First things first

Last week’s CSA box (which I didn’t photograph or write about before it was eaten) was good. But it pales in comparison to what we got this week.

Enclosed was a recipe for broiled eggplant. I’m not a huge fan of eggplant (something I didn’t admit to myself for years—after all, vegetarians are supposed to like eggplant, right?), but this recipe involves coating sliced eggplant with mayonnaise, covering it with grated fresh Parmesan, and broiling it. I’m intrigued. I think we’ll try that tonight. I hope I like it, because something tells me we’ll be getting a lot of eggplant from our CSA. (I suspect the free recipe is a “get ready for the onslaught of eggplant” warning.)

Would I live in a house like this? Absolutely.

Somehow, though, I just can’t imagine someone being able to pull this off in the USA. Surely some building code or another would get in the way, don’t you think? Or am I being too cynical?

Last year, Jan and I built a 4′x’4′ raised-bed garden along the side of our house. (Our yard has a lot of trees, and that’s pretty much the only consistently sunny spot.) We were very modest in our goals, and wound up with decent harvests of purple beans, lettuce, and Swiss chard.

This spring, we decided to expand our garden—not least because Sylvia was very interested in the project and had helped choose some flower varieties to plant. We added a 4′x8′ raised bed next to the first one, and filled both of them with mushroom soil, which is readily available in this area (southeastern Pennsylvania grows most of the mushrooms in this country) and has been described as “rocket fuel for plants.”

A wet, cold spring gave our seeds some problems, but now that the warm weather is here things are taking off a bit. We have zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers, and some other flowers (I don’t know what they are—it was a packet of seeds that Jan’s dad sent to Sylvia from the Netherlands). There’s a bit of chard and Italian parsley, and two bean plants.

When Jan and I gardened at our apartment, we had a seed-starting setup (complete with heat mats and grow lights) in the tiny spare bedroom. Our plan is to do this in our basement, but we didn’t manage to clear out the clutter soon enough this season. So we went to our local farmer’s market and bought some tomato plants and several basil plants. My end-of-summer goal is to make and freeze a gallon of pesto.

After cranking through one pair of toddler socks, I felt like I was on a roll. So I decided to knit another pair—this set for the soon-to-be one-year-old son of a friend. I used Wildfoote (in Master Grey), which was just lovely to work with. I knit the legs extra long, because socks almost never stay on babies’ feet once they are mobile (I used to find Sylvia’s little socks scattered throughout the house). Also, an extra-long leg can help prevent the “gap-itis” (particularly unpleasant in the winter, when it’s cold) that occurs when pant legs get scrunched up. These took just eight days to knit. I think I have toddler socks out of my system for now, though. My next sock project will be something for a grownup.

First, though I’m going to work on this sweater. I knit this a few years ago out of Baby Cashmerino left over from Sylvia’s baby blanket. I followed the Simple Boatneck pattern in Baby Knits for Beginners by Debbie Bliss.

Sylvia loves this sweater. She can put it on and take it off all by herself, and it has purple in it. Originally, the arms were way too long, but now they’re just right…and the body of the sweater is way too short. So I’m going to add some length to it by picking up stitches and knitting downward. It doesn’t have to look perfect (have you seen the seaming job I did on this thing?). Luckily, my friend Beth just happened to have two balls of Baby Cashmerino in a color that looks very much like one I used in the sweater!

We took Sylvia strawberry picking (at a local pick-your-own place) last year, shortly after she turned two. For months she’s been excited about returning there and has talked about it constantly. And yesterday we went.

We came home with about eight pounds of strawberries and just under ten pounds of rhubarb. Sylvia ate strawberries pretty much nonstop while we were in the field, but fortunately they didn’t weigh her, too.

Jan and I joined a CSA a few years ago but did not have the best experience with it. (We love the idea of the CSA, but this particular implementation had some problems.) Last year, a local creamery started a CSA, and after hearing good things about it from pioneering friends, we decided to sign up for it ourselves this year.

The location just can’t be beat: it’s literally about five minutes from my house. And I did mention that it’s a creamery, right? So yeah, we’ll probably be picking up freshly made ice cream there from time to time, too.

We picked up our first box of produce for the season yesterday. Here it is, laid out on the counter. (The basil wasn’t in the box but was purchased at a farmer’s market.) From left to right: a huge box of strawberries, half a dozen eggs, a head of red-leaf lettuce, a ginormous bag of snow peas, two zucchini, some beautiful pencil asparagus, a ton of scallions, a fresh onion, and about a pound of button mushrooms. We ate most of the strawberries for dessert last night and plan to grill the zucchini this evening. Yum!

Today’s mail brought not one but two delightful packages.

First, wrapped in even more packing tape than even I use (and I like to use enough to ensure that any package I send will survive a nuclear winter), was a small envelope from my friend Mary Ann, whom I’ve known since we went to college together. About a month ago, she sent me a birthday card in which she’d written a promise to send me another tacky magnet for my collection. When she and her family went on vacation to Great Smoky Mountain National Park a couple of weeks ago, she made doubly good on that promise by picking up two of the cheesiest magnets she could find. (Note the use of Smokey, a misspelling that ratchets up the tackiness quotient for this duo.) I’m putting these on the fridge right next to the Bass Pro goodies that another college friend, Frank, sent me in April.

The second box contained lots of yarny goodness. About two weeks ago I won a contest at Yarn Is My Metier. Karen asked people to compose haiku poems for her birthday (which was May 29), and the random number generator chose my entry as one of the winners.

Next thing I know, I get an e-mail from Karen asking my for my snail-mail info and all about my yarn preferences. Sending along my address was simple, but answering the other questions was tricker. I had a bad case of option paralysis. It was like standing in front of the counter at a Baskin Robbins. Fortunately, Karen was very patient and, after a few e-mails back and forth, announced that she would send me enough burgundy yarn for a shrug (a project I’m interested in trying) and enough taupe yarn to make something for Sylvia.

The taupe yarn? Four balls of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran. I received a Jo Sharp book as a gift from a friend in Australia two years ago, but have never tried any of her yarn before—or even handled it, for that matter. This stuff is so soft. It’s 85% wool, 10% slik, and 5% cashmere. (Interestingly, the care instructions say “Dry flat in shade.” That’s the first time I’ve seen that variation. What happens if you dry it in the sun? Does it get a sunburn?) I’m thinking I might turn this into a little vest for Sylvia, or perhaps some legwarmers for her. Ooooh…maybe cabled legwarmers!

Also in the box were a panda pencil sharpener (which was of course immediately appropriated by Sylvia) and three balls of Jaegar Shetland Aran in a beautiful burgundy color. This yarn is 80% wool and 20% alpaca and it, too, is very soft and totally new to me. I haven’t quite decided what to do with this yarn, but I’m eager to get it on the needles. Karen suggested I look at her Mia Shrug pattern (available in the sidebar on her blog, and also a popular knit on Ravelry). It’s awfully cute and may be just the sort of dive-in-head-first plunge I need to get over my reluctance fear sheer terror of lace knitting!

So thanks, Mary Ann and Karen, for making my day!

I received a lot of wonderful comments to my post about which sock yarn to knit up first. (Thanks, everyone!) The suggestions were great, and I agreed with them all—even when they didn’t agree with each other!

I decided to start with the Trampoline yarn. This was given to me as a gift, and it definitely falls into the “these are so not my colors” category. But Sylvia really liked the yarn, so I set out to knit a pair of socks for her.

I followed the Ann Norling pattern for baby and kids socks. This pattern is written for three different gauges and is clear enough that even a sock n00b like me had no trouble following it (until I got to the Kitchener stitch instructions at the end, which made no sense to me, so I looked them up elsewhere).

These socks knit up pretty quickly, and I really enjoyed working on them! The best part? Sylvia is excited to wear them—as soon as her feet grow a little more and the weather cools. I think they’ll be just right for her this winter.

And now…on to the next pair of socks!

Two weekends ago Jan and I did some spring cleaning. We carted off a few hundred books to our local library (no, they were not overdue—we were donating them!) and worked on decluttering our basement. Jan unearthed a box of my social theory books (Environmentalism and Cultural Theory, anyone?), and I quickly discovered that underneath the top layer of books was a plastic storage bin. Even though I haven’t thought about it in a few years, I instantly recognized it.

Jan and I were married in a small town in Vermont where all of the various event-service people know each other. Our flowers were done by a woman named Nancy Murray at A Schoolhouse Garden, and we liked and trusted her so much that we didn’t bother working out a detailed list of each and every type of flower that would make its way into the arrangements. Rather, we settled on the number and type of arrangements, as well as a general sense of the flowers: in our case, we wanted something autumnal, though of tapestry (reds, blues, purples) rather than harvest (reds, oranges, golds) hues.

Nancy did not disappoint and created beautiful arrangements of white roses, fresh herbs, freesia, snapdragons, and wildflowers. Jan and I liked everything so much that, even though we hadn’t originally planned to do this, on the morning after our wedding, when Nancy arrived to retrieve the pots, we asked if she could dry and preserve my bouquet. “Sure!” she said, and took it away with her, telling us we’d get it in about two months.

Four months later, it hadn’t arrived, so I wrote her a note asking about it. She replied that she had indeed sent it out several week after our wedding, but thought that perhaps USPS delays caused by post-September 11th scares might be the culprit. She suggested waiting a bit longer to see if it might show up, so we did. Two months after that, I wrote to her that it still hadn’t arrived and was clearly lost for good, and asked her how much it would cost to recreate and (re)preserve the bouquet. I never heard back from her.

Near the end of the summer, a box arrived in the mail. It contained a plastic storage bin, and through its translucent walls I could see a small bundle amid bubble wrap and packing peanuts. There was also a note from Nancy. She had redone (and dried) the bouquet and mailed it to me. At no additional charge.

Yes, there are still very kind people in the world. The next time someone cuts me off in traffic or some politician utters another lie or I encounter unpleasant behavior, I’ll just remember Nancy’s gift to me, and that will go a long way toward making me feel better about humanity.

I love reading blogs. I love how blogs can offer intellectual and creative stimulation. And I love how blogs can point me in directions I hadn’t seen before.

A lot of this pointing takes the form of links. I don’t click through every link I see, but when one grabs my interest I hover the cursor over it and look at the URL in the status bar at the bottom of my browser to see if the link looks clickworthy.

On some sites, though, my placid cursor-hovering is interrupted by a little window that pops up in the middle of my screen: a Snap Shot.

I hate these things. Loathe them.

First, they obscure a good chunk of the surrounding text. Here I am, merrily reading along, when suddenly one of those little windows appears and completely derails my train of thought.

Second, the Snap Shot windows are so small that they’re actually useless. (Note that I am not advocating any embiggening.) Whatever text and images appear in them are barely discernible from the noise in the window. If there’s a link to, say, Matthew Fox in a Speedo*, that little window isn’t going to show much. If I really want to see Matthew Fox in a Speedo, I’m going to have to follow that link.

Third. if I want to know where a link goes, I find it far more useful to just look at the URL. The URL of a blog post can reveal a ton of information, including the website, post title, and post date.

Fortunately, there are ways for site visitors to avoid seeing those annoying windows: by disabling Snap Shots. Apparently, the company has had enough complaints about this product that they’ve included this info in their FAQ; just follow the link in #3 on the list. Unfortunately, this solution requires cookie placement and has to be reactivated whenever your cookies are deleted.

If you’re using Firefox and running the AdBlock Plus extension (which is awesome), you’re in luck: you can get rid of those Snap Shots forever. (Well, for as long as you’re running AdBlock Plus. Which is so awesome that you’ll never want to get rid of it. So yeah, I guess that does mean forever.) Check here for the details. (Opera users will find their solution in the comments to that post.)

*That one’s just for you, Gina!