On Playing With Our Food....

I'd been wondering if getting weekly CSA baskets would be the teensiest bit like having children.

No, no, we are not cannibals and I am not deluded, thinking babies come delivered in baskets. I have two grown children and the stretch marks to show for having firsthand knowledge about where babies come from and how they are delivered.

What I was thinking might be a parallel was how much fun I've been having taking photos of the baskets week to week.

You know how that goes? You take photographs about every 84 seconds of your first born child, then by the time your second child claims their limb on the family tree you are a lot busier and even a bit wearier and you realize that perhaps not every nuance of that child's smiling and lip puckering will simply have to be captured on film and shared. At least that is how it went for those of us who recorded all of that pre-digital photography.

"Historian Fatigue" as I have dubbed this phenomenon isn't anything new. I have the baby book my own Mom started for me back in the (ahem!) 1950s. There are careful entries for "Baby's First" everything up until about 18 months when apparently I became a lot less, well, darling and/or recordable we'll say. Some of my "Firsts" past that point sit unrecorded, and certainly unrecalled, at least by me.

So far I'd have to say I am finding an opposite trend happening with the produce baskets. I mean, come on, these vegetables are GORGEOUS! I could barely be bothered to think about, much less cook and eat dinner today because I was having so much more fun taking photos - especially of the kohlrabi. What a rock star of a root! I'll share some of today's favorite photos with you in just a moment.

We will eat something from the basket for dinner tonight I am sure. We have leftover scalloped turnips and I have some orange roughy fillets to prepare. And although I am excited about a recipe for Cwikla Beets shared by one of the basketeers on the Tecolote Farms Yahoo Group, that is a "refrigerate overnight" deal so it will have to wait. See - I am not alone in all this frenzy over fresh vegetables. There are a whole host of us out there going week to week, excited about our food.

With the Yahoo Group and the newsletter we get each week, a lot of the intimidation factor is taken out of all of this for a newbie like me. Yes, it is true - I am thoroughly enjoying playing with my food again.

Mom would be so proud - I bet she'd write THAT in my book!