Spring Yellow

I seem to have developed a small obsession with photographing my vegetables, but they are just so pretty. I love market day.

Today I came home with these yummy vegetables (including one gigantic three pound romanesco!) and had a "Yellow Salad" for lunch: local organic lettuce and yellow tomatoes (less acidic than the red, I hear, and so delicious), and hard boiled eggs. I dressed it with an improvised pureed carrot, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, ground ginger, with a touch of honey concoction.

(And there I am, reflected in my salad bowl in my springy sundress, I see...)

Eating Healthy Food Is Prettier

Just look at these gorgeous specimens:

Paradise

Bird of...

Write On!

Handwriting Game!

All you have to do is take out a pen and paper, answer the following questions, and post it to your blog.

1. What’s your name/blogger name?

2. What’s your blog's URL?

3. Write “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

4. Favorite quote?

5. Your favorite song?

6. Your favorite band / singers?

7. Anything else you want to say?

8. Tag bloggers to participate. I saw this on Simply Kelly Designs

Aren't architects supposed to have good handwriting?! I never properly learned the art of lettering...

I've always been curious about those handwriting analyses that tell you what your script says about you - kind of like a handwriting-horoscope. What does yours say? Post your sampler and leave me a comment!

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.

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)

Dancing for Socrates

Characters are key to a good story.

And when one shows up unexpectedly, sitting in the corner, watching…it adds a little magic to the evening.

I went to my ballet class last night, brought a book (study, study, study) as I can’t NOT show up too early for some reason (bet my boss would appreciate if the same applied to my 8 AM work morning), rolled my ankles around and stretched a bit, and caught a glimpse of an old gentleman sitting in the studio watching the class before mine. He looked like he belonged – comfortably occupying the corner of a pew that appeared in the studio a month or so ago (a prop for one of the upcoming performances I suppose). When my instructor came out at the end of the class I inquired. “That’s Socrates. He’s been watching classes all day.”

I’d figured it was a student’s grandfather. Socrates? Socrates. In the flesh.

My instructor later elaborated – apparently he’d been in the heart of theater and dance scene in his heyday – in NYC of course. He loves ballet and wanted to watch. I don’t know more than that.

I know – it sounds like it could have a real creepster component. But…really not at all.

Socrates, I’m glad to have danced for you.