are usually snacks or leftovers.  On our meal planner, I call it the "clean the fridge" night.)

August 6

Breakfast

  • Toast with jam

Lunch

  • Leftover eggplant quiche
  • Leftover deviled eggs
  • Watermelon

Dinner

  • Tacos
    • I made the flour tortillas found in The Hands-On Home
    • We also have a beef in our freezer from last fall

August 7

Breakfast

  • Toast with jam

Lunch

  • Leftover tacos
  • Peaches

Dinner

  • Roasted Tomato and Basil Soup
    • I left out the tomato paste to keep things local and I make my own stocks throughout the year and freeze them.
    • Also, we make this fresh, eat it for a meal and then freeze the leftovers to use in the winter.  Try it!
  • Dairy Queen ice cream for dessert
    • The kids earned free cones this summer at the library from the summer reading program and I wasn't going to not get some too!

Great Indiana-made products

August 8

Breakfast

  • Toast with jam

Lunch

  • Leftover eggplant quiche

Dinner

August 9

Breakfast

  • Pancakes and Bacon

Lunch

  • Leftover pizza
  • Leftover cake

Dinner

Snack

  • Chocolate chip cookies

August 10

Breakfast

  • Leftover pancakes

Lunch

  • Leftover pizza
  • Peaches
  • Cookies

Dinner

Snack

  • Chocolate chip cookies

And there you go!  The first ten days of meals in the eat local Bent Arrow Challenge 2018.  Let me know if you have any questions about how we sourced some ingredients locally.  I'm loving that we've discovered new Indiana brands and are making the most of our garden.

Erika

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Bent Arrow Challenge 2018: Eat Local

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Y'all know how important local food is to me.  I'm all about gardening, farmers' markets and supporting local agriculture.  So last year when my friend Claire over at Bent Arrow Acres challenged herself to eat only local for the month of August, I was in awe!  And I planned to try to do it for a week this summer.  BUT Claire is doing the whole month again this year and has created a challenge (with prizes) for others to join her.  So we're going to give it a go and join in.

Concerns

My biggest concerns are: Our oldest starts kindergarten this year, and I have no idea how this will affect our schedules and daily life yet.  My husband will continue classes for his masters.  And I have small kids that eat what we eat for meals...no short-order cook here.

As a perfectionist, I have already identified that I could easily let the challenge overwhelm and stress me out.  I DO NOT want that!  To prevent this, I'm already speaking grace over myself.  The challenge does allow for people to pick some "freebie" items and I'm probably being more lenient with our family than I would if it were just my husband and myself or if we had older kids.  And if I fall off the wagon for a meal or a day, I'll just do my best the next.

My Plan

My plan is to visit Lucky's Market and Bloomingfoods a couple of times during the challenge.  While they are a bit further away, they have a great variety of Indiana produced foods and products.  There are also a few things that I'm allowing as "freebie" items that I'll only allow if I get them from either of these stores' bulk sections.  Partly because I'm excited about how this challenge can help us reduce our waste and partly because doing this will keep me from being too quick to grab things off the local grocery's shelves.

Obviously we have the garden and our own eggs, so we will try to eat a lot from there.  We also have locally raised beef, pork and one of Bent Arrow's chickens in our deep freezer that will take care of any meat we eat.  Things from the garden that we will definitely be able to eat are tomatoes, eggplant, green beans, carrots, shallots, garlic, peppers and maybe corn (It isn't looking too hot.).  Hopefully my zucchini, summer squash and watermelon plants will do something this month too!

We also have access to two farmers' markets, one on Tuesdays and one on Saturdays.  We will shop here frequently as well during the challenge.

Baked goods are something that we already make homemade most of the time.  All bread will be homemade and I'm excited to try to make tortillas and hamburger buns this month!

Our Freebie List

Freebies are things that you can't find local or can't easily make yourself.  HOWEVER, this list should not allow you to buy everything you normally do.  It's a CHALLENGE, remember?  That being said, I do have a few items that are freebies for the kids and not for my husband and myself because I'm just not going to make a 7 month old, 3 year old and 5 year old go completely without some of their favorite things like bananas and shredded cheese.

  • All flours (bread, all-purpose, whole wheat, etc.)
  • Sugars
  • Additional baking items (baking soda/powder, salt, etc.)
  • Cocoa powder (bulk only-we make our own chocolate syrup for the kids' milk and my coffee creamer)
  • Spices (although most herbs dried or fresh will come from my garden)
  • Butter
  • Heavy Cream
  • Cultured Buttermilk
  • Milk (do plan to try to get some from Traders Point and Oberweis, but won't be able to get it all from them)
  • Peanut Butter (bulk only-my kids love PBJ sandwiches and my husband takes them to work a lot)
  • Coffee/Tea
  • Dry pasta
  • Cooking Oils (plan to purchase California Olive Oil and Healthy Hoosier Oils when at all possible)
  • Cheeses (This is mostly for the kids.  I plan to try to avoid cheese as much as possible.  And I do plan to try my hand at making mozzarella!)
  • Lemons
  • Condiments (ketchup and mustard mostly.  I plan to try to make my own ranch dressing and always make my own mayo)

As far as restaurants are concerned, I'm saying that all are fair game.  I know this is an area that Claire is really good about choosing only locally owned places, but one request of my kids when we have to go to Bloomington is Chick-Fil-A.  We also occasionally grab a pizza when I'm single parenting for the night while my husband is in class.  So the plan is to TRY to avoid chains, but I'm not going to beat myself up if its been a crazy and I breakdown and get a carry out pizza from Pizza Hut.

I'm also giving myself a pass on anything already in the house...and no, I'm not going out to stock up on items before the challenge so that I can use this as an excuse.  However, I haven't planned a cleaning out of the pantry this week because of other stuff going on, so if it's already here, its fair game until it runs out.

And my new kindergartener will eat in the cafeteria at school on some days.

How You Can Join

If you think this is something you want to try, even for just one day or one meal, you CAN make a difference!  Visit Bent Arrow Acres's website for more information and to get on their mailing list for tips and rules for the prizes!  I hope to be able to share weekly posts about what we ate, but at the very least, you can follow along on social media.  Use the hashtag #bentarrowschallenge2018 to see what I'm cooking as well as what everyone else is trying!

 

Erika

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