Jun 12 2009
Yay peppers!
Happy Friday to us! There's also one more itty bitty one above these two and a bunch of blooms.
Jun 11 2009
peaches! or, we joined a CSA and you should, too
we did. and this week our box had four lil' peaches on top. we're very excited about the peaches, though i had just found a good rhythm for eating strawberries all the time. i'm gonna miss them. if you're wondering what i'm on about, i shall back up and inform. we signed up with a CSA this summer (community supported agriculture); we pay a membership fee, basically to ensure we're going to be getting and paying for our food every week through the end of the season, then we pay $35 a week for a 1/2 box filled with delicious produce. we joined avalon acres, which is a sizeable farm outside of nashville worked by a few amish families. conveniently, one of their drop-off points is cmt, so we don't even have to make any effort to go get it. we signed up a couple of weeks late, so this is our third box and man are we loving it. it's like christmas every wednesday, only way more healthy.
plus we get a few new experiences out of the deal. our first box including a kohlrabi, or german turnip, which looked somewhat like what would happen if a turnip had sex with a beet. tasted like a turnip though. we had a bunch of radishes the first week (and this week too!) and because we waited too long to use the lil' carrots, inadvertently discovered that awesome joy that is the roasted radish. i think i actually said "where've you been all my life?" we've had napa cabbage, which we mostly ate raw in salads because we weren't 100% sure what it was the first time, other than delicious. yesterday we got a couple of yellow zucchini. nope, not yellow squash, zucchini, which are a lovely, daffodil yellow color and very smooth to the touch. my interwebbing tells me it's a hybrid and tastes pretty much like a green one.
i think the most exciting new discovery is the garlic scape, the long green stemmy part of the garlic that most people discard - to their own detriment. it has a very mild flavor that's somewhere between garlic and green onion, but also a little bit buttery. we've gotten some in every box thus far, and i'm hoping that we'll get many more since garlic isn't harvested until later in the summer. they can be used any way garlic or onions would be. i cut the first bit in bigger pieces and roasted them with some veggies and last week's batch went into loaded potato salad instead of onions. dee-licious! having never seen them before, i'm not sure where you could get them.
yesterday's box had potatoes, an onion, garlic scapes, a napa cabbage, a head of some sort of lettuce (haven't examined), carrots, yellow zucchini, yellow squash, radishes, a head of cauliflower, peas, dill, basil and some other herb that is very dark purple.
i haven't yet mentioned the almost best part for me because i'm a weirdo: i LOVE getting food with dirt on it. perhaps this stems from being a farm kid and growing up with the crazy belief that food came from the ground, IN the dirt, not some candy-colored flourescent-lit nightmare store out of a delillo novel. food. complete with dirt and stems. *aaaaahhh*
Jun 05 2009
dear nice lady across the street with all the dogs
i appreciate you, i really do. you've collected our escaped children and returned them to our yard on numerous occasions. you've shouted encouragement over the years at all our attempts to rehab those front flowerbeds. generally, you seem like a very nice lady, and i'm honestly more than a little fascinated by the odd and sizeable pack of dogs you have over there. the many sundry cars are also a point of interest. BUT.
why, oh why do you find 6:30 or 7 am to be the best time for your loud outdoor activities? fairly often you're out cutting your always-immaculate lawn, whilst we young deadbeats across the road are still lazily clinging to hour number 6.5 of sleep. the last three mornings you've been happily hammering away replacing the picket fence enclosing your always lovely front yard. this endeavor in general i whole-heartedly support, because that thing has long been losing the battle to the over-excited mastiffs and rottweilers who like to put their front paws on it to better keep tabs on the 'hood and bark at passers-by. they also are well-aware that they can push certain spots and free themselves for some brief exploration of the neighboring yard, and that 30 pound lil' rat terrier you have spent so much time outside your yard that we didn't know she was your dog for about a month. so, yay, new fence. but seriously, hammering before 7 in the frickin' morning? NOT COOL.
Jun 01 2009
now what?
so i graduated, have a degree an' all that, am hunting the internets and stalking whomever i can think of for a job, but nothing's really different. i still hang out with the lil one two (longlongLONG) days a week for peanuts, i'm still soulpancakin' and still generally freaking out about a lack of employment and not enough hours in the day. while it's true that i am more than ready to be done with the nannying for several reasons, and i really would like some sort of job (okay, truthfully, i'd like about three months with no responsibilities - anybody wanna foot the bill for that?) i think i'm more bothered by the fact that nothing has changed since graduation. quite bothered, at least. and, because i'm me, i'm annoyed that i'm bothered. how much more illogical could i be? seriously, what a whackjob.
part of it is that it just seems like such a big thing happened, so shouldn't my life be at least a little altered, even if that alteration is unemployment? sure, i'm required to read and write less, fewer deadlines and no insipid assignments, but really no major changes. it's like now i'm more of a deadbeat with a part-time crap pay job and a non-paying job but no real excuse (i.e. school) for being such. that and the whole end-of-school thing is bascially pretty anti-climactic and almost a non-event due to the aforementioned same-old, same-old.
it's like i'm ready for some Next Big Event or whatever, i completed the step that was supposed to be the final one before something happened and now i just get to blog whilst ignoring a temper tantrum instead of writing a paper. the joy. maybe it's residuals from that postponed move. we were supposed to be taking steps toward living somewhere else after i graduated, so perhaps somewhere in the back of my brain i'm being sad about that again. i guess spending a week in new york didn't help either. sigh. or i'm just whiny and pathetic and need to suck it up as usual. i mean, i am thankful to still have at least some sort of income and particularly thankful that ben has a pretty good one, especially when so many people are lacking in that department (yay economy!), but ya know, it's nothing new. something changes, everything stays the same i guess.
maybe it's just human nature: expecting a change when we think it will come or because of some other transition. perhaps i'm just twitchy and annoyed with myself. i feel like something career-related will work out, in God's (sometimes painfully slow and vague) time, so i'm trying to be patient and zen and all that, i'm just not good at it right now.
May 29 2009
graduations, a brief photo blog (photlog?)
k. so here are some obligatory family shots from my gradjiation and then one from annalise's. someone should harass ben into putting up some of the fantastic new york pictures he took. perhaps start a letter-writing campaign...
me, me parents, that ridiculous hood thing that comes with a Master's
many franks, only one in a silly hat.
he's so proud. mmm... diploma.
ben's mom took this after Annalise graduated, and i think it's pretty rad.
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