The Box

This year for the first time I signed up with a farmer in my area to receive a box of organic produce once a week. My friend and I decided to go halvsies on it, figuring that neither of us could use the whole box in a week (and to tell you the truth, I have a hard time using half the box). So for the entire summer it's been like Christmas once a week when we get the box... we open it up, look inside and marvel at all the produce. Generally we get kale, swiss chard and beets every week. Plus whatever else is in season: leeks, green onions, red onions, garlic, cabbage, carrots (mmmm... fresh carrots are the BEST!!), squash, and the list goes on. One thing that has been included a lot is dandelion... I swear that I tried my best to figure out what to do with it, even tried it in a soup, but I just don't like it. So it's the one thing that goes from the box to the compost every week. I wasn't quite sure what to think when I pulled this out...





Well actually, I thought a few things:

1. What the heck is it? (then determined it was a parsnip)
2. Why would the farmer send this out to one of his customers... heck if my farm produced it, I would keep it top secret :-o
3. Maybe I can make vegan octopus salad with it?



Still haven't decided what to do with it, so it's resting comfortably in my fridge right now. I'll be sure do a follow-up blog about what became of it.



I think we're coming to the end of our run with the box (as it's all grown on an organic farm closeby, so there's nothing really available over the winter). I have to say, I'll miss it a lot, but it will give me another thing to look forward to next spring.



Changing topics, today I went out with my friend (same friend I share the box with, I'll call her T2 for the sake of this blog) for an 18k run. It was cold this morning, got down to 5 degrees celcius last night, so I pulled out the tights, jacket and gloves (oh what a sad day when you pull out the gloves). We took a somewhat new route - somewhat new because we ride our bikes on this route quite often, but we have never run it. And it was a totally different experience (aside from the obvious differences of biking vs running). There were so many things that I noticed that I have never seen while on my bike... houses, ponds, fields etc. The run turned out to be entirely enjoyable, and partway through I even took off the gloves ;o)


T.