Farmers’ markets have long been popular in the Pacific Northwest as havens of the freshest, just-picked, just-baked foods from the region. With dozens around the area, only once a week, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) popularity wasn’t far behind. Boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables delivered to customers are like treasure troves of possibility, and one company is making a name for themselves by taking it a step further: ACME Farms + Kitchen.
Based in Bellingham, Washington, founders Joy Rubey and Cara Piscitello started the company in 2011 as a local food delivery service that creates boxes of more than just produce. Each of the popular Locavore boxes also includes artisan bread, handmade pasta, farmstead cheese, and pasture raised meat and wild fish.
Any CSA subscriber will tell you that sometimes, what comes in the box is a real head scratcher. What does one do with four bunches of collard greens? How do you make three pounds of carrots shine in the middle of a hot summer when soup doesn’t sound so great? Enter ACME’s best idea: each one comes with recipes to highlight the best way to use each product.
Besides the main Locavore boxes, which are packed to feed a family of four 3-5 meals, they also cater to specific diets, like dairy-free, paleo, vegetarian, gluten-free, and even make full meals for the heat-and-serve set.
“The recipes we provide use up everything in the box [with the addition of a few simple pantry ingredients from home] so you’re not left with that ‘what am I supposed to do with this thing’ feeling and nothing will go to waste,” says Rubey.
Adds Piscitello, “The boxes are great for all levels of cooking skills, with recipes simple and straightforward enough for beginner cooks, but the ingredients are always versatile enough that a more experienced cook could expand on the recipes or make something all their own! It’s also a great opportunity to cook with your kids and teach them the value of eating good, clean, whole foods. For those that don’t have time or energy to prepare a meal, we also have ready-made meal boxes [Bellingham + Seattle only] that have pre-made home cooked meals using the same locally sourced ingredients you’d get in any ACME box.”
All their partners are small to medium-sized local producers and farms, and they pride themselves on supporting their community with deliveries to Bellingham, Seattle, and Portland area customers. Besides helping busy families source clean, local food, they also have a mission to support their local food economies for future generations.
Each area has a slightly different box, but with the same end goal of similar ingredients, keeping things hyper-local. “The boxes in each of our three markets are similar each week but vary depending on what items are available from the purveyors in that area. For example, one week might include a steak taco recipe, and the Seattle and Bellingham boxes would have ribeye steaks from Crown S Ranch and Tadeos Tortillas while the Portland box would have Deck Family Farm’s ribeye steak and Three Sisters Nixtamal Tortillas.”
They deliver hundreds of boxes each week, and have a calendar forecast through the end of the year of what they’ll include. Because customers are able to sign up one week at a time, if they want, there’s built in flexibility to opt out when traveling, or when they just don’t feel like cooking that week.
Recipes are inspired by the season, but one of their favorites is happening right now, thanks to asparagus season. “Entering into our 5th season we have a good database of recipes built up and know which ones our customers have loved. When it’s asparagus season like it is now, we know that we will be making Shaved Asparagus Pizza with Truffled Formage Blanc and Asparagus Camembert Bread Pudding and Penne with Asparagus Pesto. We build meals around what is coming out of the fields and is at its peak flavor and ripeness. Typically we will look at the produce then run through our list of purveyors to see what products would play off the cherry tomatoes or basil or whatever is fresh that week.”
