Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

This morning’s trip to the farmers’ market to collect the veggie box donated by Harmony Valley for my MACSAC class tomorrow turned out to be a bit of an adventure. First I debated whether to go by bike or car – I knew I had the box to pick up, and, even though I knew I could easily fit the box contents into my panniers, for the purposes of the class, we kind of wanted to be able to show the box as a box. Plus it looked like it might rain. In the end, I nerved up, put air in my bike tires and took off, but I kept having this feeling I would get a flat, in part because the last time Mark pumped up the tires on my bike, I told him they took 65 lbs. and he came back and said, “no, dear, they really take 85”. In fact, the back tire takes 65 – 85, but the front is only 65 – 75 – I let a little out on the front, afraid I’d overfilled.

Once I got to the market, I decided to pick up the box first, so that I could see how much room I’d have for my own shopping. I pulled up behind Harmony Valley’s stand, got shown where the boxes were, and immediately determined that I’d need to take everything out of the box. Which meant I got to inventory everything right away – and, no offense meant to Harmony Valley, but this box illustrates why most people are stumped by the contents of their CSA boxes. It’s filled with one of this and two of that – awkward, to say the least, for recipe planning. Full illustrated inventory below, and here’s a link to the Harmony Valley newsletter for this week, describing the box contents, and my recipe plans for said box contents.

As I was transferring all the veggies to bags and my panniers, my bike tipped over and grazed the leg of another Harmony Valley customer. I made nice about that, moved my overloaded, lopsided bike to lean against Harmony Valley’s parked truck, and flattened and put back their box. That gave me a chance to look for some of the items from the box on display in their stand, labelled – especially the fuzzy greens that were right on top – that turned out to be sesame leaf. When I got back to my bike, the rear tire was flat. I wheeled it to a parking spot and pushed on to do the rest of my shopping – sungolds from Matt, iced coffee (and tipped a street musician on the way) from Gotham Bagels, eggs & spicey pork sticks from Pecatonica, jerky from D&G, cheesey bread from Stellas. I called John to see if he could pick me up, but I also was thinking that Yellow Jersey might be able to fix my bike while I waited.

Which turned out to be true – got another iced coffee while Yellow Jersey fixed the flat. It was actually a puncture, which made me happy, oddly – I thought I might’ve overloaded the bike so much that the tube got pushed off the rim – but because it was a fixed puncture, that meant that I could re-overload my bike and head off home. Pretty good, except in changing the tire, the bike mechanic left the chain kind stuck off the smallest sprocket, so I had to take all my big bags off the bike yet one more time, upend it, get the chain back in the right place and shift the bike into a reasonable gear, and load all my bags on again, in front of a cop car, with cop, watching over State St. And no grass to rub the chain oil off my hands on.

Real adventure.

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It started this morning. We coulda biked to the farmers market, but I was thinking I/we would bike to the Sugar Maple Fest later on. So we drove to the market, and oh by the way, accomplished some car errands like dropping off the screen from E. Wash that the bike thieves tore, at the hardware store to get re-stretched.

I made two pies for Debbie C.’s pie party: blueberry buttermilk, and zucchini lattice (see below). I coulda made pesto, too, but I think I’ll do that tomorrow. I wanted to make the blueberry tart partly because I remembered Jane bringing it to a long ago picnic, and I liked it. It’s almost like a quiche with the berries in a sweet crust and a sweet custard poured in over. And, yesterday I laid in my supplies of blueberries and cherries to freeze. Got 5 pounds of blueberries at Costco, and then a 10-pound box at Brennan’s, along with a 7-pound jar (like the big plastic jars food service mayo comes in – a gallon or so) of cherries. But I haven’t frozen the berries or cherries yet – tho I coulda – so it also seemed like a good idea to make a recipe that called for fresh, un-frozen berries.

And at about 6:00 I realized we coulda gone to Atwood Summerfest and seen some version of Honor Among Thieves.

Shucks. But it’s hot out and I have some kind of sinus infection or cold or something. Sore throat. Sneezing. Itchy eyes. Headache. Tired & draggy. So easier to stay in air con, even though I coulda not.

Blueberry buttermilk tart

Zucchini Lattice Tart

Getting ready for work didn’t go so smoothly today. I showered upstairs with Mark, and used his more-skin-drying soap, instead of mine – the bar of Castille soap I keep up there. “No problem”, I thought, “I’ll just lotion up downstairs.” I decided to use the old patchouli lotion, instead of cracking open my pristine pump bottle of Jergens. But, reaching for the patchouli stuff, I knocked one of my favorite hair pins – the giant one that can be used to hold all my hair in an up twist – into the flushing toilet. Even plunging didn’t get it back. I’d noticed that the all-natural patchouli lotion seems to be separating, so I shook the bottle really well to try to get actual moisturizer, rather than just a thinnish splurt of perfume – but I still got a lot of the thin stuff, and had to debate whether to simply chuck the whole bottle, or keep it – afterall, the bottle, sans the content and the pump, can be recycled…. plus it’s at least 1/3 full…. Oh what’s a conservation minded person to do? Sigh.

When I was a kid, my mom and I used to go to a notions store called Parker, Button & Bow. Notions are sewing accessories – buttons, zippers, ribbons, hooks & eyes, snaps & fasteners. They also sold nice hair accessories – barrettes and hair pins, plastic and metal made to look like tortoiseshell and so much better quality than the crap that can be had in the hair aisle at Walgreens or Target.

There aren’t really notions stores anymore – only big warehouse fabric or craft stores, that do have sewing notions, but not usually hair stuff. I remember going to a big fabric place out in the suburban wilds of Minnesota, with Rach and Lea and her daughter, Liz. I got a card of little embroidered rosettes that I thought I would sew into the necks of t-shirts – haven’t done that. And a piece of a batik-looking printed cotton, to make into an elastic waist skirt, traced from a skirt I already had that fit well, that I bought from J. Jill – I’m wearing it now, the one I made, not the one I copied. It doesn’t hang quite as nicely as the J. Jill one, that’s lined, but it’s good for hot summer days.

I used to use ribbons from Parker, Button & Bow to hold the end of my braid. Now I use cloth covered soccer hairbands, but it doesn’t seem like they make this cloth kind anymore. When I’ve looked to replace the pack I’ve got, all I can find is rubbery ones. Yuck. Maybe I’ll have to go back to the ribbons.

france-luxe-hair-pins - that can be bought online

PS – just spent $37 to get these hair pins in all three colors, plus a fancy barrette, France Luxe brand, but sold & delivered to my door, by Amazon.

Today for breakfast I made a “Taste of Madison” breakfast strata – hot, spicey, cheese bread, and two flavors of cheese from the farmers’ market, basil and sweet onion from my CSA box, Usinger’s bacon (actually purchased at Costco, but made in Milwaukee.) We ate it with hot sauce and fruit.

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