Comments on: 7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 30)

By: Angie

Angie — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:59:00 +0000

Oh my — I laughed out loud about the Yale diploma! Bwahahaha!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:21:00 +0000

About the CSA: My husband and I get a box of organic produce, every Friday. It isn’t always local (you can’t get grapefruit from Ottawa!), but the company tries to make it as local as possible.
Downside: I do end up wasting some of this precious stuff. It’s a matter of discipline, though. I can check by Tuesday what’s going to be in our organics box, and then I should plan meals around those in-coming foods. So, if you can do that, it’s a wonderful idea. It’s not cheap, however, for us, because we are receiving organic produce. But we love the idea and shall keep it up as long as we can.

By: Anna

Anna — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:16:00 +0000

After looking through various of the 7 Quick Takes links, I’ve noticed a very definite trend. They’re ALL women. Ok, I did find one single lone guy there, and maybe there’s another one somewhere hiding. And maybe it’s not THAT interesting or surprising that a stay-at-home mom would have mostly women reading her blog and participating in 7QTF, but still. There’s a lot of variety among all those women; married, single, with children and without, all over the country. Why not more guys too?

Just a randomly curious fact.

By: Lana

Lana — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:22:00 +0000

#6: Awww…you poor thing. That is just so mean of cartoonists to do that.
#7: how do you do this? I try and try and have decided that even Orthodox Jewish women (who plan ahead, I mean) rarely get to really rest on the Sabbath. I mean, the poo on the bedsheets really needs to be changed even if the laundry can wait, right?

By: annef

annef — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:04:00 +0000

Hi Jennifer-
Sorry to be chiming in late, but wanted to comment on your CSA question. We've been members of one for about 5 years on and off, and it took me a while to figure out how to consume all the veggies (or, at least, most of the veggies). When i got my mind around two important concepts, we did better:
1. you don't necessarily need to identify it to eat it.
2.when in doubt, cut it up and sautee it in olive oil!
good luck!!
anne

By: Charlotte

Charlotte — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:25:00 +0000

I’ve found that when I observe the Sabbath, my workdays are more restful. Just started a fabulous new book on the topic.

Also–we’ve been members of a csa in the past. I enjoyed the variety. Definitely more work. Handling my plethora of fresh veggies inspired my love of making soup.

By: Lynn

Lynn — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:26:00 +0000

To banana and any others who get broccoli–if you soak the heads in water with either vinegar or salt in it (strong enough that you can really taste it) the little bugs and worms will let go in self-defense and float to the top or sink to the bottom. If you have a particularly buggy head for some reason, break it into big florets with your hands. 15 minutes soaking and a quick swish and they are ready to go!

By: Karen

Karen — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:09:00 +0000

We did a CSA last year and split both the cost and the veg with my inlaws – mostly b/c my kids aren’t big veggie eaters. They devour the fruit and stare at salad. Splitting it with my inlaws created the perfect amount of food – 2 adults in each household, one big kid here and two little kids here – no kids with them. The food tasted so good and the kids enjoyed picking it up with me.

By: Elizabeth Mahlou

Elizabeth Mahlou — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 07:20:00 +0000

Your story about the Yale diploma made me laugh and brought back a funny memory (funny now, not then!). When I enrolled at Pushkin Institute to finish my PhD there, the Ministry of Education of Russian would not accept my master’s degree diploma from Penn State University because it was in English. The ministry insisted that all American diplomas are always in Latin! (I guess they had only ever worked with the ivies.) They would not even accept a copy with a pastille and notarized. It took several phone calls and emails from the registrar at Penn State to one of the ministers in Russia to convince the ministry that an American diploma in English was legitimate! So, hang onto that Yale diploma in Latin! Apparently, for other countries it’s the only true American (!) thing.

By: Banana

Banana — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:42:00 +0000

Hi, we did the CSA, and it was really good. I will be up front here and say I was glad to stop it, but I was really glad we gave it a try.

We would pick up our box at local pick-up spot. Our box was for 1-2 people, but that meant about 13 fruits/veggies, so it was more than enough for us (2 adults,2 toddlers). The produce was usually picked the same day we got it. This was great. Not so great was that they often had bugs (it was organic)and dirt on them, so when I brought the box home I would spend about 1-2 hours cleaning all the produce. Fill sink with ice cold water, soak, scrub, rinse, dry, chop, and bag. Some of the things like broccoli I just had to throw away because you can’t get the bugs out of the florets. Other foods were great and needed no cleaning like mandarin oranges! I called the college farm were we were getting the produce but it never really got better. I was also 8mo pregnant, so it was really hard on me to stand at the sink for two hours after putting the kids to bed! We stopped getting the boxes after the 10 weeks was up.
On the bright side it did make us eat, not only more veggies, but also veggies that we would never have picked out of the store. On Sunday I would receive a news letter telling me what was going to be in the box for that week and I would make a meal plan around this. This made it a lot easier to use all the produce. Check out allrecipes.com if you need ideas for strange veggies I never had any veggies go bad because if I could not use them up in a meal I would steam them in the microwave, puree them in the food processor, then freeze them in ice cube trays (each cube is 1oz or 2tbsp). I would put all the cubes in a gallon ziplock in the freezer and then add them to things like soup or anything else I could think to “hide” some veggies in.
Hope that’s a help!