The most wonderful time of the year...

Is here, but almost complete...

It is the time of year where I eat an average of 1/2 a pound of cherries per day. And while we have a beautiful and stuffed gallon bag of "bullets" in the freezer for wintertime baking (perfectly pitted, whole, round, red frozen Washington cherries), I still bought another three pounds on Tuesday for a second bag o' bullets.

Alas, here we are Saturday morning and three pounds are gone, nary a one frozen. Will I have the discipline to buy and bullet another few pounds? But it's time for peaches! The Sauvie Island Farm Wife blog says peaches were ready as of 7/31, and last only two weeks.

To eat or to freeze, to eat or to freeze... my most wonderful time of year.

Hell

I'm surely going to foodie hell... but, but, but... these cherries from Chile for $3.99 a pound taste sooooo good after going on month four of bananas, apples, oranges, bananas, apples, oranges!

Seasonal

In Portland, every restaurant serves things local, sustainable and seasonal. Even the local fast food chain! (Remind me to go get some Walla Walla onion rings, by the way...)

But sometimes, even in the middle of berries and green garlic and new fingerling potato side dishes, you want a Brussels sprout. So learn from me - it's not just the tomato in January that is awful. It is the Brussels sprout in July, too, that is all food porn: looks good but never delivers; the right color but you can't touch it without getting in trouble.

CSA! CSA!

With the exception of thickening up the sauce a bit (one can of organic tomato paste), the use of Dave's Killer Bread crumbs, and a small sprinkle of cheese, John and I made an eggplant (almost)parmesan entirely with ingredients from the CSA and our garden! Eggplant, an insane variety of tomatoes, basil, oregano, garlic... all grown within 50 miles of here (or less). A wild, wild weekend night, I know - but delicious!

This brings me to thinking about using food as a reward -- in a healthy way. I have a terrible, terrible lifelong habit of using food to reward myself. Been a long day? Get takeout. Been a failure of responsibilities at work? Get a milkshake at lunch. Achieved a great goal? Pizza! Need to celebrate a birthday or accomplishment (of mine, or a friend's)? You get it.

So the CSA cooking was a reward for a long week spent out of the house every night for work... use the summer abundance to reward myself for staying in. But I think I'm figuring out how to make that reward a little healthier. We joined a CSI this year too: Community Supported ICE cream. (I said a little!)

A tiny, local, amazing chocolatier here in town wanted to buy a fancy European ice cream making machine, but didn't have the money. So they got 30 people to pay $150 to get ice cream every other week for a year. Money up front for them, and a year of ice cream for us. You pick from chocolate, vanilla or a seasonal fruit sorbet, and pick up to 4 mix-ins from their list... Marcona almonds, brownie bits, candied ginger, etc... and pick it up the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month.

Now, I do not need decadent ice cream every other Saturday, clearly. So we split it with some very good friends; ice cream once a month? Perfect! And the pint is ideal: enough to last 10 days or so, enough to be excited waiting for the next month's installment, enough to keep the ice cream special. We think about it a bit, order it by the deadline, go pick it up on one day a month, and savor it. It's made by a local business and feels like a one-of-a-kind treat.

Could I never buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's again? I'm thinking about it. It falls into a food rule I love: if you want to eat it, eat it. But you have to make it. No drive-thru fried chicken. No Burgerville milkshake. No PastaWorks pasta.

I'm not committing; I'm just thinking about it.

Begin with Failure.

Life wouldn't be worth living if we weren't trying to continually improve ourselves, would it? We've all met the folks who aren't working to grow, and not only are they stagnant to be around, they must be miserable shoes to walk a mile in.

The only exception to this striving-for-evolution is my late grandmother, who at 84, was still operating under the impression that she'd find the magic cure to lose weight. (And to erase wrinkles and revive her sight, but the weight loss was the major focus. Lord, I hope I give up thoughts of physical perfection in my 7th or 8th decade!)

But. Back to this week's newest benchmark for improvement: not throwing out leftovers. Some folks, I hear, don't save or have leftovers. What is this concept? I grew up in a house where my mother, as a gift from her mother mentioned above, saved every bite of food... and to quote my father... as a result... we had a fridge full of "a thousand little tin foil packages!!" (With or without expletive in that. Ahem.)

If food should be taken seriously, if food should be honored as our daily communion with sustenance, health, community... then I ought not be throwing it away, tiny-tin-foil package or no.

So I begin with failure. Sunday night's turkey loin and sauteed kale. The final bite of turkey loin (yes, there is one slice left) will get eaten on toast in moments for breakfast. Five, six days old? I live on the edge! But the kale? It looks sad, and limp, and lonely in streaks of cold olive oil, a too-large Tupperware dish. I think I'm going to give up the dream that it'll get eaten, and turn my attention instead to the half jar of peanut sauce for a stir fry this weekend, the small scoop of chicken salad for lunch today, and the zucchini that are getting a wee bit soft from last week's CSA pick-up.

I'll report back when I fail again, but I have high hopes for now. High, apple pie, in the skyyyy hopes...

The CSA is back, baby.

We joined a CSA again this year. (A different farm from last time, and in fact, the very one recommended to us in the comment section of that post! No nameless farms this year; Groundwork Organics already rules!) And Friday was their first day of local, organic, fresh bounty. Whoop!

I know we all - myself especially - like to think we are these unique beings, who choose our culinary, fashion, music and literary consumptions carefully and will not be swayed by advertising, marketing or ginormous social influences. But really, we all have a healthy dose of being "sheeple" and in the case of our CSA, I embrace it!

It's true, it's true... seasonal, fresh, organic, local produce tastes nothing like the canned or frozen or ethylene-gas-ripened tomatoes you find in January. But I did not make this discovery on my own; I made it through the influence of friends, the food and locavore culture of Portland, and the media I consume preachin' it to me.

But all that aside, if five years ago you told me that a big bin of fresh veggies was going to the very highlight of my weekend... in the form of some steamed baby turnips with butter, some sauteed bok choy, and some new potatoes with thin delicate skins (roasted in olive oil and tossed with my very own parsley growing in the deck garden!)... I would have never believed you.

I see some of the heavy cooking of the past few months receding, to be replaced with the delicate, sweet and whole food of summer in Oregon.

Though in the interest of full disclosure... we didn't do a totally veggie meal last night. There was a big fat steak on the plate too. You can't change me into a TOTAL hippie all at once!

Anonymous Complaint.

I don't like getting people in trouble, so the names in this story have been withheld.

I belong to a CSA this year, and I love the idea more than I love the outcome. Other friends I have who belong to a CSA get weekly baskets of insane goodies - farm fresh fruits and veggies that overflow the fridge. I'm gonna join theirs next year if I can. Why?

Well, sometimes my CSA seems more eager to offer a wide variety than they seem willing to admit that 8 oz of potatoes ain't gonna feed a family of 2, much less the 3-4 it's intended to.

So, last week we got amazing peppers - sweet ones, hot ones, and skinny ones to saute - and a nice pound of potatoes. We got a beautiful head of cauliflower and two fresh, spicy, sticky heads of garlic. We also got "one head of lettuce" and please, if you will, check out the size of this lettuce:



It's adorable! It's crispy and fresh, even a week later! It's local and organic! But seriously. It's in miniature.