week two: lowered expectations

Here's what this week's produce box has in store for me:

Fruit:
3/4 lb. BC Rome apples
1 Granny Smith apple
1 lb. bananas
1 avocado
1 mango
2 Navel oranges
2 D'Anjou pears
1 red pear

Vegetables:
1 1/4 lb. carrots
1 celery
1 jumbo garlic
1 romaine lettuce heart
1 lb. yellow onions
1 bunch spinach
1 lb. potatoes
1/4 lb. Roma tomatoes
1 acorn squash

Good variety from last week's box, especially given the fact that it's January and we're in the middle of a frozen wasteland.

But what am I going to do with an acorn squash that doesn't involve some kind of pureed soup resembling baby food?

wilting, wilting, wilting

This first week has been pretty successful! Roommate has taken it upon herself to ensure that no piece of fruit goes uneaten, so most of that has disappeared as it has ripened. We're still waiting patiently on the mango. Come on, mango!

I only really took pictures of the wilted chard with bacon, which I made with chicken breast instead of pork because I'm lazy.


First, I washed and chopped my chard. (Check out the awesome knife safety, there.)




Then I chopped and browned some bacon. Vegetables are still good for you even when they're covered in bacon. Honest.


Everybody in the pool!


Wilting.


I put the wilted chard aside and made the sauce.


Last of all, I ate the hell out of it. The sauce was delicious, and was a great way to use marjoram, an herb I rarely use. I'm not going to lie to you - I took the lazy way out and made it with plain yellow mustard. Next time I'm going to make it with Dijon.

As for the chard itself, cooked greens are not something I have a lot of experience with, as we didn't eat that sort of thing (spinach and other greens) when I was a child. This is the first time I've made anything like this myself, in fact. The texture was okay, but a little tiresome after a while. I think maybe the key is to really just wilt them - don't cook the life right out of them. It's a work-in-progress.

Later on that evening, I was feeling peckish, so I made guacamole:


I love guacamole, but I was underwhelmed by my own effort. I basically winged it and threw in approximate amounts of all the stuff one puts in guacamole. It was only okay. I'm getting another avocado this week; any suggestions on how to improve my guacamole?

In the interest of honesty and transparency, I'm admitting to you now that I threw out most of the romaine lettuce. It got dried and brown very quickly, and I'm not a big salad eater, particularly on cold January nights. Mea culpa.

special organic delivery

special organic delivery, originally uploaded by girl with the parking lot eyes.

Week one, delivered January 27th. Unsurprisingly, I neglected to cook anything on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday nights, because it was more important that Roommate and I go see a mediocre movie and eat popcorn than we stay in and cook. You don't know my life, okay?

Roommate and I have eaten some of the fruit already, and it's all been perfectly fresh, ripe, and delicious. The red chard was nice just to look at - the colours were seriously breathtaking. Never thought I'd say that about a vegetable.

Tonight I cook chard for the first time, and later I will make guacamole with that cute little avocado.

week one: high hopes, low blood sugar

I get my first fresh box delivery tonight. I am eagerly awaiting the end of the work day, and not just because I plan to watch several episodes of Dog Whisperer and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives in my pyjamas this evening. No sir. I am eagerly awaiting the end of the day because between 6 and 9 PM tonight, my very first fresh box of organic produce will be delivered!

Per FOOD's website, my Organic Fresh Box contents for the week of January 27, 2010 will be:

Fruit:
1/2 lb. BC Fuji apples
1 lb. fair trade bananas
1 avocado
1 ruby pink grapefruit
1 kiwi
1 Navel orange
2 Bosc pears
1 mango

Vegetables:
1 romaine lettuce heart
> 1/2 lb. green beans
1 cauliflower
1 cucumber
1 red chard
1 bunch green onions

Interesting. I've never cooked red chard before, and I have limited experience with fresh mangos. Epicurious, here I come!

I promise I'll try to take pictures of my Rubbermaid cornucopia when it arrives. Blogs are pointless unless they contain fun things like PHOTOS and FLOW CHARTS.

"an organic oddysey" or, "not another goddamn food blog"

Some time ago, I heard about Fresh Option Organic Delivery, or FOOD. At the time, I was living at home with my family, and when I brought the service up as a potential method of encouraging us to eat more fruits and vegetables, I was shouted down at the family meeting. Now that I've been living in my own place with a roommate for nearly six months, I am completely in control of purchasing all my own food. Naturally, this has consisted of a lot of pizza, fast food, overpriced and underwhelming take-out salads, processed foods, and, of course, liquor.

Last week, after scrubbing the grisly remains of yet another vegetable of mysterious origins from the bottom of my crisper, I had an epiphany. (This epiphany is approximately 3-5 years behind the times, but as my beloved hometown of Winnipeg tends to be stuck in a 5 to 10-year time warp at any given time, I hope you'll forgive me for being late to the party.) This epiphany consisted of the following important realisations:

1. Wasting food is stupid,
2. Eating bad food all the time is stupid, and,
3. Wasting money on bad food is really stupid.

I already knew these things. In fact, my mother did an admirable job of instilling them in me as core values when I was a child. But somehow, in the midst of this McDonalds and Jack Daniels-fueled post-adolescent Bacchanalia I call my early 20s, I got trigger happy with my debit and credit cards and forgot that I love food, real food, and that the consequences of the choices I make now will follow me well into the rest of my life.

Assuming I don't get hit by a bus tomorrow, of course. Which, well... I don't really want to assume that I'm going to get hit by a bus tomorrow.

And so we arrive at the UNCONSTRAINED, UNREALISTIC VOWS portion of this blog post!

I've signed up for FOOD. The Roommate and I will be getting a small bin (an amount designed for 1-2 omnivorous people) delivered every Wednesday, starting January 27th. I intend to ensure that we eat every item. I intend to blog the results, be they triumphant, incompetent, depressing, or just plain disgusting, because I wasn't using this blog for anything, anyway. Hopefully no one will read this and judge me, aside from the omniscient unsleeping eyeball of The Internet, to whose judgment I am already well accustomed.

Let's see what happens.

PS: Smothering tasty vegetables with lots of butter and/or cheese still counts as healthy, right? Right?

seedlings

seedlings, originally uploaded by jubilize.

This here is a test post to see if my Flickr is hooked up all right.

Also, a post to inform you that I hope to actually use this blog in the future to show you dazzling pictures and relate fascinating stories about my garden, cooking, and ~life~, I suppose.