This year we joined the Clinton Hill CSA. We've been been splitting the CSA with a friend in the neighborhood, but she's been out of town the past few weeks so we've been up to our ears in veggies. I love it though because I've been forced to experiment with foods I would never buy on my own. There was mashed turnips (mixed with potatoes since there wasn't quite enough turnips), Spinach Tart with swiss chard substituted for the spinach, Zucchini and Squash Latkes, Zucchini Tart, with squash substituted for zucchini, Cucumber Soup, and Pasta w. Kale and Prosciutto, and of course salad. And that's all in the past week and a a half. And considering we've only been home for dinner about half those nights, you can say we've almost gone vegetarian. In fact, the bacon in the pasta last night was pretty much the only meat we've cooked in a while. I love being challenged, so its a lot of fun.

One thing that's a bit weird though is the farmer who runs our CSA is nice enough to write a newsletter each week including recipes, but the recipes aren't always for this week's food. Like a few weeks ago, all the recipes were for kohlrabi, but we just got the kohlrabi last week (though I just figured out what it was today). And the week with all the swiss chard recipes came a week after the swiss chard.

Unfortunately, I think we'll run behind our veggie stock next week since we're heading down to Bermuda for a short break on Friday to celebrate our anniversary (2 years!). At least we'll have a good salad to look forward to when we get home!

I like this fireworks picture even though its blurry

I haven't been inspired to blog much lately, especially when much of my time feels like its just working, eating and sleeping (and the past few days, sweating). However, I did see Sicko a few weeks ago and it definitely got to me. The fact that our health care system is based almost completely around how to get the biggest profits for corporations has always bothered me, but seeing this movie enraged me even more. True, its completely biased, and you have to take a lot of it with a grain of salt, but Fresh Air's interview with Jonathan Oberlander, a professor in the health care field, points out how spot it really is at parts.

What really comes out of the movie is that people in the US have a totally different outlook on government and society than pretty much every other country in the world. I think Michael Moore's best point is that if our house catches on fire, the fire department isn't going to check and see if you have insurance before agreeing to put out the fire, but if you get burned in that fire, there's a decent chance you might not get treated if you don't have insurance. Or you might have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for that treatment. Oh yeah, and the pharmaceutical companies run our government.