Chances are, next week I will have a beautiful and complex understanding of exactly what this thing is and how to eat it—but right now, I’m stumped!

[Edit: Thank you George!! It’s purple kohlrabi, and it sounds like it will make a delicious stir fry…!]

Oh, and by the way…

My Johnson’s Backyard Garden CSA membership is FREAKING AWESOME! I get tons of these beautiful little vegetables in a box every week, and a half dozen of good happy grass-fed eggs for Marty, and I transfer it all into my pretty rainbow bin and bring it home and then we EAT IT!

So far it’s fairly similar to Greenling, except more of my money goes to the people who grow the food, and I have the opportunity to swap veggies if there’s something in my box I’m not crazy about. (I haven’t bothered yet, because I’m having a great time learning how to eat new things, but it’s really nice to have the option!) I also don’t have to make sure to be home watching the gate like a hawk to make sure I’m there when my delivery comes, and I have a nice four hour window to pick my food up. I rather think the veggies look better from Johnson’s than Greenling’s local box; this may be because the produce takes longer to get to me with Greenling (and is out of the ground longer), but I’m not sure. I love all the pretty colored peppers and little yummy tomatoes and gorgeous white radishes. Marty says he will be using those radishes to bonk shy-guys, but I have insisted that we EAT them. Yesterday, we made delicious vegetable stew!

I’ve also discovered that since we buy almost entirely raw produce now (wow. when did that happen?) I need more crisper space! I’m not completely clear on this crisper thing, but the greens in the crispers survive the week much better than the ones in the fridge proper, so it has me wondering if i can buy some kind of extra crisper for the upper parts of the fridge. I’m going to have to read up on veggie cold storage. I don’t want to have to cook very much of it if I can avoid it (though our plans for the stew include eating some for lunch and putting it in meal-sized bags in the freezer for easy defrost & devour once we start to run out of food).

For those of you still wondering, I have to say this: We’re eating organic produce, a lot of it raw, and we’re not buying very much packaged food (plastic, glass, paper, jars & whatnot). I am almost 100% certain now that eating a diet of organic produce is less expensive than eating almost any other typical American diet, with the possible exception of the stomach-turning Walmart diet, which I would not wish on my evilest, worstest enemy. So if you’ve been complaining about organic and natural and pesticide free being too goddamn pricy… you’re depending on packaged food way too much. Or maybe meat.

Okay, now I’ve done my food-related people poking for the day. You totally owe me a zucchini for making your life better.

Stew ahoy!