The Beet Goes On

This is surreal.  It is noon, and I am sitting down, in my house, at my computer, eating lunch.  And I am all alone.

Jeff and Ree are out running errands to get ready for the soccer tournament Jeff's team is playing in this weekend.  The boys are napping.  And having already put in my 40 hours for the week, I am home from work.  This is nice.

While things are quiet, I have two goals (well, four if you also count eating and typing).  To finally put pictures in the collage frames we got for Christmas (We have the pictures and the frames, and they are in a bag together.  Yet somehow the pictures have refused to jump in the frames.  This is annoying.  I expect more out of my prints.) and to cook.  Actually, to cook a lot.

Back in March, I had a realization.  We go through a ton of food.  In the era before children, and even when Ree was little, I would cook big, healthy meals on the weekends, and we would eat the leftovers during the week.  So one weekend in March I cooked three big meals a day, from Friday - Sunday.  By Monday night, all that was left were the dirty dishes in the sink.  The food was all gone.  So in order to avoid another trip to the grocery store, we got creative.  One day that week, the kids ate a loaf of bread.  Yes, the entire loaf.  Of big, fat multi-grain slices.  They had toast and grilled cheese sandwiches and French toast for dinner.  The next day they ate a box of cereal; a can of refried beans; and all the lunch meat, cheese, fruit in the house.  We regularly go through close to 3 gallons of milk a week.  The kids each think a cantaloupe is an individual-sized fruit.  Some people worry about college costs.  We don't.  There are so many options, that if our kids are even college bound (and let's face it, right now the boys really like eating boogers and rocks.  They aren't exactly screaming Harvard Class of 2030.) they will find a way to go.  Scholarships, loans, GI Bill, free tuition depending on where I'm working.  It'll be fine.  What we worry about is feeding them as teenagers.  Holy cow!

So I decided to act.  Some people have personal trainers.  Others have personal chefs.  To deal with our insane need for food, I decided to enlist a personal farmer.  Seriously.  Well, sorta.  We've joined a CSA for this summer.  For the uninitiated, which would be us right up until this year, "CSA" stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  When you join a CSA, you pay farmers up front for a share of their crops for the year.  In return, you get boxes of food throughout the summer.  It's nice for farmers because they can focus their efforts on farming rather than on marketing and trying to sell their food throughout the season, and it's nice for consumers because we get (depending on the CSA) chemical-free, locally grown produce at a great price.

Yesterday we got our first of 10 boxes of produce from Jones Family Farm.  I had looked at the pictures of all the yummy boxes from last season, but I hadn't really thought it through.  We live in North Carolina, and we had a cold winter, and it's only May.  Yesterday we got winter veggies.  Lots of winter veggies.  I have two huge bags of salad mix, some greens (I think they're turnip greens), beets, and A LOT of turnips.  Like a few pounds of them.  I have no idea what you do with a turnip.  Add them to stews, I think.  So I will be learning.  Quickly.  This is kinda exciting.  I'll keep everyone posted on the results. (Because I know you are fascinated!  This is a train wreck just waiting to happen!)  I get to be my own little Iron Chef.  If the boys don't wake up first.