The color of infinity inside an empty glass

I was talking last night to salome190 over gtalk yesterday, throwing thoughts out and trying to put into words thoughts that were bouncing around my head. I feel like it's leading me to a new "Diet Manifesto", an updated and better version of what the C-C Diet was (though Erik and Igor wouldn't necessarily approve of this one and I wasn't posting it to their site ANYWAYS!)

( More Food/Diet Stuff. Move on if you aren't interested. )

I got interested in Food (I agree with Michael Pollan, by and large, that a great majority of the American Diet is not Food so much as Edible Food-like Substances. If your product has been processed beyond it's identity as plant or animal, than it's not Food, it's Modern Chemistry.) back when I started dieting. It was sort of a natural progression for me, from caring about what (and how much) I put into my stomach to caring about precisely what I put into my mouth.

( Cut for Length )

I'll admit that I struggled for a title to this post.

This morning I was pokin' around the internets when I saw a post from chite who is a local friend. She had just signed up for a Share in a Local Farm Commune, Potomac Vegetable Farms that had a Farm sorta near our dance studio in Vienna.

Truth be told, K and I have been interested in being involved with a Farm commune for a while. There are lots of reasons why to get involved with a local farming commune. The first is taste. I, at least, have been big about trying to get local produce IN SEASON because it just TASTES better. Stuff picked early in Florida and shipped via various warehouses until it appears, looking ripe or almost ripe or even likely overripe in your local supermarket... Meh.

Nothing is as good as farm-fresh produce. That's why Farmer's Markets rock, by and large, because they bring in the local produce and they sell it, still ripe and delicious. Not freeze-dried and packed and yadda yadda.

The other problem at least the two of us have is.. we get stuck in ruts. What do you want to make today? I dunno. Feels like we've done our favorites til we're sick of 'em. I think we both have hopes that.. being presented with a pumpkin or a turnip will make us go "OK. Now we have this. What do do with it?" and being adventurous and stuff.

So I call K over it and we consider our options. And decide to just go for a Mini Share. (There are three Share Types.. a Regular Share is about 1/2 a bushel of fresh vegetables a week, a Mini Share is about half that. The other one, the Robust Share.. we're not doing anytime soon.) We might have been a Regular Share work for us, and then again, it might have been a few too many vegetables a week. We don't know yet. We don't really even have a good feel for how much food a 1/2 or 1/4 of bushel really IS and if we even have the room to STORE what we get.

All we know is.. starting the first week of June, we start getting 1/4 a bushel of FRESH locally-grown RIPE produce a week and we keep getting fresh ripe local vegetables for 24 weeks, til the first week of November. And a loaf of fresh homemade bread from Mid September through the first week of November (because we wanted to try it.)

Grocery Shopping and Cooking won't be the same for those 24 weeks. What will we ever do? ;)

And on top of that, the pickup place, the Vienna Farm, acts as a mini-farmers market, selling stuff they, themselves, aren't producing such as sweet corn, apples, and apple cider. ;)

Interestingly, and making us feel a bit lucky, we signed up early this morning, about 11 AM. As of about an hour ago when we checked, the shares are all sold out. We got our share in just in time. PHEW! :)

So.. I'm feeling really good about this, and really excited about trying new stuff (fresh, delicious stuff.)
.. the big question will be what to do with our tomatoes. ;p K and I hate the texture and taste of raw tomatoes. We can try to find a way to cook the crap out of them, I guess.

:)