2.21.2011

Dinner

All organic salad:
-strawberries*, tomatoes, and pickling cucumbers** from Parksdale Farms
-lettuce from Worden Farms***
* the size of plums and deep yummy red all the way through
** a) I did not know you could eat these un-pickled, and when I asked "You can eat those raw?" Mister Gary picked one up, took a bite and said "Yea...like this" and b) amazing crispy flavor!
*** still crispy after two weeks forgotten in my fridge...impressive
Add shredded sauteed zuccs from Parksdale Farms to my pasta (pasta not organic...BOGO from Publix).
YUM.

2.01.2011

Romanesco, Beware!

(My romanesco, slightly less-than-perfect but with lovely 'arms' curling defensively up around it)

My sister discovered this vegetable called romanesco at my local Farmer’s Market. We call it the “fractal veggie” as it is like a cross between a broccoli and a cauliflower but in a geometrical fractal explosion.

It’s a Spring-ish (it’s getting towards Spring here in FL – not to make all of y’all who are currently snowed in jealous) veggie so I peer into the Worden Farms tent at the Farmers’ Market whenever I’m there, awaiting its arrival.

Last week I was out of town on market day, for my Mom’s birthday. But I’d mentioned this green geometrical wonder to my friend who also frequents the Farmers’ Market…lo and behold it was there! And she bought one for me!

So after work on Monday she grabbed it from her apt, met me at study group (study study study [why didn’t I pay more attention to moments of inertia and radii of gyration when I was in structures class??]) and passed it off to me after study group. But then we decided to continue studying (at a bar…strangely effective for the first 30 minutes or so), then went to dinner, and by the time the night was over…my beautiful veggie had slipped my mind.

Until…not when I got in my car Tuesday morning and should have seen it (still groggy), but when I arrived on a construction site soon after, and saw it sitting next to my notepad (which I’d thankfully remembered). Who brings raw heads of vegetable to a meeting on a construction site? So in my car it sat, in the thankfully cool morning lack-of-sun.

So when I made it into my office finally I felt like I was toting around a poor little orphan vegetable, which amused me to no end. I couldn’t leave it in my car so I brought it in. And I feared I’d forget it at the end of the day, so believe it or not, I set an Outlook Reminder to 4:50 pm “Romanesco – bring home”. Normally I’d have used a post-it, but alas, post-its don’t have times that can be set when they’ll pop up in your face…

So…to make the long and uneventful, but amusing-to-me, story of my orphan vegetable slightly shorter than it could have been…it’s now home safe and sound.

But I was too lazy to cook tonight and ate leftovers from my freezer. So, Romanesco, beware…tomorrow is your last day!

(The picture-perfect romanesco that the wikipedia folks found, in all its fractal glory)