We prioritize sustainability at Acme. In fact, the sustainable benefits of local food systems is one of the central goals that drives our mission to build a better, more just, and virtuous food system.
One great way to be sustainable is to find creative ways to use things that you would otherwise throw away, or to use ingredients that don’t need to be mass manufactured and transported long distances. Not only does this help save something from the landfill if you use scraps/compostable ingredients, it can also reduce the emissions from transporting products long distances and reduce our reliance on environmentally destructive supply chains.
A great example of this is Easter egg dye. Why purchase an egg dying kit manufactured and/or packaged overseas made with ingredients you can’t pronounce when compostable veggies can be used to make brilliant dyes?
Introducing… the Acme Natural Easter Egg Dying Kit! Did you know that colorful veggies such as red cabbage, onion, beets, and spinach can all be used to make natural dyes, as well as blueberries and turmeric? We’ve packed all these wonderful natural dye sources into a kit along with a dozen organic white eggs to help make having a sustainable Easter as simple and as easy as possible for you! Our kit will also help make your Easter egg dying tradition this year support small local producers near you!
You can achieve different shades by increasing and decreasing the dye time, and also experiment dying your eggs in multiple colors to achieve additional egg colors! There are certainly more colorful natural ingredients you can use to dye your eggs (we’ve heard coffee can make some great browns) so we encourage you to experiment!
We would love to see your natural egg dying attempts and successes! Tag us on social media with your photos @acmefarmsandkitchen
You might notice from the picture above that our new website will be looking very similar to our old one. As we look to find more ways to make your shopping experience with us smoother and easier, we don’t want our makeover to look unrecognizable to you.
Here is a quick sneak peek at some of the new exciting features that we think you’re going to love.
Feel free to send us feedback as you scroll down and see our new features by contacting us at info@theacmebox.com. We would love to hear from you as we continue to develop this new website.
Full Meal Descriptions
When looking in a Curated Box, you can now see the full description of each individual meal. You can see the cook time, serving size, dietary category, the ingredients list, and what items you’ll need from home to complete this meal.
AND
You can now rate and review our meals! We are always wanting to know how you like our meals, and here is an easy way for you to communicate that to us. We welcome full honesty always! If you didn’t like the meal, we want to know about it. If we see negative reviews from a meal, we will gladly pull it from our menu. We value your opinions and are so excited to have this new feature available.
Text Alerts for Quick + Easy Communication
Sign up for text alerts and get 10% OFF! We find text messaging an easier way to communicate our special offers, sales, and last call reminders. This new text program makes it easy to sign up, and easy to opt out.
New Build Your Own Box
If you don’t want to commit to a specific box every week, Build Your Own Box might be the best choice for you. Build Your Own Box makes it easy to search for individual categories like “Quick Meals”, “Gluten Free Meals”, “Vegetarian Meals” etc. You have all the meal options at your finger tips to build your own perfect box every week.
Reward Points Are Back!
You can now earn points for every referral, and dollar spent. Every dollar earns you 1 “smile” point. Build up your points to earn awesome Acme rewards!
More details to come about our rewards program. 🙂
Check Out Button
Remember check out buttons? You know, that button every other online shopping website has? 😉 Well, we did it — we finally have one!
No more confusion about when your card will be charged, no more unwanted products being charged and delivered just because you forgot to take them out of your cart. Just the click of a button makes your purchase with us clean and simple.
Are you getting excited about our new website now?! 🙂 More communications to come, so please keep an eye on your emails.
Thank you for your continued support and your patience as we work to make this website awesome! -Your Acme Team
As we find ourselves a year into the pandemic, we’ve seen trends to keep us busy at home come and go. Maybe you participated in some trends yourself and are now a master at crafting the perfect sourdough loaf. At Acme, we love finding fun trends to put our local spin on to keep you engaged and to support your local small businesses.
That is why we are challenging you to take your pandemic bread-making to a whole new level with our latest challenge. We are challenging you to take your bread to the level… of fine art! Okay, maybe not “fine art” level… maybe more like kindergarten finger painting or a “drink and paint” class level?
Introducing… the Acme Spring Focaccia Art Challenge! Don’t worry, we were only joking before, focaccia is an easy bread to make and bake—you don’t need to be any sort of bread expert to succeed in this challenge, just a creative spirit! Keep reading to learn more.
Let’s break it down, shall we? First: focaccia. If you didn’t know, focaccia (pronounced “foh-kah-chuh”) is a flat oven-baked Italian bread. Focaccia topped with oil, spices, and other goodies was actually the prototype to modern pizza!
Second: art? Yes, art! All food is art, but this time we mean it a tad more literally: you can make beautiful art on focaccia bread using many different tasty things! See the photos below for inspiration.
Focaccia art before baking…
…and after!
Flowers make great focaccia art…
…and so do landscapes!
Are you feeling inspired yet? Ready to bust out the baking sheet and release your inner Van Gogh? Then read on for the rules for our Acme Focaccia Art Challenge:
Post your Focaccia Art photo on facebook or instagram and tag us with @acmefarmsandkitchen AND #AcmeFocacciaArt to enter into our contest.
Our Acme Team will choose the top 3 entries on April 1st, then YOU will get to vote for the Grand Prize Winner.
Our top 3 winners will be announced April 2, and our Grand Prize Winner will be announced on April 5th.
Prizes!
1st place winner: $100 Acme Credit 2nd place winner: $50 Acme Credit 3rd place winner: $25 Acme Credit
We can’t wait to see your masterpieces (and your earnest attempts!) We are sure all your focaccia art will be unique and beautiful in its own way… even if you have to squint and tilt your head a bit to see it.
We hope you enjoy this challenge as well as our other offerings this week! If you have been enjoying your Acme boxes, it would mean a lot to us if you left us a review on Google, Facebook, and/or Yelp. Your reviews help us reach new customers which helps us grow—which means the more we get to directly support small local producers near you!
So, without further ado… let the baking and art begin! And don’t forget to eat your art after appreciating it!
In Bellingham, we are so lucky to have a fantastic producer of delectable fresh pasta in our own backyard: Bellingham Pasta Company. At Acme, we couldn’t be prouder to partner with Bellingham Pasta Company to feature high-quality fresh pasta in many of our meals.
Bellingham Pasta Company is a wholesale and retail pasta company offering many different varieties of fresh pasta—from lemon pepper linguine to bucatini to lasagna sheets—made from high-quality ingredients including non-GMO flour from Shepherd’s Grain.
Like Acme, Bellingham Pasta Company recognizes the value in local food—not only to provide pasta fans with the freshest product but also to minimize the carbon footprint of production and transportation, and to keep money in your local economy. We also give them a sustainability shout-out for using compostable packaging for their pasta.
Bellingham Pasta Company uses the extrusion method to create their pasta. See the extrusion method in action below. How refreshing to see real humans creating delicious pasta using real ingredients!
Meet some of the Lummi Island Wild team: Riley Starks, Keith Carpenter, and Ian Kirouac
At Acme, we love partnering with producers who are as mission-driven as we are. It is truly our honor to partner with Lummi Island Wild as a seafood supplier. We must admit—we are a bit starstruck partnering with such a stellar local supplier that has been featured by Patagonia Provisions, HuffPost, Food & Wine, The Seattle Times, and many more media outlets for their commitment to sustainable and ecologically sound fishing practices.
Lummi Island Wild’s mission is “to promote the respectful and responsible harvesting of wild salmon while protecting the environment for future generations of fish and people.” One of the primary ways Lummi Island Wild achieves this mission is through reefnet fishing—a fishing technique used by the Coast Salish tribes indigenous to the Salish Sea surrounding the San Juan Islands for hundreds of years.
About the Reefnet Method
Once practiced throughout the Salish Sea by its many indigenous fishing communities, reefnet fishing now only happens off Lummi Island, three other San Juans Islands, off of Cherry Point through a cooperative effort between Lummi Nation tribal members and Lummi Island Wild.
Here’s how reefnetting works: salmon follow along an artificial reef and over a small net suspended between two platforms. Spotters, standing on 20- foot towers, watch for a school of salmon to swim over the net. When the spotters make the call, the net is raised and the live fish are rolled over the side of the platform at the waterline (so no harm is done to them) and into a netted live well open to the flowing seawater. Here they are allowed to rest, releasing any lactic acid that may have built up in their flesh.
Lummi Island Wild spotters watching from their 20 foot towers for salmon to swim over the reefnets.
Fishermen sort through the live well to release any unwanted bycatch unharmed back into the sea. The kept salmon are then individually bled into an adjacent bleed well, and then into a tote filled with slush ice. The release of lactic acid and blood here results in the high quality and clean taste of Lummi Island Wild’s catch.
The batteries that run the motors Lummi Island Wild uses to raise their reefnets are solar powered—using no fossil fuels. Each of Lummi Island Wild’s reefnet gear are anchored to the sea floor in the same spot year after year, allowing for the smallest carbon footprint of any salmon fishery.
The reefnet method offers so many benefits, but one of the most important is that it allows individual selection of all fish caught—meaning the fisherman individually sort each fish, releasing unharmed all fish they are not targeting or fish that are protected species. This helps protect the area being fished from unnecessary ecological disruption.
See reefnet fishing in action in Lummi Island Wild’s “A Day in the Life” video below:
Look for Lummi Island Wild’s Nicoise Salad with Smoked Salmon in our upcoming meal kits! Purchasing these meal kits is a great way to support Lummi Island Wild and many more local producers near you.
To learn more about Lummi Island Wild and reefnet fishing, we recommend the following resources:
In celebration of our 7 Days of St. Patrick’s Day box, we wanted to take a look at each item in the box and explore its connection to Ireland. Make sure to order your 7 Days of St. Patrick’s Day box before orders close so you don’t miss out on this exclusive box and these festive recipes!
Day 1: Rachel’s Ginger Beer (add your own Irish Whiskey to enjoy an Irish Whiskey Ginger cocktail)
If you aren’t a whiskey aficionado, you might not be aware of all the different kinds of whiskies that exist in the world (some spelled “whiskey” and others “whisky” depending upon where they are produced.) You also might not know that the word “whiskey” comes from the Irish (or ‘Gaelic’ to be precise) “uisce beatha” meaning “water of life.”
But what makes Irish whiskey different from other whiskies? First of all, to be labeled as Irish whiskey, the whiskey must be distilled and matured on the island of Ireland. This article does a good job of breaking down other differences between whiskies. The most famous brand of Irish whiskey is Jameson, but there are hundreds of different Irish whiskies out there to try, each with its own unique flavor profile.
There is nothing particularly Irish about ginger beer, but Rachel’s Ginger Beer makes an excellent mixer, and who couldn’t use a healthy dose of ginger in these winter months? If you aren’t a drinker, Rachel’s Ginger Beer served straight makes a more than suitable “water of life”.
Day 2: Boxty – Irish Potato Pancakes with Bacon + Eggs
Boxty is a traditional Irish potato pancake made with grated potato, flour, baking soda, and buttermilk. Traditionally made with ¾ potato and ¼ other ingredients, all ingredients all mixed together then fried in a pan like a normal pancake. This gives boxty a texture between a pancake and a hash brown.
The Acme Boxty kit comes paired with Jack Mountain Meats uncured bacon, eggs, and fresh scallions to top your boxty.
Perhaps a contender for ultimate comfort food, shepherd’s pie is essentially a ground meat pie with a crust or topping of mashed potato. Seriously, you need to make shepherd’s pie on a cold or rainy day. If you think mashed potatoes couldn’t get any better, wait until you try them baked until crispy on top of a bed of delectable seasoned meat and vegetables. There is apparently some contention about if shepherd’s pie is of Irish or English origin.
The Acme Shepherd’s Pie kit features grass-fed ground beef, kale, and tender root vegetables covered with mashed potatoes and parsnips.
The Acme Irish Beef Pastieskit features grass-fed ground beef cooked with cabbage, potatoes, onions, and a savory sauce wrapped in buttery, flaky pastry, served with a light green salad.
There are few things associated more with Ireland than Guinness beer. Guinness is a stout beer and remains the best-selling stout beer in America. Guinness traces back to Arthur Guinness’s brewery in Dublin in 1759, and yes, it did create Guinness World Records—funnily enough, after the Managing Director of the brewery got into an argument with friends about the fastest game bird in Europe and failed to find the answer in any reference book.
For the Acme Guinness + Beef Stew kit, you will have to supply your own Guinness (or other stout beer) but we will provide the grass-fed beef, mushrooms, carrots, celeriac, potatoes, and other fixings for a complex, stout-spiked gravy, served with a swirl of freshly grated horseradish root.
Day 6: Irish Apple Cake with Vanilla Custard Sauce
Staying authentic to the recipe, the Acme Irish Apple Cake kit comes with the makings for the soft, moist cake along with the traditional streusel topping and a vanilla custard sauce.
Corned beef is a salt-cured brisket of beef—and no, it does not have corn as an ingredient. The “corn” in the name comes from the large-grained rock salt—called “corns” of salt—used to treat the brisket. Sugar and spices are also sometimes added to the mix. Corned beef is featured as an ingredient in many cuisines, but in America, it is most associated with Irish cuisine and St. Patrick’s Day.
Irish soda bread is a yeast-free quick bread. The name comes from the “baking soda” (or in Ireland, “bread soda”) that is used as a leavening agent instead of yeast. There are many different forms of soda bread popular across different parts of Ireland.
The Acme Soda Bread kit includes raisins and calls for buttermilk to add tang. You can consider adding orange zest or caraway seeks to sweeten the bread, or a quick search on the internet will turn up many other variations you can attempt for your soda bread.
We hope you enjoy the 7 Days of St. Patrick’s Day box and that these recipes bring you some festive cheer. As always, your purchase supports many local producers near you in their mission to better our food system. If you enjoy your 7 Days of St. Patrick’s Day Box or any of our Acme offerings, please leave us a review on Google or Yelp—it would mean a lot to us!
As always, thank you for supporting local and for making a difference in your community.
First off, what makes a whole grain whole? Simply put, whole grains contain all three parts of the grain kernel. Refined grains contain only one part of the grain—the endosperm—as the other two parts are stripped away in the refining process. Enriched grains are just refined grains with some of the nutrients lost during processing replaced.
Health Benefits of Whole Grain
Each part of the grain has health benefits, so by consuming all three parts you are getting the full nutrition of the grain. Here are the three parts of a grain kernel and the nutrients they contain:
The bran is the fiber-rich outer layer of the grain that contains B vitamins, iron, copper, zinc, magnesium, antioxidants, and phytochemicals. Phytochemicals are natural chemical compounds in plants that have been researched for their role in disease prevention. Bran and fiber slow the breakdown of starch into glucose—thus helping to maintain regular blood sugar rather than causing sharp spikes. Fiber also helps to lower cholesterol and to help move waste through the digestive tract. Fiber may also help prevent the formation of small blood clots that can trigger heart attacks or strokes.
The endosperm is the interior layer that holds carbohydrates, protein, and small amounts of some B vitamins and minerals. This is the only part of the grain left in refined and enriched grains.
The germ is the core of grain and is rich in healthy fats, vitamin E, B vitamins, phytochemicals, and antioxidants. Phytochemicals and essential minerals such as magnesium, selenium, and copper found in whole grains may protect against some cancers.
If whole grains are so much healthier, why do so many products and recipes use refined grains? Milling leaves only the soft, easy-to-digest endosperm. Without the fibrous bran, this makes refined grains easier to chew. The germ is removed in milling because the fat it contains can limit the shelf life of processed wheat products.
Refined flour is fluffy and does help to make airy and light pastries and breads—but the refining process also strips away more than half of wheat’s B vitamins, 90 percent of vitamin E, and nearly all of the fiber. Although some nutrients may be added back in by enrichment and fortification after refining, other health-promoting components of whole grains such as phytochemicals are unable to be replaced.
Incorporating Whole Grains in Your Diet
Swapping out refined grains for whole grains when possible is a great way to get all the benefits of whole grains. Some whole grains you may consider incorporating into your baking and diet: barley, brown rice, buckwheat, bulgur (cracked wheat), millet, oats, popcorn, wild rice, quinoa, spelt, teff, sorghum, kamut, and whole-wheat bread, pasta and crackers.
Back by popular demand, we are excited to announce our new Whole Grain Bakery Box Challenge! This time around, all the recipes in our Bakery Box will use healthy whole grains including whole grain flour locally sourced from the wonderful Cairnspring Mills in Skagit Valley.
We love Cairnspring Mills because they share in our vision to disrupt our broken food system. Cairnspring Mills does this by ensuring local farmers remain financially viable, preserving the unique agricultural heritage of the Skagit Valley, shortening the distance between farmer and customer for a bulk crop such as wheat, and by building soil health and conserving farmland.
Purchasing this bakery box not only supports such an awesome local producer, but you also get all the recipes and ingredients for 8 healthier-yet-not-skimping-on-taste whole grain baked goodies! Plus, we invite you to participate in our social media challenge for the opportunity to win big!
Here are the rules for our 2nd Bakery Box Challenge:
Order the Whole Grain Bakery Box between Feb. 19th-24th. When you order this box, you will also be entered to win a brand new $370 Kitchen Aid Mixer!
The challenge runs from March 5th-26th. During these weeks, each photo you post and tag with @acmefarmsandkitchen AND #AcmeWholeGrains on Instagram or Facebook of your completed recipe will earn you one entry. You will know your entry has been counted when the Acme social media account likes your post.
At the end of each week, we will randomly select one lucky winner for $200 Acme credit! We will announce the winner on social media and credit the $200 to your account.
We were so delighted to see the response from our first Bakery Box Challenge, so we are so excited to offer this opportunity again with a whole grain twist! We so appreciate each and every one of you home bakers out there trying these recipes and spreading the word about good, local food. We can’t wait to see all your baking pictures!
If you have never expressed an orange peel (or any other citrus peel), we encourage you to try it the next time you get your hands on a citrus fruit. Express the citrus oils over tea, a glass of ice water, ice cream, or simply into the air. The bright, aromatic oils released are like pure sunshine to the nose.
Citrus fruits have been used to add character to both food and beverage since ancient times, and have historically been sought after for their medicinal properties—used to combat sickness, intestinal ailments, skin conditions, gout, scurvy, an antidote to poison, and as an antiseptic during times of plague.
Not all these uses of citrus hold up today, but modern science has come to know much more about what makes citrus so nutritious. This week’s Acme curated meal boxes feature a variety of citrus fruits: orange, grapefruit, and blood orange. We wanted you to know some of the health benefits you will get from these citrus fruits in addition to the flavor they bring to this week’s recipes.
Vitamin C
Vitamin C has many benefits. We need vitamin C to maintain healthy skin, bones, blood vessels and connective tissues, and it strengthens our immune system. Vitamin C also acts as an antioxidant that might help protect your cells against the effects of free radicals and fight inflammation. By reducing inflammation, vitamin C may prevent or delay heart disease conditions like arthritis and some types of cancer.
Flavonoids
Ever heard of a flavonoid? Flavonoids are plant-based nutrients that create the bright color and the familiar aroma of citrus. Citrus fruits are an important source of dietary flavonoids!
Studies indicate citrus flavonoids protect cells against the damage of free radicals. Through a direct scavenging of free radicals, citrus flavonoids can reduce inflammation. Consequently, those anti-inflammatory pathways provide therapeutic benefits against cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, atherosclerosis, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes.
Fresh salad with avocado and grapefruit on a stone table. organic diet food. top view
Citrus flavonoids can also protect against diabetes by improving glucose tolerance, increasing insulin secretion and sensitivity, and decreasing insulin resistance and also may play a significant role in the development of antiobesity agents, reducing obesity and adipose tissue inflammation.
Also importantly, citrus flavonoids have the ability to modulate gut bacteria (microbiome) composition and activity and exert beneficial effects on intestinal barrier function and gastrointestinal (GI) inflammation.
Dietary Fiber
When you think about fiber, perhaps you first think of grains and rice. But citrus fruits are high in dietary fiber as well! Citrus fruits contain both types of dietary fiber: soluble and insoluble fiber—both of which are important!
Soluble fiber can help lower LDL cholesterol, reducing cardiovascular disease. This type of fiber can also help improve glucose control by slowing the absorption of sugar resulting in better blood sugar levels. Insoluble fiber can help relieve constipation by helping food move more efficiently through the digestive system and increases stool bulk.
If you are looking to get more fiber in your diet, we recommend not adding too much fiber too quickly, as this can promote intestinal gas, abdominal bloating, and cramping. Increase fiber in your diet bit by bit over a few weeks to allow the natural bacteria in your digestive system to adjust. Also drink plenty of water along with your fiber, as fiber works best when it absorbs water.
Even More Benefits
Among other benefits, citrus fruits also have a low glycemic index (meaning they won’t spike your blood sugar as much as some other foods) and are high in potassium, and other essential nutrients such as folate, calcium, thiamin, niacin, vitamin B6, phosphorus, magnesium, copper, riboflavin and pantothenic acid.
Upside down blood orange cake on old dark concrete background. Rustic stile. Selective focus
It is important to know that some citrus fruits—such as grapefruit, pomelo, and orange fruits— can interact with medications. If you are taking medications, please consult with your healthcare provider before adding those fruits to your diet.
We hope you enjoy this week’s citrus recipes and that the bright and tangy citrus flavors of this week’s recipes bring some warmth to your winter.
Acme is so excited to partner with Selva Wholgemuth, MS, RDN, CD of Happy Belly Nutrition for our Best Year Ever Box. Selva is a gut health dietitian, specializing in functional digestive disorders, including GERD, IBS, SIBO.
Selva has helped many patients regain health and vitality using integrative and functional medicine principles in her private practice, Happy Belly Nutrition. Selva specializes in both gut and women’s health, helping patients find relief from chronic digestive issues and providing essential nutrition guidance for women trying to conceive and during the perinatal period.
As a Registered Dietary Nutritionist (RDN), Selva is bringing her years of expertise with food and nutrition to the table. Not only providing accessible information on a number of healthy living topics, she is working with us to select and develop meals that highlight those topics in the most delicious way possible!
Initially, when starting her private practice, Selva wanted to work with all types of patients and health conditions. She began to focus on gut health because many people are struggling silently with chronic digestive issues and the consequences of an inflamed gut are far-reaching. More and more research has been highlighting how the gut microbiome can impact the development of chronic disease.
After becoming a new mom, Selva realized there is a lack of quality nutrition support for women wanting to conceive, during pregnancy, and postpartum. She was distraught to find out that often nutrition is rarely talked about when women are struggling to conceive and during the postpartum phase. During the 6 months leading up to conception, during pregnancy, and the year following birth, proper nutrition (and absorption) is essential! However, often this population is not getting the expert nutrition guidance needed to support optimal health for mama and baby.
With her in-depth knowledge of the gut and women’s health, Selva has helped many patients meet their health goals, including alleviating irritating gut symptoms and helping women conceive successfully after many years of trying. It is Selva’s passion to provide expert nutrition guidance and make a lasting positive change in someone’s life!
