check this out!

I have a dirty little secret. It may not sound dirty to you, but it really gnaws at me and my personal goal of living as sustainably as possible... it is my love and over-use of ziploc bags. I buy them in bulk at Costco in sandwich size, freezer quart size, and freezer gallon size. I use Ziplocs on a daily basis for snacky items or whatever else I want to bring for lunch at work. They are just so much lighter and easier to transport than reusable containers which are normally bulkier and sometime breakable (mason jars are not the answer for everything... although sometimes I feel that way). I like the convenience, but all the plastic waste makes me a little crazy. Until now! I found these awesome re-usable snack paks, it oh-so-cute fabrics at WasteNotSaks.etsy.com. And they are homemade, which makes me happy in supporting a home entrepreneur. Won't quite work for freezing extra soups or sauces, but for daily snacking needs these are eco-friendly and uber-fashionable. Now I just have to decide what patterns...

3 years!

Still playing catch-up, May 28 marked Dave & my third anniversary - woo hoo! So much has happened in those three years it feels so much longer. :) I just so happened to win tickets to an Orioles game that evening, and we had a really lovely time together.

We also marked the occasion by buying Orioles hats and fessing up to the fact that for once, we were going to Camden Yards to root for the home team rather than going decked in our Red Sox gear to cheer for the visitors. (mind you, this is only because they happened to be playing the Detroit Tigers - I will still root for the Sox when they come to town!).

Happy times!

rhubarb madness

So for the last few weeks of our winter buyer's coop, we received what many people eating locally and seasonally are all about (or were all about a few weeks ago) lately... rhubarb! I love rhubarb. I love that it's a vegetable which is used almost entirely to make sweet desserty things, and I love it even more due to it's crazy tartness... I am a sucker for sour! There are some purists who say it deserves to hold it's own and wouldn't dare pair it with berries- but I am not so strict, so the first thing that I did was make a strawberry-rhubarb crisp. It was just heavenly, and of course - oh so simple. Since it was the first recipe of the season, I just wanted something simple and basic, so I googled for a recipe. I would usually do a food blog search for something more interesting, but I really wanted just the basics - so I took the first decent recipe from cooks.com, scribbled down the ingredients on a post-it (our printer hasn't been working), and made up my own measurements once I went up to the kitchen... because it was a crisp, not rocket science - right?

Well obviously I forgot about this blog. If I had remembered such things, I would want to share the recipe with everyone and show a picture, right? I was too focused on the food. Knowing that the crisp would pair perfectly with the peach ginger-snap cookie ice cream I had made a few weeks back and was just waiting to be eaten all melty on top of a hot fresh crisp! So I threw out the post-it, and took zero pictures. Not a responsible blogger at all, but my tummy was happy indeed.

Thank you Amy!

One of the things that happened while "I was away" (from blogging), was the receiving of a lovely little package from one Mrs. Amy I. Yummy little shortbread cookies with accompanying homemade blackberry jam. All with cute little labels on everything.

I just had to take this picture to share with you all - since, not only did I get the package and immediately enjoy a cookie... but also, I was wearing an outfit that made me think of Amy and her love of bright bold rainbow-ee colors. Quite lovely, indeed!

Uhg.. how pathetic!

When I jumped back on the blog band-wagon I promised myself that I would post at least once a week. Unfortunately, I quickly fell behind on many other life tasks and found blogging at the top of that list. With spending many hours at work on the computer, I tend to avoid it at home... which makes it difficult to get posts written, right?

Oh well. Things happen. Life is more important. I never stopped doing all the fun things I should be writing about, I just stopped writing. So here are a few tidbits to get caught up, and then on we go. Our CSA starts next week, so I'd better get back into the swing of things so you don't miss out on a single meal!

Right after I left off I went to the beach for a friend's bachelorette weekend. Good times!

We planted a bit of a garden on our back deck:

And I ran another half-marathon.

Did I mention we already have veggies growing?!?!

We have freezer issues.

So lately I've had some much-needed time around the house. Among other things, I have organized and unpacked the kitchen (it's sad that we've been here since December...), changed the sheets and flipped the mattress, made some inferno-hot soup that won't make it to this blog since it was such a disaster, spent the entirety of an afternoon lounging in the sun on the back porch and finished unpacking all our books in the living room. I also slept in.

And then this past Sunday I addressed the freezer.

We have freezer issues. Like, we hoard food. We have piles of food in our freezer and yet never seem to eat it. Our pantry is almost as bad, but not quite. So I decided to go through and make a list of everything in the freezer in hopes that we could begin cooking our way out of a full freezer. Because Dave is sick of stuff falling out of the freezer when he goes to get ice, and I am sick of buying new food when we have months worth in the freezer!

Here is a partial list (I will spare you the unabridged mostly so I don't have to type it all): roasted butternut squash (pureed from last season's CSA), massive amounts of fried rice left over from a work event (it's kosher, in case you care), asian veggie soup (single serving), almond meal, sweet corn, one piece of french toast I have been eyeing lately since I can't eat it, shrimp, crabmeat, crawfish, beef bones I plan to make stock with, individually sealed tilapia, sweet italian sausage, 1 serving of homemade tomato sauce with veggies, kielbasa, swordfish (just one steak), hot dogs, ground beef (approx 1 lb), tater tots, vanilla ice cream, turkey meatballs (from Trader Joes - I love these!), and approx 4 servings of this tomato, ground turkey, potato concoction that I swear I am going to turn into a lasagna someday.

So the list is now posted on the front of the fridge and moving forward I think we need to commit to something like two meals a week using mainly freezer ingredients. Either that or I will simply ban Dave from purchasing any meat or seafood until we are out of frozen stuff. Those are the items I am most embarrassed about since it just seems excessive to have that much variety of MEAT and SEAFOOD. Really. I'd feel less silly having 6 different kinds of dried beans or three different pastas (which we also have, in the pantry...)

Any thoughts on what to make first? Gumbo comes to my mind...

News in the Kitchen: we have worms! (AKA: Distraction #3)

Hooray for worms! (both the receptionist at my office and the mail carrier that brought this package basically freaked out when they found out what was inside!)

I am so excited to announce that we are now composting our food scraps. Worms eat our garbage! I have been wanting to do this ever since last summer when I visited a friend with worms under her sink, but finally got everything together to make it happen. I put together a workshop through work for others to make their own bins, and as a result made one for ourselves. Very exciting, indeed.

Updates of their progress will follow - but after approx. 2 weeks, I am already seeing compost being produced! Yippee! Those red wigglers are very good at their job. However, we have realized that with the winter buyers co-op currently and then the CSA coming up, we need a bigger bin to accommodate all our scraps. Currently there are lots of orange peels and egg shells and coffee grounds; but also tons of carrot and parsnip peels. I just feel like I'm overwhelming the worms. The good news is - I have already made a larger bin (at a "not-as-good-as-ours" workshop I went to in order to research for ours), and all I have to do is assemble everything. This is scheduled for completion Wednesday (tomorrow).