Told ya I’d be back. It is now Sunday Monday of after another over scheduled weekend, and I am trying to catch up back to last week.
Anyways, it rained last Monday, hard a few times, and I managed not only to bike to the University library and home again without getting significantly wet, I also drove out McFarland to pick up a book donation, and managed to get those boxes into the library before the rain really hit. And the basement only leaked a little bit. Tuesday I went to yoga by car and then met somebody for a walk and didn’t get rained on. But I had a haircut at 4:00 and around then the rain really started and the basement really leaked. Shop-vac-able. That is more than I can sop up with just towels. And it was extra frustrating because it didn’t seem that bad early in the evening, but when I went to check at 9:30 it was bad. And it hadn’t really stopped raining yet, so hard to clean up because it was still coming in. But by about 11:30 it was mostly dried up and the worst consequence was that I didn’t sleep very well. I kept thinking I heard more rain falling and getting nervous about the basement. And I also didn’t get as much done on CSA recipes as I would have liked.
CSA recipes? Last fall my CSA announced they’d be stopping doing the full May to November season, with 26 weeks of boxes, but would do a 4-box season in June, plus amp up the number of strawberry and tomato U-Picks they do. I thought I mentioned it someplace on this blog but can’t find it. (If you find it let me know!) All this meant I thought I wouldn’t be doing any recipes for them this season, but turns out we’re doing a kind of “recipe-lite” for the short season. In prior years I’d always do one or two original recipes (most some of them are here; I have a lot of saved files littering my computer desktop that are recipes I’m supposed to add, and see Tipi’s newsletter here, with lots of recipes); originals meant cooking something based on the week’s veggie box, photographing the dish, and writing it up. Then there’d also be 5-6 searched recipes, where I’d find an online recipe using the week’s produce, link to the recipe and a picture, and add a head note with tips, substitutions, etc. For this short season, we’re only doing the 6 searched recipes. So less time consuming than the originals. But I still only got 3 of my 6 done Tuesday evening because of having to clean up flooding.
So the boxes have started and and the first one’s lovely (see below), though I wonder if I should have signed up for all four. I think my feeling was, shit, if they’re only doing four, I’ll take all of ’em, but that still means a box per week, when I have always done every other week before. Plus these early season veggies can be less preservable, like lettuce, but of course I can freeze blanched greens. And rhubarb.
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- First CSA box of 2024 – a few strawberries, lots of rhubarb and lettuce
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- Look at that lettuce
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- Close up on the lettuce
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- Lettuce & friends
Wednesday was another Jasper day. We started off with a stroller walk to the bagel store, and we stopped at a playground where coincidentally there were about a thousand kids. And parents. I think it was some kind of end of school playground meetup. With donuts. This is the playground with one big kids play structure and one that’s better for little kids. It was a little tough to keep track of Jasper with so many kids around. Most of them were older and able to get around on the structure without too much worries about them falling off although there were a few kids Jasper’s age. One whose mom was watching him like a hawk (like Jasper’s grandma) and another who seemed a bit abandoned, but who didn’t fall off of anything, thankfully. Also thankfully Jasper was happy with his apples and the bagel stick we bought and he didn’t get too interested in the donuts.
We played in the screen room with the kitties, and had lunch, and generally had a good day although no nap, until we went to the co-op by car and he conked out in his car seat on the way home. He seemed ready for a nap after lunch, he put his head down and wanted his bottle and books and cuddle, but then just didn’t go to sleep in his crib.
