Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

My family is in the process of making a few changes in our lifestyle. First, for those who don't know us, a little background: my husband and I live with our two wonderful twin daughters in Jerusalem, Israel. We live, like most of the country, in an apartment (well, what you north Americans would refer to as a condo, since we own it, but here they're all just called apartments). Our is a three bedroom, two bath, with a small laundry room and a nice south-eastern facing porch that, thanks to living on the top floor (with no elevator, I might add) gets complete sun. We've always been very environmentally aware, recycling what we can and using cloth diapers (which we wash at home) on our girls.

Around the time the girls were born we signed up with a local CSA. Neither of us cared much about organic eating, rather it was convenience that drove us to doing so (certainly not cost, since it's a lot cheaper to go to the city's open air market, or shuk, where all produce are fresh and tasty). With two little babies, making it to the shuk on a regular basis was unrealistic. Plus it was too easy to turn to carbs or processed foods for our meals, so we liked the idea of having a house full of veggies. Knowing there would only be another delivery the following week forced us to work hard to finish off our current box each week. Plus, there was a fun element of surprise to it. Other than the usual cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and lettuce, we never knew what we were going to get. Often there's be other staples such as potatoes or onions, but sometimes there's be something totally new. Thanks to these baskets, we discovered, and fell in love with, swiss chard and kohlrabi, among others.

Recently we both read Michal Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and that got us thinking and talking about the food choices we make. It helped us decide we really do care about organic and, more importantly, we care about eating local. Fortunately living in Israel that really isn't much of a problem, unless you're talking about processed foods. But fresh produce is always local, and we eat by the calender. Watermelon in summer, oranges in winter, strawberries in the spring, etc.

Most recently we decided to start trying to grow some fruits and vegetables on our own. That got us thinking about fertilizer, and that got us to start composting, and that got us to get some red worms. At the moment we have two small compost bins, one with worms and one without, and we're seeing how it goes. So far the worms are still alive and the other bin doesn't stink so I guess those are both good signs.

This blog will follow our journey, wherever it takes us.