What I've Learned

Growing up I always made a big deal about my birthday, mostly because I was a year younger than most of my friends and always felt behind.

I saw my birthday as a day to catch up, and everyone knew it. Exactly three months prior, I would start to self promote so by the time the big day rolled around, anyone who forgot incurred my wrath. Then my friends turned a year older, and that longing to be the same age started all over again.

That all changed once I turned 30 and no longer felt so eager to catch up.

So that may explain why nine days ago, a very important birthday of sorts slipped by without me even realizing it: my two-year blogiversary! But really, it was two years ago that I subscribed to a CSA and changed my eating and cooking habits. (Technically I didn't receive my first box of produce until November 16, so I suppose I have some time yet.)

When I started this CSA experiment, I wasn't sure if I would really take the time to find recipes, cook, and manage to eat the stuff too. But it has become a new way of life for me.

I went from buying the same boring foods at the grocery store to getting unidentifiable veggies that I had to figure out how to make.

I went from coming home from work, ordering takeout, and planting myself on the couch in front of the tv all night to chopping onions and garlic, sauteing with spices and veggies, and going straight to bed after eating and cleaning up. (Except when Lost is on. Two more months!)

Along the way I have collected some favorite recipes: strawberry and feta salad; chicken tajine; rhubarb crisp bars; pasta with butternut squash and sage, and so many others that I was just plain lazy to blog about.

I have learned important lessons about cooking: always make at least one test batch when baking pumpkin pie for a holiday dinner; always put a lid on the pan when popping popcorn on the stovetop; and food left out too long or stored incorrectly will rot (and when this happens, I will feel sad).

I also have made many discoveries about food and my own tastes and habits: I don't like a vegetables that rhyme with arse-snips; potatoes come in different colors; and grating beets is tiring, turns my hands magenta, and inspires bad, punny dialogue between me and Ryan (Me: I'm beat. Ryan: You're doing great, Hon.) I never wrote a blog post about this, so you'll have to take my word for it.

I now know what sunchokes, rutabega, celeriac, salsify, and rhubarb look like.

I think some foods taste best when eaten raw: raspberries, grape tomatoes, carrots, and strawberries.

I would be nothing without onions and garlic.

But most of all I have gained tremendous appreciation for the farmers, who deliver fresh and delicious produce week after week. I have learned that no matter how hard they work, sometimes the weather has other plans. Like last summer too much rain destroyed crops, and my CSA decided to delay deliveries for a few weeks to let the farmers catch up.

I know the feeling of wanting to catch up. But as long as they're growing food, I'm eating it, I hope, for many years to come.

Off the Wagon

I haven't felt like cooking much in the last two weeks.

Maybe it's the holidays. Or that I've eaten more potatoes in the last month and a half than I thought possible.

Instead I've been snacking on the vegetables of summer, ordering takeout, and eating my way through holiday gatherings and sugary sweets at work.

But now that I've had some time off from the kitchen, I am gearing up to get back to it after the new year. I have some recipes waiting in the wings, like parsnip potato curry and pumpkin walnut risotto.

I do want to give a shout out to the popcorn again, though. With minimal prep required, this is the perfect snack. I finally figured out how to make popcorn in my pot without it burning or flying across my kitchen (keep the lid on, shake every few seconds, and remove from heat while you still hear popping). I popped two cobs of it last night while I watched my favorite movie The Sound of Music. And yes, popcorn is one of my favorite things.

Happy new year!

Transformation

Last night we popped some popcorn, fresh off the cob. There's no story to tell. Just some pictures of the three different stages of popping corn.

In three different bowls.

Flying Popcorn

I got my first bushel of produce yesterday!

It's late fall, which means lots of root vegetables plus some extra goodies. My box included loads of sweet and gold potatoes, butternut and acorn squash, pie pumpkin, yellow onions, carrots, leeks, parsley, apples, cranberries, honey...and popcorn.


The popcorn came in handy as I babysat my two nephews last night. They are both under age 4.

The kitchen was already total chaos. I was making (ahem) apple walnut salad with cranberry vinaigrette and butternut squash and sweet potato ginger bisque for my first official CSA meal. After all, one of the reasons I joined was to enhance my appreciation of food. I wasn't sure if the boys would feel the same way after the 3-year-old smelled an onion and recoiled.

By then they were getting a little restless. We'd already giggled at the funny-shaped carrots (one of them seriously had boobs) and played hide-and-seek three times, really exhausting every last hiding place in my apartment. They had colored, raced trains, and started to play the "let's run around and scream" game when I threw a brown paper bag with the last-resort, promised surprise to my boyfriend.

"Let's make popcorn!" he said, pulling out miniature corn on the cobs.

They cheered and scraped golden kernels into a bowl. Many clattered on the floor, which should have been my first clue about the impending mess. But they loved it and were distracted enough to let me puree the vinaigrette.

Once the pan sizzled with vegetable oil, we poured the kernels in. At first the boys weren't too interested.

At this point, I should say that I don't have a proper lid for my pan. We had to use a smaller lid for a big pan. As the kernels heated up, the lid started to tremble. We could hear little explosions underneath when suddenly a white blur shot up, bounced off the microwave, and landed on the counter.

This caught the kids' attention.

Suddenly they were shrieking and laughing as pieces of white, fluffy popcorn escaped from underneath the pan to the most far-reaching places in my kitchen. The exploding kernels sounded like a rapid-fire bb gun.

"It's flying popcorn!" yelled the 3-year-old. The 19-month-old jumped up and down with glee, waving his arms as a winter storm of white popcorn snowed all around us.

This popcorn tasted so good. Each bite in to its tender flesh yielded a soft crunch and a savory flavor, nothing like Orville Redenbacher or what you get at the movies (which I still love). I ate so much of it that by the time the soup was ready I wasn't very hungry. And forget about the salad. I had no energy to toast the walnuts let alone wash the spinach. The vinaigrette would keep for another night.

By the end of the night, I had a blister on my right forefinger from hacking open the butternut squash with a dull knife and a burn on my left forefinger from accidentally touching the hot pan. The burnt smell of popcorn may never go away.

But it was all worth it. My sister e-mailed me that the 3-year-old woke up this morning asking for popcorn.