summer pasta, wine, and best friend

The bestie is in town and this means eating home cooked meals on the reg with company! Since the theme of this week seems to have been death by lettuce, we dutifully built a mini salad of red leaf lettuce, tomato, and cucumber to accompany dinner. Fairly boring, still tasty. More interesting was the main dish: pasta with escarole and sausage.

I had some leftover sausage in the freezer and the logic was that sausage in all its meaty heartiness (lol) would be our saving grace, balancing the escarole and keep us from feeling like reincarnated rabbits. I deliberately kept everything light and simple though, because it’s summer and it’s hot. A chilled bottle of pinot grigio was a perfect complement to dinner and I wondered what it would be like if me and the bestie lived just a little closer. Wistful thoughts :/

Pasta with Escarole and Sausage

Ingredients:

-          1 head escarole

-          2 sausage links

-          Minced garlic

-          ½ white onion

-          1 box spaghetti or pasta of choice

-          Red pepper flakes

-          Salt, pepper

-          Olive oil

Directions:

1.       Wash the escarole thoroughly and tear into bite size pieces.

2.       Chop onion and set aside.

3.       Chop sausage into bite size chunks.

4.       Cook pasta for ~10 minutes or until al dente.

5.       While pasta is cooking, heat some olive oil in a (very) large pan. Add onion and garlic, stirring frequently to keep from burning and seasoning lightly with salt. When the onion just starts to turn translucent, add sausage chunks. Cook until sausage is lightly browned.

6.       Add escarole, one big handful at a time (to keep pan from overflowing). Season with red pepper flakes and salt. When escarole is cooked through (3-5 minutes), remove from heat and set aside.

7.       Drain cooked pasta, reserving one cup of pasta water.

8.       Add pasta to the pan. Drizzle with olive oil and heat everything together over medium heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add reserved pasta water as necessary.

9.       Serve and enjoy!

2013 CSA Season

I signed up last night! I know, I know. It's already mid-March. Hey, at least I eventually got around to doing it right?

I signed up for a partial vegetable share, a poultry share, and a farm visit. I'll be splitting part of the vegetables and poultry with my friend and roommate. I plan on eating the bulk of the produce and I'll be doing the volunteer shift and picking up the produce, which is perfectly fine with me if it means more people are exploring the CSA experience. The whole concept of a CSA is fantastic, but I honestly don't think it's for everyone. I would rather see someone have a fulfilling CSA experience by piggybacking and "just trying it out" instead of seeing a dissatisfied customer walk out of a CSA from a clash in expectations and what can sometimes be an overwhelming amount of produce (remember the deathbylettuce episode last summer?)

I'd like to get more involved in my CSA this summer, but I'm not quite sure how. Perhaps I'll email Cara and see if there's something I can do to help out the team.

Also, I've been doing a lot of reading and research on topics like sustainable agriculture, small to mid-size family farms in the U.S., programs that focus on supporting agriculture, soil enrichment and care, methane pollution (especially from dairy farms), monoculture crops, permaculture, biodiversity, conservation of the environment, fertilizer runoff, pesticide/hormone/antibiotic use, the involvement of government and large corporations in next-step R&D, technology in agriculture, the trend towards local eating, and American attitudes towards food and the consumption/production of food. It has been fascinating to see the different opinions and views people have across the country in regards to all of these topics. I don't know that anyone is wrong, exactly, but there'a lot of people who see the world through opposite lens, and that is making the discussion of America's food supply awfully polarizing.

I brought up the whole idea of local, sustainable agriculture to my dad last night and my goodness. I realized we see it completely differently. He's an engineering professor and believes wholeheartedly in scale and efficiency. For him, concepts like organic or local sound warm and fuzzy and make people happy. But it's only a matter of time before it scales into mass production, which is the most sensible and cost-effective way to feed people. My dad is not at all a romantic idealist and believes very much in the pragmatic, the quantifiable, and the efficiency of science and research.

I inherited my practical side from dad, no doubt about it. But between my day to day job, which affords me the opportunity to examine myriad businesses and their structures and modus operandi; my years in college; and my experience as a young consumer living in New York (one of the most food forward environments I've come across)...

I see a very different picture. While I do not believe that small family farms are the ONLY solution to feeding America, I do think they should play an important role in the food ecosytem. There's nothing wrong with having multiple ways of growing, processing, and distributing food to Americans. What I do believe is that the ecosystem has room for improvement. I do believe that America should pay closer attention to how it eats and where its food comes from. I do believe that consumers, farms, conservationists, shareholders/investors, corporations, and restaurants all have different responsibilities to each other. And I do think we all need to do our part to ensure we have a competitive, cooperative, secure, and healthy food ecosystem in the U.S.

The part of this equation I'm most interested in right now is increasing awareness of and advocating for programs like CSA's, farm-to-table, sustainable agriculture, and paying closer attention to what we put in our bodies. So in my own way, I try to do my part. I educate myself and do my own research, I spread the word, I sign up for a CSA, and I continue to look for ways to help balance the equation. I've helped introduce the concept of a CSA to a few of my friends and I'm fully prepared to hold their hand through their first season with a CSA to ensure they have a wonderful and enjoyable experience. It may not be much, but I like to think every drop in the bucket counts.

More than anything, I think awareness is key. As we were signing up for a share last night, my roommate turned to me and said, "You know, they should market this better. I never heard of this until I saw you with your shares and neither did my friends until you told them about it." The inherent problem with a local CSA is that it's local and it's small. Marketing is obviously going to be less polished than a company like Whole Foods or Gristedes. CSA's rely more on word of mouth from farmers' markets and happy customers than anything else. Feeding America cannot be solved through a one-size-fits-all approach and I think people should be free to decide what they want to eat when they want to eat it. Having said that, I do think people cannot be expected to make a good decision if they are uninformed or can't see all the pieces of the puzzle (or don't even have all the puzzle pieces to begin with!) If we educate people, market various approaches to eating, help adjust attitudes towards food, I rather suspect interest in CSA's would skyrocket.

FRIENDS! and chickens and eggs

I can now claim to have convinced not one, but TWO people to sign up for a CSA because of me! One in California and one here in New York. I am so pleased, I'm grinning like a Cheshire cat.

I'm worried, of course, that they won't like it. That I've been hyping it up to everyone. But honestly, I'll just let the produce do the talking, and I'm sure it'll be fine.

I was hoping to pull my roommate into sharing my CSA with me this year, but it looks like my roommate may or may not be with us this summer. So...I've decided that instead of being overly ambitious, I'm going to sign up for just one partial share ($375 for 22 weeks of a larger-than-half-of-a-regular-share) of vegetables. I wanted to try the eggs, fruit, or chicken because it looks so good and I want to support Free Bird Farms. But I didn't know what the best option would be and I was scared being overwhelmed by Foodmageddon again.

I can polish off fruit quite happily and easily on my own, but I like the idea of free range, organic (not certified, but raised organically) chickens and eggs, and I wanted to give it a go at home, rather than relying on super duper expensive fancy places that I like to think about eating at because heaven knows I'd never be able to take myself there without feeling awfully guilty about how I'm prioritizing my spending. T_T

I digress. I ended up deciding on the chicken share. Why? Eggs are perishable but these chickens are frozen. Plus, they seemed like a slightly better deal. $90 for a dozen eggs a week comes out to a whopping $4.09 per dozen eggs. That's a lot and I am not quite sure the difference in taste and quality would be worth it. I snooped around and the prices for free range, organic eggs are anywhere from $3.50 to $5.50 per dozen in NYC. Regular eggs are $$2.00 - $3.00 a dozen. While it would be nice to have eggs with beautiful, rich, nutritious orange yolks, I just don't want to commit to a full season right now. I guess the humane treatment of chickens is another factor, but on this point, I'm indifferent, since chickens raised for meat also face the same issue of humane treatment. The deciding factor for me was just that I don't eat a lot of eggs to begin with and they are fairly perishable.

On the other hand, I can get 12 chickens for $180, which comes out to about $15 a chicken, or $3.75 a pound. Although pricey, I did some investigating online and in stores, and this is actually fairly reasonable for a free-range, organic chicken. Normal chickens go for a lot less - something like $4 to $8 per whole 4lb chicken. The price markup for free range and organic chicken is a lot higher than it is for eggs. Why do I bother buying free range and organic then? It freaks me out that I'm eating chicken meat laced with antibiotics and hormones. I don't know. I don't like it. Plus, I've seen the chickens being raised for meat and eggs at Free Bird Farm and I can definitively say these chickens were raised happily. I can't say the same for the chickens I buy at the store, free range and organic or not. Finally, chickens can be frozen. They will keep for up to a year in my freezer. This gives them a significant advantage over eggs.

And I know $15 per chicken is a lot, but I know how to stretch my chickens. I can easily, easily, make at least 5 or 6 meals out of one chicken. Roast chicken for two meals with a side of veg, chicken over rice or chicken with pasta or even chicken salad sandwiches can make another two meals, and the leftover chicken bits and bones makes for at least two meals of chicken soup. I can add noodles, rice, or potatoes to the soup to instantly make it more filling. The price breakdown comes to about $2 to $3 per meal for the chicken. Rice, vegetables, noodles, potatoes, and pasta are super cheap, so the total cost of a full meal would break down to less than $5. That's a price I'm willing to live with, especially since I don't actually eat meat that much anymore, meaning my other meals are much cheaper than that. And I can rest easy, knowing what I'm putting into my body, how the chickens were raised, and who I'm supporting with my $. This makes me happy.

*Caveat: I don't know how "green" or local my chicken is, since I presume Free Bird Farm had to take the birds to be processed and frozen at a butcher plant, and I have no idea how far away that plant is, but I'm okay with that. This is a better option to me than what I can find in my supermarkets.

Why didn't I opt for both chickens and eggs? Quite simply: I can't eat that much. I think it's better to buy only what you need than to oversupply and waste food. Less food, more quality. In fact, I think 12 chickens is more than I can handle, so I convinced my friend to share some of the chickens with me. In exchange for buying 3-6 chickens off of me, I've agreed to teach him how to cook the chickens and pass along any excess produce, which I'm more than happy to do. Community building with CSA food! :)

All this thinking about local, organic, free-range, etc. made me wonder about all the other food I eat. I want to live better and I am considering kicking off a month of clean eating, where I restrict myself to only eating sustainably produced/harvested food, with an emphasis on organic produce, free range and hormone/antibiotic free meats, and wild-caught fish. And, of course, trying to support local farmers where and when I can.

Surprisingly, there are a lot of restaurants and grocery stores that are quietly (or not so quietly) sourcing local, free-range, sustainable foods. I think it would be fairly easy to pull off a month of clean eating in the city. I'll chew on this idea a little longer, but it's definitely something I want to pursue.

Tomato Sauce from Scratch

This weekend ended up being a little less domestic and a lot more crazy than expected. I need a month long detox. But I did manage to get around to making my tomato sauce!

My roommate, his friend, and yours truly, were bumming around the apartment on Saturday evening with no energy left for going out to eat dinner. We debated ordering takeout, but I really needed to use up my tomatoes, so I told the boys I'd cook pasta. They seemed skeptical, but they took a leap of faith and agreed to eat pasta for dinner. They even offered to help in the kitchen :)

The tomato sauce was sort of improvised, but I was pretty happy with it.

Pasta with Spicy Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
- 2 jalapeno peppers
- 6 cloves garlic
- 2 onions
- 6 medium tomatoes
- 1 bunch basil
- 1 package pasta
- salt and pepper to taste
- a bit of olive oil

Recipe:
1. Peel and chop onions. Thinly slice the garlic cloves.
2. Heat some olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Toss in onions and garlic.
3. Wash and chop tomatoes into small chunks.
4. Stir the onions and garlic occasionally until the onions turn slightly translucent.
5. Add tomatoes to the pan.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let the pan simmer, stirring occasionally.
7. Put a pot of water on to boil.
8. When water reaches the boiling point, add pasta.
9. Boil the pasta for 10-12 minutes, or until al dente.
10. Drain pasta and set aside.
11. Chop up the jalapenos and basil leaves. Add to the pan.
12. Stir the tomato sauce and let it simmer until most of the liquid has boiled off. If the sauce is too thick, add water.
13. Ladle sauce over the pasta and serve. Garnish with extra basil leaves if desired.

Note: Be careful with the jalapenos! We were informed by my roommate's friend that the peppers "weren't that hot." Turns out, they were. If you're worried about making the sauce too spicy, remove the seeds and the white pith (this is the spiciest part of the pepper) or just omit the jalapenos altogether.

The boys were impressed, especially since there was no meat in the pasta. We were all happily fueled up for a night out, I used up a lot of my leftover CSA share, and I didn't even have to do the dishes afterwards! I'd say it was a success.

CSA Share #8

I love my new apartment! I think a housewarming party this weekend is in good order.

Sangria + CSA produce + friends + summer nights = happy people

In fact, my eighth CSA share seems like it was designed just for a nice summer dinner:
- 1.5 lbs Yukon gold potatoes
- 1 bunch Thai basil
- 1 bunch beets
- 1 Italian eggplant
- 2 heads garlic
- 1 bunch red onions

Extras:
- 1 green bell pepper
- 1 bunch carrots

CWTC: POTATOES! Eek! I love new potatoes and these are as new as they get. They look so lovely and waxy and yummy... My absolute favorite dish to cook when I'm in a hurry but need a crowd-pleasing favorite for potlucks or dinners is roasted new potatoes. This "recipe" is super forgiving. Quantities, temperature, and timing are all approximate and have large margins for error, which is excellent news for challenged cooks like me.

1. Preheat oven to 350 ish.
2. Wash potatoes thoroughly.
3. Quarter into bite size chunks. Leave the skin on!
4. Drizzle with olive oil.
5. Add a dash of salt, rosemary, and pepper. Extra points if you can get coarse sea salt flakes, fresh rosemary, and freshly ground pepper. I just love the texture and taste of the giant salt crystals on the potatoes. In lieu of rosemary, feel free to experiment with dill, parsley, or plain.
6. Line a pan with foil for easy cleanup.
7. Evenly spread the potatoes in a single layer.
8. Pop in the oven and wait a while. Depending on the size of the potato chunks, this could take anywhere from 15-40 minutes. Check the potatoes by poking them with a fork (or chopstick). If the fork slides in easily, the potatoes are cooked. If not, best leave them a bit longer. If I'm in a huge hurry, I'll slice the potatoes smaller so they cook faster.
9. Garnish with sprigs of rosemary or other pretty things if desired. ENJOY.

I'm getting hungry thinking about this. Oh man. I'll probably roast them along with the beets and onions. I still have another batch of beets from last week that I need to use up too.

WTF: None. I like all these. And I know what to do with mostly all of these.
TAV: Thai basil. Everything else is pretty garden variety, but I'll admit that I'm less sure of how to use this herb. However, I've eaten it in pho and curry countless times, so I know I definitely like it. Brainstorming ideas for this weekend...my best ideas so far are:
  - Thai basil infused lemonade (spiked :D)
  - Eggplant stir fry with garlic and thai basil

If I still have leftover basil, I suppose I could always try to freeze it. Nahhh...moar cocktails! :D

CSA Share #7

Alright, I've resigned myself to perpetual busyness. I'll be moving to a new apartment this week and I'll need to figure out a new routine for bringing my produce home. Seems like I'm not the only one staying busy though - our farm has their hands full trying to combat the record drought and heat.

A few posts back, I touched on last year's season and how the heavy rainfall (and Hurricane Irene) wiped out a lot of farms and CSAs. The idea of rain being a bad thing for crops honestly didn't really cross my mind until I read last year's Free Bird Farm blog posts. However, droughts and excessive heat are nothing new to me (yay Arizona). When our CSA sends out the farmer's updates on how weather is affecting what's ending up in our share boxes, I definitely empathize.

On a related note, corn fields in particular seem to be getting hit pretty hard. From what I remember in my plant genetics lab research days from high school, corn is quite heat-hardy but needs a lot of water. Not only does this mean no sweet corn for me :( but it means less corn for everyone. Including animals. So...we can probably expect higher corn, beef, pork, and chicken prices next year. Ah well. Good thing I don't eat much meat these days anyways. :)

This week's share was pretty good (no more broccoli yay!):
- another bunch of beets
- parsley
- 3/4 lb green beans
- 3 medium red onions
- 1 bunch carrots
- 1 Italian eggplant
- 1 red cabbage

Extras (not included in the original distribution list but available at pickup):
- 2 patty pan squash
- 1 yellow zucchini

Alrighty then. This week's roundup:
CWTC: GREEN BEANS! I love green beans. I rarely manage to cook them - I end up eating them way too fast. I don't even really need dressing or dip for these, as long as they're fresh. Just wash, snap off the tips, and voila. Snacks.
WTF: parsley...
TAV: Eggplant. I love eggplant in Chinese food, but I've never really eaten it on my own. I have no idea how to cook it. Everyone loves to hate on eggplant for some reason, but I'm determined to make this work. Just watch me!

Side note: I love how much purple there is in this share! The onions, cabbage, eggplant, and even the beets are all various lovely shades of red-purple to deep purple-black. Pretty!

Side note of shame: I still have a lot of leftover produce from last week. I'm falling behind...help! I still have the romaine lettuce, zucchini and squash, chard, broccoli (for the last two weeks, actually), and garlic scapes from a while back. I think I should invite my friends over for a housewarming party. Little will they know it's really just a cover for using up all my extra produce. I feel like it's not a good sign when you start viewing your friends as broccoli vegetable disposals.

Beets and BBQ

What a lovely weekend full of friends, swimming, and lazy lounging in the sun :)

I contributed my zucchini, beets and lettuce to the BBQ this weekend and the reactions were interesting, to say the least.

As always, people were politely interested in the idea of a CSA, and I doubt most of them would go the extra step and sign up for one.

However, when it came to eating the vegetables, a very clear divide emerged. Reactions fell squarely into one of two camps:
1. Yes, please!
2. Is anyone going to actually eat that?

Interestingly, perhaps unsurprisingly, almost all the girls fell into the first group, while almost all of the guys were firmly in the second camp.

We lost a few slices of zucchini to the coals, but the rest disappeared pretty quickly. Beets also disappeared pretty fast. We ran out of coals, so the beets were more like gently-warmed beets than grilled beets, but they were still quite tasty. I didn't even know you could eat beets raw until this week. o.O

The guys, for all their earlier scoffing, were intrigued and I saw more than one person tentatively trying out a beet slice, probably for the first time in their lives. Very amusing and I managed to use up my CSA share and get other people to cook my vegetables for me. #winning :D

CSA Share #3 and #5

Wow. Between traveling home for some (much-needed and much-appreciated) vacation time and a million other life-events, I just haven't had time to do much beyond pick up my CSA share and try to figure out ways to incorporate more veggies in my life.

Quick recap of the last few weeks...

CSA Share 3
- garlic scapes (picked by yours truly :D)
- patty pan squash
- romaine lettuce
- swiss chard
- kale
- arugula
- basil

CWTC: Patty pan squash. They're just so cute!
WTF: None. I like all of these :)
TAV: None. THese are all pretty garden-variety (haha). And I got so up close and familiar with the garlic scapes after spending an hour picking them that I don't really consider them adventurous fare anymore.

I picked up this share, dropped it off at home, grabbed my luggage, and ran like crazy to catch my flight back to Arizona. But...this share was too cute and I couldn't help but pack a few veggies into a bag and carry them with me. I imagine a lot of the passengers on the plane were a bit confused. I know security at JFK was certainly a bit bewildered. As I was collecting my shoes and laptop from the plastic buckets, I overheard one security person whisper to another as they examined the x-ray screen, "Are those...vegetables?"

Haha. My parents were very impressed by my dedication and even more impressed that I cooked a lovely lemon-basil pasta with summer squash for dinner the next night. Most of all, they were impressed that I did the dishes (voluntarily!) and kept my room clean. I feel like they think I'm still 16 years old sometimes.

As an added bonus, the basil kept my air-sickness at bay. Every time I felt a bit nauseous, I just snagged a leaf from my bag and took a quick sniff of my basil. Mmm.

CSA Share 4
Skipped - out of town :/
On the bright side, I was having the time of my life at home, so I could care less. Plus, my CSA donates leftover vegetables, so it's not wasted!

CSA Share 5
- 1 head fresh garlic
- broccoli
- purple basil
- 2 cucumbers
- 1 Cousa-style squash (aka Korean hobak/zucchini)
- 2 golden zucchini
- red leaf lettuce
- carrots
- beets

CWTC: Carrots! They're so adorable :)
WTF: Broccoli. I like vegetables. I do. But not this one. Sigh...I still packed some for lunch, but I'm not thrilled about it.
TAV: Golden zucchini - zucchini itself is pretty standard stuff. But the color! So pretty! :)

Not sure what to do with this share yet. Very happy there is hobak in there. Apparently people didn't know how to cook/eat it, because this week's newsletter included a request for ways to prepare it. I EAT THIS ALL THE TIME. GIMME MOAR. 호박전, 된장찌개, 호박 무침...omg. More korean-style veggies are popping up in my CSA share than I expected. Plus points!

I might just pack some of my share and bring it with me to the BBQ my friend is throwing this weekend. Zucchini and beets will probably grill nicely. Lettuce on a burger? Cucumbers for snacks and cucumber water! Basil and cucumber for making mixed drinks? Mmm.

CSA Share #1

Our CSA share pickup times are 5pm to 8pm, but I obviously need to be at work during that time. However, I figured I would plan out my CSA rendezvous so that I could grab my share, drop it off, and be back at work in about 30 minutes. A good plan - a great plan.

Of course, life doesn't go according to plan. For starters, it was raining.

Remember a few posts ago, how I waxed poetic about the rain? Yeah. All well and good in theory, but slogging through puddles was a bit less than fun. Especially since I was slogging and hopping awkwardly over puddles in heels. I'm just glad I managed to not sprain anything vital. Graceful, I am most definitely...not.

Once I made it to the pickup building, I took an elevator to the 5th floor, where the distribution was supposed to be taking place. I ended up on a floor with rows of numbered rooms. I walked down one hall, then another, looking for the "conference room," only to realize halfway down the third hall that I was wandering through a hotel. Wrong building.

I went back to the elevators and waited patiently for the elevator to bring me back down to earth so I could continue my CSA quest. I say patiently because the elevators (there were two!) took about 5 minutes to reach my floor. If I wasn't sure before, I was sure now: this was an old, decrepit building, and I was probably safer walking up and down the stairs than risking the elevator. But I'm lazy, so I just waited for the elevator.

Once I was safely on the ground, I went through a pair of double doors and asked the nice gentlemen at the front desk where the conference room was. They pointed right and said through those doors. I went right. I climbed a flight of stairs, only to realize it led straght to a locked door on the second floor. I went back to the nice gentlemen and inquired politely where the conference room was. This time, they pointed left. I thanked them and went on my way.

Once I went through the door on the left, there were two hallways and multiple doors. I went right. Nothing. I backtracked and went left. Eureka! Elevators! And the people coming out of the elevators were holding plastic bags full of green leaves. I was getting close. I could feel it!

This time, the elevators were slightly faster, but I was surrounded by sweaty people in a hot, dank elevator. We also stopped at every floor. My offended nose informed me that this was rather unpleasant, and this CSA share had better be worth it...

Upon reaching the fifth floor, I went left and for the first time all day, I had guessed right the first time. The conference room was straight ahead! (Okay, I cheated. I went left because that's where all the other people with bags of vegetables were coming from. But I still went the right direction the first time, which I think is remarkable regardless of the circumstances surrounding the decision. Plus, it shows my strong deductive skills.)

CSA Share #1

I walked in, initialed my name on the sign-in sheet, and went down the row picking out my vegetable allotment for the week:

- 1 bunch frisee

- 1 head romaine lettuce

- 1 bunch Easter Egg radishes

- 6.5 oz mixed baby salad greens

- 1 bunch red spring onions

- 1 bunch arugula

- 1 bunch kale

- 1 bunch cilantro

It all looked so good and so fresh, I wanted to start munching away at the table. But that would have earned me some odd stares and possibly an escort out of the building (plus a mouthful of dirt), so I restrained myself and packed away my shares into my plastic bags.

Halfway through my perusal of the red spring onions (such a pretty color!), the woman next to me found a large bug in the pile of frisee I had just been sorting through.

Lady: Oh hello! What are you doing here?

Other lady: Is that a bug?

Lady: Yeah, let me just take him outside. Come here little fella! I'm not gonna hurt you. Come here!
Other lady: Wow, he's a big one!
Lady: Aww come here, little guy! Aww he's scared!

Me (in my head): UHHHHHHHHHH.

Fortunately, I'm not the squeamish type except when it comes to cockroaches and millipedes/centipedes. Earwigs freak me out too, but those I can deal with. I used to play with potato bugs and collect earthworms. And I caught scorpions and released them outside in the name of humane-bug-treatment. So I wasn't completely unsympathetic to the lady. But at the same time, I think 5+ years of living in super-urban environments has made me a bit less capable of mentally dealing with bugs, so I decided to speed through the CSA pickup line and pray that the bug would remain terrified long enough for me to escape into the elevator before the bug-savior managed to catch him. I wasn't exactly keen on the idea of sharing a cramped, dank, humid SLOW elevator with our lovely bug-savior, the bug, and a couple of sweaty strangers who might not take kindly to the ongoing bug-rescue.

I grabbed my spoils and fled out the door, willing the elevator doors to shut before bug-savior came barreling through. Fortunately, my prayers were answered and I was on my merry way down to the ground floor sans bug.

Walking home was a trial, as I tried to balance my umbrella, bag and vegetables while hopping around puddles in my heels without crushing my delicate salad greens and arugula. Fortunately, I'd had the foresight to pack away my delicate greens in my purse, so they were somewhat more protected than the plastic bags banging away at my knees as I jumped and skipped my way home.

I dumped the vegetables into individual plastic bags after admiring them for a few minutes, shoved them in my fridge, and ran back to my office. Total adventure time? 45 minutes. Not bad, but next time I'm hoping to shave that down to half an hour.

After seeing this week's share, I'm thinking a salad spinner would be really handy. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with everything just yet, but I've got a few ideas. The radishes will make a nice snack or salad addition, and I can use the spring onions and cilantro in spam fried rice. I've invited one of my friends to come eat salad with me on Friday night and she happily accepted. Since she just moved to the city, all she has in her pantry is spam. Ergo, spam fried rice. I can't use all the cilantro though (and my roommate hates it), so I'm not sure what to do with it. We'll see...

I'm really excited about the kale though! Lovely, gorgeous kale leaves that will make beautiful kale chips. Woo!

  

KALE CHIPS?!

And I'm thinking that sauteed radish greens and frisee would make lovely additions to our salad/spam fried rice dinner. We'll see!

Frisee: wilted?

 Anyways, it's late, I'm out. I think I'll hold off on washing anything until Friday and cross my fingers that the cilantro and greens stay fresh. Not worried about the radishes or kale, but a little concerned about the baby salad greens. I always feel like Friday is so far from Monday (or Tuesday, or Wednesday...), but this Friday in particular feels like it can't come fast enough.

More pictures of this week's haul:



Radishes! So cheerful and bright :)



So happy :)

social musings

Time and time again, I realize how central food is to the formation of community. Eating is such a social act, with food singlehandedly defining entire cultures and communities. Even the act of eating family meals together has been shown to be correlated with healther, better behaved children (which probably leads to happier parents too). I can't think of any other single act that brings people together so effectively (except maybe drinking haha).

I was reading an article on the importance of family meals, and one section in particular stuck out to me:

“But something precious was lost, anthropologist Fox argues, when cooking came to be cast as drudgery and meals as discretionary. "Making food is a sacred event," he says. "It's so absolutely central--far more central than sex. You can keep a population going by having sex once a year, but you have to eat three times a day." Food comes so easily to us now, he says, that we have lost a sense of its significance. When we had to grow the corn and fight off predators, meals included a serving of gratitude. "It's like the American Indians. When they killed a deer, they said a prayer over it," says Fox. "That is civilization. It is an act of politeness over food. Fast food has killed this. We have reduced eating to sitting alone and shoveling it in. There is no ceremony in it."

First of all, this is funny. But second of all, it’s so true. Food has gotten too easy. You don’t value what is easily available. Why do you think girls (and guys!) play hard to get all the time? Haha.

But seriously. Think about it. The food you cook at home is probably less tasty than what you could get from a restaurant, unless you are Jamie Oliver. But the pride you feel after cooking a meal makes it taste a lot better than it probably should. Why is that? It’s because you worked hard, dammit, and you’re going to be excited and eat every last piece of rubbery, undercooked chicken that you made (and so will everyone else) because you made it. All by yourself. It’s like when a child makes a macaroni painting of questionable aesthetic appeal and the child’s parents can’t stop talking about how beautiful it is. You almost feel like you're looking at a Picasso masterpiece, though your eyes are clearly telling you otherwise.

I think one of the biggest reasons I was drawn to the idea of a CSA was because it brings back some of the significance to food that I feel like I’ve lost. When I eat literally every weekday meal at my desk at work, it becomes unimportant. Unshared. I’m not about to get all depressed over this, but I definitely miss sharing those moments at the cafeteria, dining hall, or family dinner table.

Even in college, when I was fairly busy and ended up eating on the run half the time, most of my social activities revolved around meeting up with people to eat. Even on nights out, my friends and I always end up bonding over late night munchies. Now that I've graduated, this continues to be true, but with one major difference. In college, we ate out a lot, but we would also get together and make dinner, experiment with new recipes, or bake random goodies to get us through another rough midterm-laden week on a fairly regular basis.

Now?

I can't remember the last time I cooked with anyone. I still try to cook occasionally, but I haven't met up with a group of friends to cook in a long, long time. I miss that.

One big side benefit of joining a CSA could be that it will force me to cook more often. And if I'm cooking more often, I will probably bring some friends over to cook dinner or brunch with me at some point. And that would be really nice.


Goal for the summer:

Haha just kidding, I only wish my apartment looked like that :D
But the sangria is not just kidding. That's definitely happening.

WHY.

Why is it still cold outside?

Why isn't it time for CSAing yet?

:( Sometimes, I miss living in places that are warmer. I can't wait for summer.

On the bright side, the sky was this gorgeous shade of blue (I could almost pretend I was home for a brief second...) and the city maintenance folk have planted tulips and hyacinths and daffodils everywhere. Happy! :)

I'm also slowly collecting promises from friends that they'll cook and eat with me when CSA distributions start. After all, eating by myself at home would be like drinking by myself at home. No bueno!!!

Interestingly, once I explain what a CSA share is, people get really excited about it. Hmm.