Surprise! Dinner was delicious!

Tonight’s dinner was supposed to be vegetable risotto. I was still just going to throw it together, but I had PLANS.

However, Bill worked late and is about to go work some more. So risotto wasn’t going to happen, because it was going to take too damn long.

So, on the train ride home, I started trying to figure out some faster meal. The worst case scenario, in my head, was that we ate out. We have too many veggies in the house for that to work for me at all. We’ve been inundated by tomatoes, you see.

My train thought process went about like this (truly – all crazy thoughts included):

“We’ve GOT to use up some of those tomatoes. And didn’t we get like a pound of basil in the last share?… Continue reading →

Slow-Cooker Caramalized Onions.

Holy crap, we have a lot of onions. Our wonderful CSA “Tomato Mountain Farm”:http://tomatomountain.com/ recently had several weeks of us getting several onions in the batch. While onions last awhile, I’m told that spring onions really don’t last as long. And I couldn’t use them up fast enough.

Enter my friends Mark & Susan. See, Mark & Susan also purchased a share of Tomato Mountain Farm’s CSA. So they’re in eggplants & onions up to their ears too.

Mark is, rumor has it, an awesome cook for himself & his lovely Susan. I’m always envious as Susan often talks about what good things Mark has made recently. And recently she mentioned goat-cheese eggplant rolls (I haven’t had a chance to try these) and slow-cooker caramelized onions.… Continue reading →

14 August 2011 Market Report

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  • Monday, August 15, 2011
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The weather report said yesterday was going to be a nice “partly cloudy” day in the mid-70s. There was a 10% chance of rain[1].

The skies out our window, admittedly at about 5:30am when neither of us is at our best, were lovely. So, we got ready, but on shorts & t-shirts, hauled out our water bottles & food to be composted & we walked to the bus stop.

As we walked, the dark, dark clouds rolled in. The skies stopped being lovely. Drizzle started happening. We were not terribly thrilled with this turn of events.

We were pretty thrilled, though, that we caught our bus. That early on a Sunday morning, the buses only run about every 20 – 30 minutes, which means that we’re more often better off walking than waiting for a bus.… Continue reading →

7 August 2011 Market Report

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  • Tuesday, August 9, 2011
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Well, this is going to be a short one. Why? Because I wasn’t at the market this past week. I passed off the duties to my fabulous assistant/intern Krysti. She did a great job, with few calls or texts to me for clarification.

She had a few more vendors than expected, which resulted in a more dense market than usual. I hope that next year this will be our norm, but it’s going to take a lot of work to attract the vendors. I think we can do it.

The morning was pretty rainy, which is a good way to get a dead market. However, the rain cleared up around 11am (I believe – I’ll have to double check later), and the vendors all agreed that we had a large influx of patrons after the rain.… Continue reading →

31 July 2011 Market Report

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  • Wednesday, August 3, 2011
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This was the first time I had enough volunteers who could stay all day long on hand to implement one of my single biggest goals for this season. Counting people.

This comes, in part, from my scientific training. Those of us who run the market can say “It seems busier than usual” or “It seems slower than usual”, but it’s based entirely on gut feeling. Which, to be frank, is going to be influenced by exactly what is going on at the moment you say that. I would not be surprised to find we had a day where at one point someone said, “It seems busy today” and a different point said, “It seems slow today”. Or two different people felt two different ways.

For example, I thought the market seemed about normal in attendance.… Continue reading →