I’ve decided that CSA‘s are like vegetable boot camp.
Except instead of screaming “Drop and give me 20!!” they throw vegetables at you and scream “Figure out what to do with this!!”
ok, OK, I’m figuring, I’M FIGURING!
(everything I know about boot camp I learned from Full Metal Jacket, FYI)
Beets are yet another vegetable I use to just throw in the juicer because I didn’t know what else to do with them. Fortunately, I am now in the know.
Last week marked the start of our summer CSA distribution. Among the loot in our weekly vegetable pick up was two heads of bok choy.
Until last year, bok choy was one of those vegetables that I didn’t have the first clue what to do with. Thank goodness for the Breville, that’s all I can say. Bok Choy Lemonade anyone? No? Just me?
It was right about the time that I started to love this member of the cabbage family that I heard about an 88 year old woman who nearly died from eating too much bok choy.
On any given day, I cannot tell you what I’m making for dinner that night until the five o’clock hour is upon me. I have tried and tried to become proficient at meal planning, but it appears I am simply unable to make this learned skill a personal reality.
I suppose I could work on this shortcoming of mine, spending hour upon hour digging into my past, trying to uncover from the depths of my psyche why on earth I can’t pull together a weeks worth of meal ideas in one sitting,
OR!
Psychology Today is one of my current favorite magazines, but it’s published bi-monthly so it feels like an eternity between issues. I was at their website a couple days ago for a PT fix and got sucked in to two great reads – both well worth sharing.
I highly recommend reading/skimming the full article for yourself, but the secret is to basically “become” something. Become a runner. Become a yogi. When you try to “become” something, you practice all the time, you get good at it, it becomes a habit, it’s then tied to your ego and your self-image. Voila! You’re exercising more and you actually like it. Genius.
I get a surprising amount of traffic from people searching the web for information on finger felons. A finger felon is an infection in the tip of your finger and this happened to me at the end of last year.
It turns out that finger felons are not that common. Blogging about finger felons is apparently even less common. Go figure.
I feel like I owe the people in search of info on finger felons an “It’s Going to Be OK! (Someday.)” post, so here it is.
Have you ever heard that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with?
I slept late yesterday and inadvertently missed the run with my neighborhood running group. No biggie – instead I hopped on my bike and went out for a solo ride when I got up. (See my little bike shadow up there?) These totally perfect, it’s-almost-summer mornings have been impossible to resist lately.
Our latest homeschooling adventure was one called Pick Your Own – and no, I’m not talking “noses” here. No lessons needed with that one I’m afraid. We’re already pros.
Yes, we went berry picking. Another day, another field trip – this time for more local, fresh strawberries. Our third trip in the span of a week for these red bundles of joy got me thinking: I haven’t always gotten so nerdily excited when it comes to eating foods in season.
The girls and I hiked, biked and triked ourselves a couple of blocks to our local farmers market this afternoon.
We enjoyed the sites.
The sounds.
(Asparagus speaks to me.)
The signs.
The realization that tonight’s dinner plans were about to be revamped.
Brussels sprouts can wait until tomorrow.
I love pressed tofu for a myriad of reasons. It has a different texture than its non-pressed counter part. It soaks up marinade better and holds together nicely in stir fries. I’ve heard too that squirrels do not like pressed tofu, but that may just be a rumor. Squirrels are also supposed to hate marigolds, but I don’t want to talk about that.
You can buy a contraption made for the sole purpose of pressing tofu – it’s called a Tofu Press (go figure) and is basically a little vise that squeezes all the water out of the tofu block for you. But 1) I’ve already done the vise in my kitchen routine, b) I don’t want to buy one and three) no one has offered to send me one for free.
More Mama’s Weeds
