Tonight for dinner I made tomato soup and corn muffins while Petely made a bean salad beside me. It was a particularly good tomato soup: I browned an onion in ghee (only because we had it handy, not because I am Whole 30-ing or anything (see above re: bean salad and corn muffins)) and then added 5 cloves of garlic and an inch of ginger. When the garlic was golden I pitched in two 14-oz. cans of sliced tomatoes and let it simmer until everything was tender. At the end I pureed it all and added a couple of spoonfuls of coconut butter because we were out of cream.
(OH DEAR, this is sounding like one of those wacky Paleo sites where I expect you to have sprouted chia seeds on hand so you can grind your own not-flour with them to make crackers for serving under organ meat pate. No need for any of the above. Just use regular butter and cream, for real. Or canned coconut milk, if you have it, because the coconut flavor was nice with the ginger.)
Everybody was excited about the soup, and even Stella-who-is-still-awfully-picky made enthusiastic noises. She ate an ounce or two of soup, and then she decided the muffins were more her speed. "It's very good," she said. "But enough's enough," she doubtless thought.
I rolled my eyes, and then an hour later I got an email from the farmer who runs our CSA. Thanks to your recommendation, it said, one of your friends joined the CSA this year! As a thank-you gift, we'd like you to have $20 worth of produce for freezing or canning later this year! Which kinds would you like?
My heart sank a little. There are a lot of things I love about our CSA: I am really pleased to be supporting a local small business, to be feeding my family beautiful organic vegetables, to be eating what's in season here in my area code, to be expanding my own food boundaries with the various unexpected offerings he brings us. I felt victorious when I found a good way to eat kohlrabi (peel, shred, add slaw dressing along with something fruity like crushed pineapple or finely chopped apple). But it's also a bit of a job to make sure that his beautiful produce gets put to good use. OH MAN this is SUCH a first-world-problems post. Pardon my first-world-problem-li-ness, but it requires some creativity and persistence to make prudent use of those food dollars. The very thought of learning to can in order to dispatch even more produce makes me pine for a Mrs. Patmore (and perhaps an uncomplaining kitchen staff to eat the fruits of her labors).
I realized I was saying exactly what Stella had said. "It's very good! But enough's enough."
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