CSA OMG

Gorgeous and incredibly daunting all at once.

I have been busy in the kitchen, now more than ever.

And it’s because of my CSA.

I’ve never had a CSA subscription before. Too expensive for my miniscule salary, all that.

But now that I make a lil’ more money this year, I decided to subscribe to the cheapest farm subscription I could find in Seattle. A half-share. Because, you know, I’m a single person who can’t consume a whole share.

For the past month-and-a-half, I’ve been drowning in vegetables.

Vegan ice cream!

The day arrived on Saturday afternoon at the New Moon Farm Goatalympics in Monroe.

I saw it in person: Seattle Cookie Counter.

A sight for longing, hungry eyes.

It was tough to choose a flavor. I wanted all of them. Ice cream was just about my favoritest thing as an omnivore and I hadn’t had anything quite like creamy ice cream in ages. Sorbet, yes, and some So Delicious ice cream sandwiches, but a place where I had more than one choice of dreamy ice cream on a hot day was such a delight.

I picked coffee chip ice cream snuggled between two snickerdoodles.

Insert into face.

It was so wonderful! The ice cream was cold, but creamy enough that I didn’t have to jam my teeth through it and give myself an ice cream headache. The cookies were sufficiently chewy but held together. It was delightful. What a wonderful combination!

Perfect start to my visit with my boyfriend to the Goatalympics. Let me tell you, the goats were not impressed with the contests. They required, er, coaxing.

Anyway, go see Seattle Cookie Counter if you’re in town!

Veggie news to use

Vegetarians live longer and have a much smaller carbon footprint than omnivores

Yep, they do

Toronto: home of the veggie butcher shop (everything looks delicious)

Another vegan food truck coming to Seattle!

Eating in the land of plenty

What if eating well was the easy thing — and all this grease and corn syrup and salt were difficult? What if we really took the founders at their word and worked to build a nation where life and liberty were free in the fullest sense of the word, where health and sustenance were not considered luxuries, but were so common as to be unworthy of note? … Where not just farmers, but the people who worked for them, and the produce managers who chaperoned their goods, got the kind of appreciation they deserved for tending to what Barbara Kingsolver calls “the original human vocation”: food. And where, once and for all, we could get past this childish notion that only rich snobs care about their meals, and everyone else is content with box meals. …

We have a long way to go before truly good food becomes the American way of eating, but I think we can get there. And there is frankly no more-fitting way for us to eat in the land of plenty than well.

–Tracie McMillan, The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table

Good book. Not vegan-centric, but focused on food politics and economics.

Never again

My office went generally apecrap for the U.S.-Belgium World Cup game last week, complete with tacky decorations, pizza (my boss ordered me a cheese-free salad, lovely woman she is) and a slew of sugary, artificially-colored store-bought desserts.

I feel less bad about this photo being crappy.

These concoctions never really appealed to me. So much sugar, not very tasty and I typically felt like crap after eating them. But in these situations, though I was reasonably good at resisting such fare, I would often spring for a cookie or cupcake, just because they’re there. I’m a journalist – eating free food is a biological imperative. It might be all you eat that day.

But now I look at this stuff and it’s such an easy decision to lay off. It’s not like I’m dieting – I don’t tell myself “you can’t” or salivate while feeling deprived. Rather, it’s an automatic decision. Instead of thinking, “I can’t” eat that stuff, I just know that I don’t.

It’s a little empowering. A great excuse to eat better. There’s no wrestling with my nutritional conscience. Conventional baked confections? Not my style.

Previously in office food battles