Interactive

Today Jen flew out to Salt Lake City for a work trip. If you're thinking this doesn't sound fair you are right. However it could be said that this is similar to the time that I flew out to San Francisco for a work trip and left Jen alone with the babies.

Personally I think that's comparing apples to oranges. That time was much easier for me.


I'm getting pretty good at feeding the boys by myself but they do get a little rambunctious. It's a little challenging to get them to focus on the feeding instead of on slapping, poking, and scratching each other. It's somewhat heart-warming when I consider that they really had no clue (or care) that the other existed for the first four months of their life. However it would be nice if they could continue to ignore each other through a feeding so I could actually get some food in their mouths without them trying to eat each others' toes.


After dinner we had a FaceTime chat with mummy. She was very happy to see them but it was a short-lived conversation as both Wombats decided to start losing their minds.

This would continue over the course of the next hour where I attempted to juggle both of them. As I thought I finally got them both to settle down I went into the kitchen to begin the process of washing huge numbers of dishes. After a minute a feeling came over me that something wasn't right. My Daddy-Spidey Sense started tingling. I went in the room to see Martin looking distressed. I touched his belly and it felt like a rock. As I went to pick him up an enormous fountain of regurgitated butternut squash shot out of his mouth into the air, dirtying everything within a ten foot radius.

This had never happened before with Martin so I could only assume he had been saving it for the moment Jen left. I brought him into the bathroom, disrobed him, and left him lying on the bathmat as I ran back to the room to give his shrieking brother his pacifier back.

After a quick bath and pajama change I rocked him for a while then returned him to his crib and rolled him over to his side where the exhaustion of the night's events caused him to quietly fall asleep.


With the boys asleep I had very little time or energy to make myself dinner. I brought a pot of water to a boil while I did the huge amount of baby-related dishes, then made this shells and cheese from a box.

In college I am afraid to say that I lived on Velveeta Shells and Cheese. It's worth mentioning that I got my degree in culinary arts. Even still I made this most evey night. I used that training to doctor up the standard recipe by adding dried basil and hot sauce to the batch. That really kicked it up a notch.

One time one of my chefs lectured us about cooking crap at home while we learned all day about cooking technique. That made me feel guilty. I went home and made a roast chicken with asparagus and made Bearnaise sauce with tarragon I picked from my mother's herb garden.

The next night I returned to Velveeta Shells and Cheese.

Tonight I returned to those roots but used a popular organic brand which contained actual cheese in lieu of Velveeta.


To go with this culinary delight I poured myself the seasonal Brownstone from Sixpoint Brewery in Brooklyn, NY. This was a really tasty dry hopped nut brown ale that actually went quite well with my $0.99 dinner. The maltiness complimented the cheese sauce packet quite nicely.

It's all about culinary excellence.

Easy Pasta & Mantracker

I was pretty tired all day. Mostly because Jen and I stayed up late watching Mantracker on her cousin's recommendation. Sadly OLN in the United States recently turned into Versus which would rather air extreme fighting or bull riding (or extreme bull fighting) instead of this Canadian gem.

Mantracker is a tremendous show and very difficult to find. Currently there's only one copy of the first season on Amazon and it costs $50!

Mantracker is an incredible man. I've never seen anyone on television that had so little personality or charisma. It is rumored (by Jen's cousin) that in later episodes he gets a personality but it mostly involves him swearing a lot when people get away.

Mantracker seems to have a very unfair advantage for a number of reasons:

1. He's a man tracker.
   
2. He's on a horse.
   
3. He has a partner who is a local who knows every nook and cranny of the area he's in.
   
4. His partner also has a horse.
   
5. It must be easy to find the prey when there is a camera crew following them around. Just look for the boom mics.

Being that we were both tired and had long days at our respective jobs we opted to have an easy dinner tonight. I got some Severino calabrese fusilli and made it with some Paesana Tuscan Pepper tomato sauce.



The sauce is made in East Farmington, NY, on Long Island, a little over thirty miles from here. It was pretty tasty but don't let the sweet-looking Italian lady on the label fool ya. That's-a-one a-spicy meatball! A little too a-spicy for me.

I haven't been much of a jarred pasta sauce guy in recent years. Jen isn't much of a fan of premade sauces so I normally opt to have my pasta simply with oil and cheese or with a sauce of my own creation.

Lack of time often has ways of changing one's culinary preferences. It's a slippery slope. I must fight against the urge to, one day, be making this for dinner . . .



It wouldn't be the first time I had this for dinner. I had this daily while I was in culinary school. Some of my chefs yelled at me for it.

They're Like Beans But From The Sea!

I got home from work at 8:20 AM this morning. I slept until 11:05 AM then I had to wake up to move the car so that New York City could not sweep our sweet. I'm on to you, New York City. The past two days in a row I've had to play this ridiculous car game only to hear an eerie silence during the time your noisy street sweepers are supposed to come through and do their thing. At 11:10 AM I returned to bed and slept until 12:45 PM when I had to wake up and move my car.

I was not about to allow any of that to hinder my dinner making tonight. I was home at dinner time, and dinner was going to be made.

There have been sea beans in our fridge for over a week. I've been wanting to make them into a simple salad for a while but I've been continually interrupted by work and other events getting in my way. I had figured they'd be spoiled by now but apparently, since they are naturally brined, they seem to last forever in the fridge. Who knew?



I combined the sea beans with some shredded radicchio, Szechuan pepper, rice vinegar, mirin, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and halved grape tomatoes.



For the main course I made some simple steamed rice and edamame with a small portion of ginger soy marinated salmon. I cheated a little by purchasing the ginger soy salmon already marinated. I did this mostly because it was so cheap and I figured the marinade would work better given that I really didn't have the time (or desire) to marinate anything for too long.

I usually don't cook much pseudo-Asian fare these days. It was extremely trendy in the mid to late 90's when I did the bulk of my restaurant work but I've become extremely bored with this type of cooking at home. There are some restaurants that do an exceptional job of it and I love anything I see made on Iron Chef (the Japanese version, not that travesty they play on the Food Network these days) but overall I've lost my fondness even for Chinese take out.

It's unclear why but New York City has lousy Chinese take out. There are plenty of good places but your run of the mill, lower rung Chinese take out in New York is far inferior to the slightly below average Chinese I could get growing up in Rhode Island. I'm not quite sure why that is.

I guess New York City hasn't quite figured everything out. It's a great place to get sea beans or emu eggs at your local bodega but if you want a crab rangoon you'll have to go out of state to find anything that unusual.

Welcome to New Yawk!

Getting our Seder On

I got home tonight with 45 minutes to do one thing: make a loosely Passover Seder-themed dinner. Luckily I had most of the necessary ingredients on hand. I picked up the remainder on the way home from work and, with a little cheating, managed to throw together a pretty fun Passover dinner while we enjoyed other Jewish traditions such as watching the Islanders/Penguins game on MSG.



I picked up some Manischewitz which is a boon seeing that it was only $4.99 for one of my favorite grape varietals: the concord grape. Not just a little concord grape but a minimum of 51% of concord grape! That is a commitment to quality that most wines are, quite frankly, afraid to make. We "enjoyed" the wine with some matzoh crackers, the first time I've had matzoh that weren't the standard head-sized ones. They were not leavened which symbolizes how I had to rush home from New Jersey and did not have time to let the dough rise.



After that I made a charoset-inspired salad for two reasons: 1) I didn't have the time or all of the ingredients to make charoset and 2) I didn't have a spare pan to make it in either. The salad had horseradish (more Seder-themed than charoset-themed). I was extremely skeptical about this combination but I must say the salad was one of the best I've made in a while. The combination of these ingredients was fantastic. I would say this salad was a mitzvah!



We also had some matzoh ball soup. This I did not make (because I'm a cheater). I bought it already prepared because, again, I only had 45 minutes to get this feast together and still leave time to read from the Haggadah!



I got some already prepared brisket (again, I only had 45 minutes) and I boiled some potatoes and threw together a quick carrot tzimmes (using my Bubbie's recipe, of course) with some baby carrots I had in the crisper.



For dessert we had Poppy Hamantashen from Lilly's (their website is apparently not functional at the time of writing this). Jen was skeptical of these cookies because, for some reason, she doesn't like cookies that look like this. I think maybe she might be clinically insane. Maybe it was the Manischewitz talking but I thought the cookies were delicious! I guess four cups of Manischewitz will do that to you.

Comes to pass that four cups of wine is some sort of Passover tradition! Who knew? I guess that tradition was started because Manischewitz tastes just like delicious, sugary grape juice.

Mazel tav!

Dinner a la Lazy Man

With this weekend's final winter share pickup just around the corner combined with a busy work week I was forced to cut some corners this evening. I promise that the next three nights will be markedly more interesting culinarily.

But for now, let's phone it in!



For a salad I used some beet greens combined with our slowly dying mixed greens, some almonds, tomato, lemon, and olive oil.

So that was the salad. And you know what that means! Another episode of Space Phalanx: The Human-Zzintar Wars!

When we last left our hero we had just learned his name, so he was still pretty new to us. Also, he hadn't really done anything yet that would identify him as a hero. So we'd better get around to that.

Calcitron, the evil ruler of the insectazoid Mentarillians, stroked his mandibles thoughtfully. "Zahr'ring'ih! Come to my throne and inform me of the goings on in the Trellingi Galaxy!"

An insectazoid toady gamboled horizontally over to High Lord Calcitron's throne which was made out of the skulls of people he'd conquered! "Yes, Lord Calcitron?" He bowed, then rubbed at one of his many segmented eyes.

"We have an enemy in the human resistance. His name is Kintaur Rosenbaum! We must find him and teach him that the Mentarillians are insectazoids that are not to be trifled with."

"Yes, master," Zahr'ring'ih said, rubbing two of his antennae together in a conniving manner. "Rosenbaum will feel the true rath of the Mentarillias and this Human-Zzintar Wars will tilt into our favor!"

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!" They both said.

Tune in soon for the next exciting chapter of Space Phalanx: The Human-Zzintar Wars!

For the main course I purchase a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken, some pre-cooked cornbread, boiled some of the beets, and baked a potato. There is something extra delicious about a chicken that someone else has cooked. It tastes like laziness.



The cornbread was particularly tasty. I will have to make up for it soon by actually making something. Still, all the groceries for dinner cost me less than $10.00. It's hard to top that.

Tonight either Time Warner or our crummy, lousy TiVo that I hate is broken so we only have about three channels accessible to us which means no hockey game. Instead we'll have to catch up on our previously recorded shows and/or movies. That, or play the recently released update for Fieldrunners.

Giving Thanks for Friends, Farm Shares and Home Improvements

It's been a longish dry periods between updates, with one of my all-time favorite holidays in the meantime -- which means, I think, we owe a decidedly longish entry today. And luckily, I am sitting at home dreading doing the 7th and 8th sinkloads of dishes (Nate having done the same amount over again before leaving for work), so conditions are perfect for blogging. So let's start with Saturday ...

Saturday
Nate left early on work on Saturday morning, so I tackled a day sure to be full of work and chores in the only sensible way: having my breakfast and watching home makeover TV. After the coffee and oatmeal were but memories and the various living rooms and kitchens had been repainted, I checked my email and got some bad news: Nate had emailed to say his store had no turkeys of any variety, whether fresh or frozen. This year's Canadian Thanksgiving dinner is the 10th I have hosted, and while the paucity of turkeys in the U.S. has given me a few dicey moments in those 10 years, I have always found one of appropriate size in time for dinner. And, not to give away the whole show, but this year was no exception -- but it took phone calls to every Whole Foods in New York City, and a two-hour round trip to the farthest one to bring my 15-pound beauty back to the welcoming confines of our fridge.

Needless to say, that put a bit of a cramp in the flow of the day, but I persevered through the highs and lows. Example: I did the laundry (high) but dumped out an improperly-closed container of OxyClean all over the floor and into my laundry bag (low). I made the best damned spice cake I have ever made in my life -- moist, spongey, excellently spiced (definite high) and then fumbled one of the pans taking it out of the oven and broke the top layer into many a piece (definite, curse-filled low). I facilely whipped up a pie crust -- my personal culinary Everest -- but made an unsatisfactory filling. I also labored to put our living room, kitchen and bedroom into a semblance of order in advance of company. It was a long day, so when I finished my pie crust I rewarded myself with some Champagne taking up room in our fridge. (Two birds! One stone!). Said Champagne was leftover from the batch I bought to sip on our wedding day. Creating a pie crust with good texture: as happy a day as the day we married? I'll never tell.



Nate came home around this time, and we had a few hours more of work before Jeff, our guest for the holiday weekend arrived. We had planned for a dinner out in celebration of Jeff's birthday the day before, but by the time he arrived and found parking (apparently there was a major entertainment event in the Heights that night, so parking was far, far away), he was exhausted and the hour was late. So we ordered some Plum Pomidor (plantain chips, calamari, bolonaise and fettucine) and enjoyed some 365-brand Merlot in a box we imported from Chicago. Dinner was delicious, despite the expressions on our faces -- even the delivery calamari was good:









And the 365 Merlot was fab AND came in an ecologically correct box and spigot.



After we supplemented the merlot with some birthday cake for the birthday guest -- the traditional wacky cake with buttercream icing (a little too crunchy in the icing, actually, since we ran out of icing sugar and supplemented with white sugar) served with untraditional drink umbrellas in it. Note the cake stand in use: a delightful feature of this weekend was getting to put into effect all the wedding gifts I registered for and was told would never get use. Let it be witnessed: I have used my cakestand at least once, and it was glorious and totally worth it.





Afterward we watched some of the Red Sox games.





Sunday

The next day dawned late -- or rather, we greeted the dawn late -- and we began the preparations for the evening's dinner. By eating toast.



Then came the next-most important task: reinstalling some shelves we had hung earlier in the week and that were drooping unhappily. Can't have drooping shelves. Obviously, Nate and Jeff enjoyed this task immensely.



Jeff eventually hit on an ingenious solution of bracing the shelves with washers, and we could turn our attention to the main dish of the day.



You may note that Nate is holding the turkey in a fantastic roasting dish. This is, as I said, the 10th Canadian Thanksgiving I/we have hosted, and the 15th, I believe, overall we've celebrated, and this is the very first time we have had a roasting pan to use in place of a foil pan. And guess what? IT WAS AWESOME.

Then, while Nate labored in our one-bum kitchen, Jeff and I decided to use the aforementioned broken spice cake for a recipe that I created with Nate: a spice cake pear trifle with pumpkin-butterscotch sauce. Ridiculous easy -- just tossed some farm-share pears in amaretto and layered them with the cake, some whipped cream and the sauce (converted from the butterscotch icing made for the ill-fated spice cake) -- and with the double benefit of looking highly impressive AND letting me use the trifle bowl I registered for. Zing!

Here I am while we assemble:



And here's Jeff hoisting the finished product like Lord Stanley's cup. Luckily, unlike the cup, if you touch the trifle bowl before you have won it in combat, you're not jinxed from ever having it again.



At that point, it was time to set the table and start laying out the goods. The turkey emerged, looking golden and lovely.



Crackers and baguette, check.



Cheese plate with Stilton, borough market cheddar and fromage affinois with kiwi berries, grapes and fig jam, check.



Pumpkin drop biscuits with flax seed, created by Nate as a last-minute addition, check. Served on wedding gift tiered server, check and ROCK!



Guests with drinks in hand, check.



And after everyone had arrived and got settled, it was time to bring out the main courses: the turkey; stuffing; roasted share celeriac, brussel sprouts, share garlic, butternut squash, celery and share onions; mashed sweet potatoes with pecan praline; mashed potatoes; mashed share carrots and share turnips, a Nate's family classic; share corn tomalito; Nate's homemade cranberry sauce; and gravy (in our new gravy boat, yeah!).



(Check out Nate's pics on flickr -- the link is on the side -- for detail shots, if you're so inclined.)

And after everyone had sufficient time to bloat, we brought out the desserts: the aforementioned trifle and pumpkin pie, as well as apple pie, banana cupcakes and cookies brought by generous guests.



A closeup on my pumpkin pie. The best-looking -- but paradoxically worst-tasting -- pumpkin pie I have ever made.



I think the food -- all thanks to Nate -- turned out deliciously, and our guests (15 this year, a good amount in as that we only have 13 seats) seemed to leave full, which is all you can ask for. And the new office-nook created by the bookshelves didn't seem to negatively affect the space really at all. Hooray! I gave thanks for the blessing of sharing a delicious meal with all the fabulous friends and family who came to visit (including new friends! Some who were Canadian!), as well as for our new gifts getting some use (shallow, shallow, but true, true) and for the non-droopy shelves being sufficiently secure to not fall on anyone below. I think we can all be thankful for that.

Monday

Today was a mellow day: Jeff returned to Rhode Island, Nate went to work, and I ran errands before succumbing to the cold I've been trying to push off and returning home to collapse on the couch and listen to Sherlock Holmes books on tape. Tomorrow should bring three great things: pictures of the apartment redo and hot turkey sandwiches, which are so great they count as two items. I can't wait.

Korma Chameleon

Today we woke up at a regular time to go downtown and have lunch at the irregular hour of 11:00AM. We ended up having lunch in Union Square at The Coffee Shop with Jen's friend, Katherine, who was visiting from London.

After lunch we wandered around the Union Square farmer's market for a while trying to determine what we'd get to make dinner. The problem with farmer's markets are that they are populated largely by farmers. The problem with that is that farmers grow fruits and vegetables and we have an abundance of such items at home in our home. What we needed were the non-produce items to combine with our produce at home and create a normal dinner.

We went to a supermarket in Chelsea where we stocked up on some staples and some items to make dinner tonight.

We found out, upon returning home, that the Yankees game from last night had been rescheduled for tonight. Having already puchased a great deal of food for dinner we debated for a while then decided to skip the game. Besides, I don't think my stomach could deal with a repeat of last night's dinner.

It's worth noting that finding out about the game being rescheduled was no thanks to the Yankees terrible website that has no useful information on it. It was only after doing an exhaustive Google search and calling up a Craigslist post from someone selling tickets.



Dinner was quite easy to make. We purchased some Korma sauce from a local New York Indian food place called Maya Kaimal. I sauteed some onion, pepper, eggplant, zucchini and potato in a little butter and canola oil (my makeshift ghee) then simply added the sauce and simmered. Meanwhile Jen defied all culinary logic and made some rice by adding it to boiling water, not by starting it in cold water and bringing it to a boil like I was specifically trained never to do while in culinary school. The most infuriating part was that it turned out exactly the same.



Jen also made a coriander chutney with cilantro, garlic, jalapeno, sugar, salt and lemon juice. We added a touch of honey and olive oil at the end which rounded it out quite nicely.

We enjoyed the chutney on some store-bought naan bread which Jen heated in a pan. So we didn't do a heck of a lot of cooking from scratch this evening. It was quick, easy and delicious.

The evening is now rounding out quite nicely. Our TiVo inexplicably recorded five new episodes of Psych that we hadn't seen before! Much like our old favorite detective show, Monk, Psych is broadcast at a geriatric-friendly time slot on Friday nights. Most of the advertisements are for things like Rascal Scooters or diabetes medicine. I would estimate that at least 45% of the commercials feature either Wilfred Brimley or Sam Waterston, talking at the camera in front of an alternating solid white background or a sterile-looking bookshelf.

I really don't get it. Psych is a great show and features an incredibly smarmy Gen-Xer in James Roday. Why is it that this show is marketed so heavily to people at least twice our age? It seems like a slam dunk for thirty-somethings.

Regardless of the marketing strategy behind Psych we have just enough left to watch for the remaining 58 minutes until Spore is done downloading.

This could possibly be the best Saturday night ever.

A Case for Lateness

Since Nate is rocking the Jersey route these days, it was I who ran out of work at 6pm to try and make the farm share pickup on time. For the CSA allows you to pick up your bounty from 4:30 to 7:30 and from 4:30 to 7:30 only -- and if the two times I've been there near 7 have been any indication, that 7:30pm timeframe might be purely theoretical. Last time I went to pick up near the witching hour, I was punished with getting no fruit -- it had all run out, and they were offering a double share the next week (when we were in France, bummer!) But this time, I feel my late arrival was richly rewarded. For example, they were out of snap beans and arugula, of which we were to take 2 lbs and 1/2 lb, respectively. But since they were out, in their place I got an additional fennel (score!) and a bunch of chives (also score!) -- both of which I like better than the original share allotment. Advantage: us.



This is what we took home this week: 5 giant ears of corn, 1 lb of potatoes, 1 head of lettuce, 3 zucchini, 2 bulbs of fennel, 1 pint of cherry tomatoes, 1 orange pepper, 1 green pepper, 1 bunch of chives, 1 bunch of dill.



We also got an eggplant that, viewed from a certain angle, looks like the face of the man in the moon.

Unfortunately, the old Tuesday dilemma is/was in full effect: what to make at 7:30pm? The double jeopardy was that Nate's campaign to rid our freezer, shelves and fridge of hangers-on meant that the cupboards were bare, devoid of any meats, pastas, main dishes of any kinds.

Hey, y'all! It's Nate comin' at ya! Jen told me to write about the salad because I made (read: assembled) it. Well, merely took what we had lying around and combined it. That's about it! We had some green zebra tomato left so I put that on some of the Satur Farms greens, some Coach Farms goat cheese, slivered almonds, some of the dill and avocado.

Now back to our cheatin' ways . . .

So we ordered a rotisserie chicken. And baked beans. And cornbread. I sauteed some garlic and then steamed the green beans left over from last week's share with said garlic. We served that with the delivery and a baked potato (again, last week's share), and, all in all, it was delicious.



For dessert, we had a redux of the brilliant brownie, peach and ice cream combo. Delish. Then we looked at car insurance quotes online. It was a rad night.

Swedish Meatballs and Home Improvement

Jen is currently in San Diego and I am stuck here on the island of Manhattan all alone. Hopefully that doesn't come across as jealousy. San Diego is towards the bottom of the list of places I'd like to visit in California. It's not even close to the top of the list of places in California that start with "San" that I'd like to visit. For those curious the list is something like this: San Dimas, San Francisco, San Jose (to see the shark tank), etc.

Jen's whirlwind tidying mission preceded our planned trip to Ikea where we got in around 10:30AM and immediately lost Jen's painstakingly mapped out and measured drawings of our apartment. This was a real morale killer but we still managed to spend over four hours and far more money than I am comfortable writing on some fixings for the apartment.



After a one-hour scouting tour of the store we headed to the cafe which I maintain is the cleanest kitchen I've ever seen in all of my days on this planet. Jen had the Swedish meatballs, which she'd been looking forward to since before our trip to France. I think she may even have longed for the Ikea Swedish meatballs while dining at some of the nicer restaurants we visited on our honeymoon.

The next several hours were spent in Ikea hell. We'd made the ill-advised decision to go to Ikea on Labor Day. We we knew in advance it was a bad idea but given the convenience of where it fell in our schedules we decided to do it anyway. After all that we even took a side trip to Target to pick up a few odds and ends. I would highly advise against that as well. Our original plans even included a trip to Crate & Barrel but thankfully we forgot the gift certificates we were supposed to bring with us to spend there. Perhaps that was our subconscious at work trying to protect us.



When we got back to the city we were unloading when I saw a a brownish blur flying towards me. I jumped back and looked down to see a frog just hanging out on the ground near a fire hydrant. I tried to get close to it and it leaped up and clasped onto the side of the fire hydrant.



Slowly it made its way into the little gap where the side cap of the hydrant is screwed on. This brings the total number of wild frogs that I've seen on the street in New York City to one. I think that may be a new county record.



After getting home I quickly assembled our new bed and Jen quickly ordered take out from Dallas BBQ after we also ditched our plans to stop by a grocery store on the way home. An all-day Ikea expedition will take the ambition right out of anybody. Life would be so much easier if we didn't love that damn store so much.



Before dinner I had decided to break down some boxes using a razor blade, something I do often. Something I do not do often is slip while holding the razor blade and slice my finger open. I was lucky enough to have that happen on this occasion. After debating going to the emergency room for stitches I used my last emergency room visit as a guide and decided not to. It took four hours to get seen when I was nearly dying of some sort of rogue intestinal virus, a little nick on my finger would have kept me there for at least twelve hours. I've worked with sharp knives long enough to know how to bandage it up and move on.



After dinner I put together our new kitchen console and rattled off more creative curse words in thirty minutes than the naval complement of an average battleship blurts out in a twenty-four-hour period. For some reason the screws did not line up with the screw holes and that caused me to sweat profusely while crouching inside a stainless steel cabinet for much of the post-dinner hours. Don't let the smile fool you, I hated life at that moment.



Jen left for San Diego early this morning leaving me to pick up our farm share on my way home from work. Here's what we got this week: 5 ears of corn, 3 red tomato, 2 green zebra tomatoes, 1 yellow tomato, 1 pound potato, 1 head garlic, 4 carrots (the ones that look like parsnips), 2 red peppers, 1 head lettuce, 3 pounds peaches, 1 1/2 pounds green beans, and 1 bunch chard. They are all artfully displayed on our new kitchen console which is only two-thirds complete at this point.



After coming home to an apartment that was in a transition (to put it mildly) and that Jen was not here I opted for an easy meal.



I cooked up some frozen raviolis and served them with some farm share tomato and some sliced cornbread from last night. Just enough to eat quickly then get back to work assembling and cleaning.



Two fingers of this wine we got (because it was Shiraz and had a cool hologram on it, a clear winner in my book) and I am not ready to jump back in the kitchen and tackle another portion of this cabinet assembly.

Sadly for Jen she will not be here to hear my clanging and cursing from the other room. Instead she will be in San Diego which is currently about ten degrees cooler than New York.

Lucky stiff.