CSA with Beko Appliances

October 24, 2019

CSA has become a buzz word in the cities. This week we wanted to write a lifestyle post about our local CSA in hopes to inspire you to join your local CSA. If you already have a CSA… we would love for you to share the recipes you are making with your weekly farm fresh haul.

So you have heard us talk about selecting our Beko Appliances in the Goodrich Tudor and you have heard us talk about our local CSA. It’s time we start the conversation about both! At Jkath we like to say the kitchen is the heart of the home. It reflects all the personalities of the household and is where most of our client’s families spend majority of their time. We want the kitchens we design for these clients to be extremely functional for their lifestyles.

We get a lot of questions about what does CSA actually stand for. Drum roll please… Community-Supported Agriculture! In the most simple terms, it is a food distribution system that connects farmers and consumers directly. It is one of the easiest ways to support local farms and get weekly farm fresh meals. Almost like a famers market, which we also love supporting. Unlike a farmer’s market, with a CSA you are guaranteed a certain amount of produce each week.

Here is Otis and I picking up our haul for the family. Our CSA comes in on this big truck every week from the Tangle Town farms loaded with vegetables for our share. They load the produce off the truck and neatly display it in bins for your convenience.

I briefly came on stories last week to talk about why we posted about our local CSA. We are a remodeling and custom home company, that specializes in unique and highly tailored interiors. That being said, we want to play an inspirational role and be an authentic resource hub for you during your home remodel, whatever stage you are at. When we are collaborating on your dream home, we want to make sure we are incorporating your lifestyle into the pieces and appliances we chose together.

There are plenty of different CSAs in Minneapolis that you can sign up for. Just a quick google search will do the trick and you can find one that sounds like it will fit your lifestyle and that’s centrally located to you. My family is signed up with Tangle Town Gardens CSA in South Minneapolis. What I love about Tangle Town Gardens is that each week they send us an email forecasting what will be available in this weeks share. They are always able to answer any questions about the weeks vegetables and produce. Not only do they send us what will be in our share for the week, they provide recipe inspiration for those foods you have never seen before. Like Kohlrabi… Ever heard of it? (It’s perfect in salads for an extra crunch factor!)

Farm fresh meals and buying locally has become more and more popular over the last several years. With many of our clients living central to the city, this is a right of passage of living here. It’s a part go the local culture. If they are not frequenting the farmers market or have joined their local CSA, they are still buying lots of veggies and produce every week. We introduce these clients to products and appliances that reflect this lifestyle and contribute to their family’s overall well-being.

When you sign up for a CSA, you can pick out what type of share you want. The options Tangle Town Gardens has to offer are: Small, Medium or Large. You choose your type of share based on the quantities you or your family will consume over the week. With my family of five, we have the medium share. Most weeks we find this to be a bit heavy for our needs, especially with travel in the summer, but we have done our best torahs, prep and freeze when possible, or often incorporating into smoothies and even making fresh juice on Saturday mornings.

How it works: all of the bins are labeled from Small, Medium, Large and with these labels they tell you how many you get of each item. For example, for the Tomato bin: it might say small: 0, medium: 4, large: 6. Not every share gets the same vegetables. It’s different every week. So the small share might not get heirloom tomatoes that week, but they might get a small bin of cherry tomatoes.

Another great perk with our CSA is that If you are unable to pick up your share for the week, if you are out of town or any other reason, you can send a friend to pick it up. It’s a fun way to expose family and friends to the awesome produce in your CSA.

Tomatoes are my family’s favorite share. They are the perfect size for sandwiches, burgers, caprese salad, you name it. We made a lot of tomato and pizza sauce this summer with some ingredients from our CSA and I think it was my favorite we’ve made to date, all because of these tomatoes.

Enter, Beko Appliances. Our most recent whole house renovation, our Goodrich Tudor project, is where these two meet. The entire time we spent designing this house, we had the modern family in mind. We selected Beko Appliances in this remodel based on the value these appliances would add to this family’s lifestyle. Beko is committed to providing products that not only have integrated cutting edge technology, but also are energy-efficient appliances.

We always recommend replacing appliances when were doing a kitchen remodel so we can bring the whole space up to date at once. When you are picking out your must haves for appliances, you want to make sure you are picking a brand that will stand up to the duration of the remodel. Function is our number one requirement for remodels, design is our second. When we find a brand like Beko Appliances, that can check both of the boxes, we can’t help but spec their appliances. We get all of our Beko Appliances at Warners’ Stellian, check out their website to find a location near you.

There are so many fun Instagram accounts that feature beautiful recipes they made with their CSA or farmers market haul from the week. Check out two of our favorites below and see what they are cooking up this week.

Ashley and Lindsay with Style and Dwell – They have a highlight on their Instagram that is solely dedicated to CSA recipes. (Also lots of home organization tips on their feed!) We worked with them on styling our #ArdenAvenue project and loved working with them.

Jeanine Donofrio with Love and Lemons – A favorite food blogger that consistently posts farm-fresh meals. Take a look at her blog post on CSA box strategies.

A lot of CSAs in the city will also have some sort of additional food shares available for purchase. The most popular is a meat or cheese share. We have also seen honey and coffee shares available at my location.

Obviously it’s difficult to eat all of it in one night. Take a look at how we are providing these clients with the best appliances in the game to keep their produce fresh.

In the beginning stages we were deciding between two options for refrigerators. Ultimately, we went with the 36″ counter depth french door for this family. I have said this before and I will say it again, I love french door refrigerators. There’s just something about the design of it that elevates a kitchen. Beyond design aesthetics, with a growing family with kids of all ages, they are going to be in and out of the fridge multiple times a day. Stainless steel is perfect for keeping that fresh look. Our favorite features of this refrigerator are the EverFresh+ technology for all those CSA, farm fresh goodies. This technology keeps produce fresh for 3X longer than it’s competitors. That’s almost an entire month! The other refrigerator our clients were deciding between was a side-by-side option. I love a great side-by-side refrigerator. What ultimately sold our clients on the french door with freezer underneath, is that the water filter system is located on the inside of the door, in comparison to the outside. Both great options, and works for any family. This family chose the interior water system to have the sleek finish on the outside.

When every kid is running off to a different sport, you want to make sure their having a good meal beforehand. For all the multi-taskers out there you will love this feature: the 30″ duel fuel pro range we selected for this kitchen has a middle burner. In addition to that, it can hold up to four 10″ pots. That meal that was supposed to take over an hour to cook? Not with this range. I love when the appliances we love, fit our client’s lifestyle.

The modern family is always on the go after meals, with kids running off to practice and let’s be real… everyone enjoys coming home to a clean house. With this family, clean-up has to be under five minutes so everyone can get everyone out the door. The best part about this appliance is that this dishwasher does not require you to thoroughly clean dishes before you load them up… actually, the dirtier the better! Yeah, read that again. The dirtier the better! Every kid’s dream when having to load the dishwasher. The added layer of food can help protect your dishes as well from the initial rinse cycle and prolong their lifespan.

This is the 24″ top control dishwasher and it is the perfect size for this family and space. This dishwasher is equipped with SilentTech technology, so you hardly notice it’s running. Do you think the 24″ might be too big for your space? They offer this same dishwasher in an 18″ version, for our clients with smaller families located in space conscious environments (hello downtown city living!). We used that one in our Nokomis Avenue project and our clients love how much space it saves them. No wonder Beko is Europe’s leading appliance brand.

As you know, we love supporting brands that actively support sustainability efforts. In 2019, Beko was named ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year – Product Brand Owner for outstanding contributions to protecting the environment through energy efficiency. It isn’t just their 2019 work, this is their third year in a row receiving this award. Beko offers the best energy efficiency technology in the game and we are here for it.

By signing up for your local CSA, you are directly supporting local farmers. You pay for a season or year upfront and you get farm fresh produce every week. This allows farmers to invest quality time on producing quality food each season without worrying about their market. Supporting your local CSA contributes overall to the maintenance and growth of regional food systems. At Jkath we love supporting local businesses and this is an easy way to get involved in your community.

Any questions about Beko Appliances or our CSA? Leave below! Be sure to share in the comments what you are cooking up this week with your CSA haul or other local farm fresh favorites.

-Katie and Jkath Team