Posted in As Pictured Below, CSA, Photographs, tagged ancestors, CSA, eight-ball squash, farm, food, iPhone, photograph, Southern, squash on July 14, 2009| 2 Comments »
During my most recent CSA adventure, I made stuffed eight-ball squash. Don’t tell the generations of ancestors before me who were Southern farmers, but I still just don’t like squash.
I did like the seeds, however, roasted at 350 degrees with a little olive oil and salt. They were crunchy and delicious, plus they looked awfully nice in my favorite green bowls.
Posted in As Pictured Below, CSA, Photographs, tagged CSA, farm, food, iPhone, photograph, Southern, tomatoes on July 7, 2009| 5 Comments »
The green tomatoes from my weekly CSA delivery almost redeemed themselves in what I thought would be a snazzy salsa recipe, but no. Can somebody please explain the South’s obsession with these things?
Posted in CSA, Photographs, tagged childhood, CSA, farm, food, grandfather, grandmother, ice cream, Iron Chef, meh, South, strawberries, summer, tomatoes on July 1, 2009| 2 Comments »
Pictured above is the haul from my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) delivery from Dennison’s Family Farm in Elora, Tennessee. Even after splitting it with a friend (save for the strawberries, which were way too ripe to last the weekend), it’s quite a collection of freshness.
Enlisting in a CSA is a little like buying a share in a farm, only you don’t have to keep the deer out of the cornfield or harvest anything (although I must point out that digging up potatoes may be the dirtiest fun you’ll ever have before dark). Every Friday for 10 weeks, I get to pick up a big box of just-picked produce (whatever is ripe), split the goods, and head home for what I have dubbed Iron Chef Huntsville.
I figure it’ll be a weekly summer adventure. Before the season is over, we’ll have, among many other things, watermelon, tomatoes, squash, corn, potatoes, beans, peas, and something called a Cape gooseberry.
Last weekend, we more or less lived off of fresh greens (Swiss chard and Yukina savoy), cherry tomatoes and cucumbers.
Also, for the first time ever, I had to cook a green tomato. My grandparents had a small farm, so growing up I had access to what seemed like an unlimited supply of tomatoes. Red, ripe, juicy, delicious tomatoes. The whole fried green tomato thing never made any sense to me. Who in their right mind would pluck a tomato from the vine before it ripened? Who would batter and fry this unripened fruit instead of waiting to make it the key ingredient in a BLT?
My reaction upon tasting fried green tomatoes for the first time a few years ago: meh. I would have rather waited for a sandwich.
I’ve never been a fan of frying things, despite being an occasional fan OF fried things. So I found a reasonably professional-looking recipe for baked green tomatoes, scaled it down and sliced and coated my way to an OK side dish.
Meh. I still would have rather waited for a sandwich.
The strawberries were lagniappe, as the folks running the farm were under the impression that there would be no more strawberries after mid-June. These bonus berries were far too delicate to hang on until Monday, when I delivered half the goods to my fellow shareholder (she got the cabbage and eight-ball squash – not exactly evensies, but we’ll work it out). These went into a batch of strawberry ice cream, a concoction that turned out to be so rich and delicious that it actually saved my oft-criticized ice cream maker from the Goodwill box.
If you have any interest in making ice cream, get Ben & Jerry’s recipe book. Just using the one recipe has convinced me to toss the other two ice cream recipe collections I have and devote my empty calorie expenditures to homemade ice cream, at least for the summer. The tasty, tasty summer.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bus, calories, city, commute, crowds, escalator, food, hurry, husband, New York City, public transportation, streets, subway, travel, vacation on June 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »
I just realized my watch is still set on New York City time. I want to go back.
We spent our days and nights navigating subways and buses, seeing as much of the city as we could. We avoided shows and anything else with long lines, and ate whatever we wanted with no concerns over calories. Given that we inevitably seemed to exit and enter the underground via routes devoid of escalators, these extra calories turned out to be essential.
The streets teemed with vehicles bursting into aspirational 10-second sprints between intersections. The sidewalks were packed with people in a hurry, navigating their way through rare congregations of people inexplicably NOT in a hurry.
I had mixed feelings about getting back into my car alone Monday morning and driving 8 miles across town to work.
More on New York City later. I need to check on my husband, who either came back with a bad cold or swine flu. I wonder if I can blog from quarantine?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged childhood, cigarettes, food, grandmother, mississippi on January 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »
My grandmothers were polar opposites. My maternal grandmother was the traditional one, a proper Southern Baptist farm wife. My paternal grandmother was, well, a little less proper. Divorced two or three times, she was a single mother who showed little interest in domesticity.
During visits with my mother’s family, my brother and I could look forward to plenty of homemade food, including veggies from the garden and entrees from the livestock roaming the fields.
During visits with my father’s mother, we could count on a can of soup, a bottle of Coke and a bowl of sherbet. If we were good, we got to flick the lighter for her endless lineup of cigarettes.
She died when I was 18. Turns out a lifetime of Chesterfields wasn’t the best health plan. She died before we got a chance to know each other as adults, but I think we would have been great friends.
If ever there was a food that should be an innocuous non-memory, it would be sherbet. I will forever associate it with my grandmother, however, because back then, it was exotic and rare, kind of like her.
Thanks to the New York Times, I made a batch of tangerine sherbet recently, a venture that my grandmother would have found ludicrous. It was tastier than any store-bought sherbet that ever came out of her freezer, but it brought back the same bittersweet memories.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged career, childfree, DINK, food, home, husband, marriage, movies, travel on November 2, 2008| Leave a Comment »
I’ve been secretly living alone for the past 2.5 weeks. Secretly in deference to my mother and husband, who didn’t think the world should know that I was alone in the house at night.
The husband spent nearly three weeks in New Jersey on business. I spent nearly three weeks being really bad at being single, eating turkey bacon and wheat toast every night for dinner and strewing project papers all over the living room.
In what should have been an ill-advised move, I also watched a couple of horror movies by myself: “The Ring” and “Pet Sematary.” Either I’ve become so jaded that movies don’t scare me anymore, or I just picked the wrong movies (a certainty in the second case).
At any rate, Bill’s back, the living room has been cleared of lit articles and the toaster has been stowed under the cabinet. The pre-Halloween airing of every horror movie ever made is finally over, so no more temptation there.
In short, we’re back the the DINK lifestyle that we’ve come to know and love. I didn’t realize I’d miss it so much.
Entirely Adequate 