Monkey Monday: I really should get to bed edition 21 May 2007 1:38 am
Posted by Tracy in : agriculture,books,convenience,cooking,CSA,eating,garden,monkeys,politics,reviews,school , trackbackBut I just wanted to say: I am happy to report that I have found another good book about local food, and it is Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (written with her husband, Steven Hopp, and daughters Camille and Lily — they all appear on the back cover author picture, but Lily was too young for a book contract and so couldn’t get her name on the front cover, just very cute hands full of heirloom lima beans). I was a little worried during the early chapters, especially when they mentioned the very disappointing Coming Home to Eat by Gary Paul Nabham but I skipped ahead a little and found plenty to look forward to, so I kept reading — and was well-rewarded. I had hoped to finish Marion Nestle’s Safe Food in time to make it the subject of the book report due for Urban Farm on Thursday, but I think Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is my new winner. Of course, some (probably extended) version of whatever I turn in will make it onto TracyFood.
In other good book news, Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cooking continues to rock — we had her Lamb With Spinach for dinner on Sunday, and it was fantastic, although I think my version (made with Anderson family lamb from Brownsville, OR and Urban Farm spinach) was probably more spinachy than the one in the book. (Secret confession: I have started trying to eat meat once a week to prepare for our coming trip to Holland, during which I want to eat whatever my grandparents want to feed me, yes please but I hope it’s not too much of a shock to my so-very-mostly-plant-eating system.)
I know I bragged about this (along with my garden) already on Friday, but: we got our first CSA box this weekend! Yay! Now to remember to pick up ingredients for Caesar dressing for that beautiful head of romaine they gave us, oh yes. And for anybody wondering if fresher is really better for produce, let me just say that the strawberries Peter and I picked from our own front yard on Saturday were even more delicious than the ones from our CSA box, which had probably been picked less than a day before we ate them (and the homegrown ones).
Um, what else? There are literally three pies cooling in our kitchen right now — one apple and two pumpkin. The former is Better Apple Pie from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics because it is delicious, and the latter two are to test the difference between premade “pumpkin pie filling” and slightly-more-like-homemade “canned pumpkin but we added our own spices and sweetened condensed milk” — science rules!
And now I am off to explore the science of sleep.
