If someone had told me back on New Year’s Day that grocery shopping would be a particular type of challenge by March, I wouldn’t have believed them. But global pandemics have a way of making everything just a little more challenging. Going to the grocery store is an adventure in timing it correctly, wearing a mask, taking disinfectant wipes or anti-bacterial spray or gel and trying to avoid everyone. Well, let’s face it, I’m always trying to avoid everyone in the grocery store, so that’s not new, but STILL.
If you’re lucky enough to secure an Instacart delivery or grocery store pickup time, the stars have aligned in your favor, but you may still not be lucky enough to find essentials like eggs. And good luck finding flour or yeast.
So when the team at Edible Cleveland and Central Kitchen reached out to me to ask if I would be interested in trying out a new local food subscription box, obviously I enthusiastically said YES PLEASE!!!
Central Kitchen is a shared kitchen and craft food incubator that has launched some of my favorite Cleveland food brands: Cleveland Bagel, Pope's Kitchen, Killik Hot Sauce, Garden of Flavor, The Vegan Donut Company, Wonderlab Doozy Pots, and Cleveland Kitchen (formerly Cleveland Kraut).
The team was hearing that farmers and suppliers had lots of extra food that was not going to restaurants and other facilities due to Covid-19 closures. Combined with kitchen clients who needed to continue making and selling food, an idea was born!
Their idea was to make a bundle bag of items and create an easy and safe pick up location (people will stay in their cars), adjacent to downtown Cleveland that was valuable, offered great variety, and that introduced people to farms and new products, without a long term commitment to a program, like a CSA. Enter Love Local Collective.
Created by Central Kitchen, Love Local Collective supports small farms in Ohio as well as Cleveland-area food entrepreneurs by creating a weekly subscription food box without the commitment of a CSA. Sign-ups start each Tuesday and end on Sunday for pickup the following Saturday. Yes, there is a one-week lag between when you order and when you pick up, but you can preview your box so you only order when you need or see something you really want to try!
So how does this work: Unlike a CSA, you don’t have to subscribe to a season or anything like that. Instead, orders open Tuesday-Sunday for pickup the following Saturday (note there is a one-week delay between when you order and when you pick up). When you order your Local Love Collective box online, you also get to preview the box. The first boxes were available this past weekend and included a real bounty of food: milk, kraut, eggs, carrots, spinach, apples and so much more! Since this is a new program you can and should expect that future boxes will look different, but as I mentioned you get a preview so you know what you’re going to get. Current vendors include Cleveland Kitchen, Holistic Acres , Huffman Fruit Farm, Killbuck Valley Mushrooms, Middlefield Original Cheese Co-op, Montana Girl Mustard, Oberlin Food Hub, Moores Heritage Farm, Paint Valley Farms Creamery, The Stone Oven Bakery and more. Each box contains some assortment of these vendors.
Sound interesting? Want to try it out? Order your Local Love Collective Box here.
You can also find Central Kitchen on Instagram.
The first dinner I cooked with this box was the kielbasa sauteed with onions, served with potato pancakes, sour cream and homemade applesauce, which is the easiest thing to make.
Applesauce Recipe (to serve 2):
3 medium apples, peeled, cored and cut into slices
1/2 cup water
1 inch stick cinnamon
1/2 tbsp butter (this is optional but highly recommended by my friend Collin and I agree)
Method: place all ingredients in a medium saucepan and place on medium-high until the water just starts to bubble. Now turn heat to low, cover with a lid, and let contents cook until apples are soft, about 15 -20 minutes. The apples should be quite mushy, and you can mush them up with a fork. Serve warm or cool. Discard cinnamon stick before you eat.
That’s it. Homemade apple sauce with no added sugar! Naturally gluten free. And if you omit the butter it's also paleo and vegan.
This blog post was created in collaboration with Central Kitchen and Edible Cleveland. Thank you to both for their generous offer to test out the first lot of Local Love Collaborative boxes! Please continue to support local small businesses as much as you are able to do so at this time. If buying a box is not an option for you right now, please share their Instagram page or share this post with friends and family.