So the summer got a bit busy.  Pennsic and all, then when I got back to work there were more grant deadlines.  The CSA has been great.  The cats are still cute.  I fell and managed to bruise the hell out of my kneecap, so I was down for the count for a little while.  But it seems like things are getting a little more routine again. 

But there is still a lot of stupid crap at work.  It's funny, because the majority of the drama in this hospital has nothing to do with me, and really doesn't  affect me at all.  So I end up just standing there, slack-jawed, wondering what is WRONG with all of these people.  But over the past few months, the astonishing level of incompetence that is being displayed has started to seriously inconvenience me.  And I don't like it.

( Whining about work... )

But it's only slowing me down, which is probably good right now, and my knee is still a little cranky.  In the meantime, I'm house and dog sitting again, so I have an open invitation to people for dinner.  Let me know you'll be coming, and there will be food.  And a hot tub.  And cable, which is still a treat for me, since I normally don't have it.

So in the course of my CSA this year, I've received many bunches of beets.  This is good because I love beets.  But I've had little time to COOK any of them, and they were starting to pile up.  I needed to make some room in the fridge, and had just enough time to roast some beets last night.



( Further instructions and more pictures of beets than is reasonable... )

Cross posted to bakebakebake 

( More friggen vegetables... )

Getting geared up for Pennsic.  Tent is ready.  All the laundry is ready.  The packing list is done.  Now I just have to put it all in the car.  Thursday night, most likely.  For some reason I feel like Pennsic is going to be epic this year.  Maybe just wishful thinking, or maybe it will be epic in the way that floods or tsunamis are epic.  But hey.  I'm hoping for SOMETHING good to come out of this year.

Another week, another pile of goodies from the CSA.



( food... )

Second week of my CSA. 

( Vegetable Extravaganza... )

( Plus boring work stuff that no one but me cares about... )

I picked up the first round of my CSA this week.

( What vegetables may look like... )

( Bike Riding )

( Housewarming )

( The Lab. )

I ordered some seeds and plants from the Seed Savers Exchange.  They carry a lot of heirloom and rare varietals of vegetables, herbs, flowers and the like.  I ordered seven different kinds of tomatoes, but only one as seeds.  I ordered seeds for cucumbers, peas, green beans, and a few melons.  I'm not at all convinced I can get melon to produce on the porch, but I'm going to give it a whirl.  I'm also planning on starting a bunch more seeds than I will actually plant so I can share.  I'll probably try to convince my folks to let me plant some stuff in their yard as well, so at least there will be a slim chance that I can get some cool melons going.

I want to try a farm share this summer.  For anyone not familiar, small farms sometimes do what is called Community Supported Agriculture, where you pay them money at the beginning of the season to essentiall buy a "share" of their crop.  So the farm has money to buy seeds and equipment, you get a whole lot of local produce, and the farm doesn't have to worry about what happens if no one buys any spinach at the market this week and he loses all the work he put into it.  Nor is the burden of loss entirely on the farm in case there is a bad year.  If the corn fails, then the shareholders don't get corn.  It's a pretty interesting system.

In any case, I think Scratch Farm's pick up is the closest to work with the variety I was hoping for.  They contract eggs, cheese, fruit, and flower shares from other farms as well as their own produce, and nothing is from farther than South County.  I wanted it to be close to work because...

I got a new bicycle from the good folks at Providence Bicycle.  They were helpful, and their mechanic was cute.  It's orange.  It has a bell.  And a cup holder.  Not a waterbottle holder, but the kind of cup holder you can put a cup of coffee in.  Mother fucking cup holder.  Hell yeah.

Now I'm trying to work up enough strength to get through the hills between here and Providence so I can bike to work.  I actually thought that they would be fairly easy going TO Providence, and not too bad coming BACK.  Turns out that's not true at all.  It's brutal in both directions.  It is true that there is more uphill when riding homeward than workward.  But in the homeward direction the hills are spaced better, so you haven't lost that much momentum from going down the last hill, and you can coast halfway up that short steep hill that seems so killer.  On the was TO Providence, there will be a short steep downhill slope, then a long ways of flat for you to slow down on before the sneaky pernicious hill that you didn't even realize was coming.

I'm not quite ready to bike there and back, but today after I got home from work I went halfway to work and back.  It was damn cold too.  And I actually made it up all the hills without having to stop.  I did start getting a stich on one, but I managed.

11.23 miles in 67 minutes.  Not awful, but I won't be going all the way to work until I can do it much faster without breaking a sweat.