Adventures in Freshness

Recently N and I started getting a produce delivery service from New Roots Organics. We'd been talking about eating better, eating more healthily. Her acupuncturist talked about this service...we thought it sounded like a cool and easy way for us to increase our fresh food intake, so we decided to go for it.

This is how it works. We get a bin of veggies and fruits every two weeks. Fresh, organic produce, as much locally grown as possible, but supplemented by organics from California if the local season is light. For example, our first bin was almost all from California because the spring growing season was so cold for so long.

This week's bin contained, among other things, local lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, broccoli, green beans, summer squash, a Walla Walla sweet onion, nectarines, a cantaloupe...lots of gorgeous produce.

We're really loving the incredible summer bounty we're receiving right now. It brings back dreams of childhood summers spent with homemade ice cream, just-picked berries, eating myself sick on bing cherries, shucking sweet corn on the back porch or snapping green beans in the living room. Things we remember being excited to eat. Things we're still excited to eat.

Tonight we enjoyed some incredibly tasty treats that were direct results of our organic bins. We had some homemade avocado ice cream with a pluot (a cross between a plum and an apricot) that had been sauteed in butter and brown sugar. Dense, creamy ice cream with the fresh taste of avocados covered in sweet, tangy, warm plouts.

Of course, we don't really choose what we get in the bin. It's what's fresh now. And sometimes, that's not so exciting. Getting these bins is going to force us to eat some things we wouldn't otherwise eat. Like beets. We got beets in the bin, too. I don't like beets. N likes them roasted...little yellow and red baby beets. But these are the big, purple monster beets of my childhood nightmares. I live in fear, wondering what we're going to do with them.

We think we're going to grill them...we found some cool recipes on the internet. Most of the recipes we found said that beets were fantastic paired with goat cheese. So tomorrow we're going to grill beets and eat them with goat cheese.

Maybe, just maybe, my nightmarish fear of beets will depart after the grilling experiment. But if it doesn't, I still have a one pound bag of bing cherries in the fridge. I don't have a back porch, but I still might be able to eat myself sick. :o)