It came upon me this evening while a friend was and asked for some water and opened the refrigerator, I have a pretty clean fridge. I don’t mean clean as in it’s physical appearance but it us also that as well. What I mean is I open the refrigerator to a world of real food. Our refrigerators are really a window into who we are, because as they say we are what we eat.

I got on a food kick after graduating from college. I had always been fascinated where food came from and growing up we always had a small garden in the backyard. My mother also loves to “can” her own pickles, apple butter, wild blueberry and wild raspberry jam. When I was with my grandmother she always made up pink applesauce so as well my father owned a restaurant when I was very young. I remember summers filled with weekly trips to the farmers market. So it’s safe to say food has played a role in my life since I was born.

It was not until after college I really became interested in exactly where the food comes from that I was buying in the grocery store. My interest seemed to start right around the same time that the local food movement started to gain some momentum books like Marion Nestle’s – What to Eat, Michael Pollen’s Omnivore’s Dilemna, Sandor Ellix Katz – The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, Barbara Kingsolver’s – Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and more radical books like The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer. The more I read the more I wanted to read. I watched all the documentaries I could about food and well as I tend to get was a little obsessed. The good news is I read many view points and was armed with a lot better idea where my food came from.

Even armed with this knowledge it wasn’t until the last two years that I started to make the changes and be more mindful of my foods origins and my consumption. I once lived with a boyfriend who prided himself on only having two medium sized garbage bags at the end of each month. The rest was composted or consumed, no packaging waste. However the relationship ended and so did my quick venture into that world. However, last summer and even more this summer that idea of almost zero packaging in my food has resumed. It can all be attributed to one simple lifestyle change, joining a CSA.

A CSA or Community Supported Agriculture is like having your own farm without the work. In the beginning of the spring I joined the Amee Farm CSA (home of the Death Race) I paid my share up front and got in return over twenty weeks of fresh veggies, eggs, and chicken in the fall. Each Monday I head over to the farm and pick out the veggies I would like for the week. You don’t have to live near a farm to join a CSA either, the one I joined last year had weekly drop-offs. The consequence of joining a CSA is you have an abundance of fresh local and in my case organic food at your fingertips.

So here I am months into the summer and into my new apartment. I am armed with a kitchen, my cooking supplies that were dormant for three years at my disposal again and more fresh options than I can sometimes wrap my head around. As I stand in front of my refrigerator these days, gone are the mounds of take-out boxes, gone are the quickie meals, and gone are the foods with ingredient lists filled with weird chemical names. No a look in my fridge today is colorful and simple. Simple is good.

So I challenge you to take a look in your refrigerator. If we are what we eat I am content with what I see, are you? All this week I challenge you to take a picture of your refrigerator and submit it to Dirt In Your Skirt via Facebook, Twitter (#Showmeyourfridge and tag us @Dirtinyourskirt), or our Contact Us page. I have showed you my fridge now show me yours.