This week's supply

This week, we got... let's see...

6 tomatoes (most were small-ish ones)
a pound purslane
half a pound baby greens (ugh, I didn't have salad all last week, my sister said she'd eat it all up, and then she didn't touch it. I'll eat these greens no matter what!)
a pound carrots
6 green bell peppers
2 pound swiss chard
3 pounds cucumber
3 pounds squash
2 eggplant (and I took an extra one as well from the take a veggie, leave a veggie box)
2 napa cabbage (I left one in the take a veggie, leave a veggie box)

Also, a dozen eggs, a quart each of peaches, apricots, and blueberries.

That's nice. I like this week.

Last week's peaches were stuck in the back of the fridge and froze. I may make pancakes out of them. Or pies. What say you?

I've learned a lot this summer.

First I learned that one can eat beet greens. That was interesting, certainly.

Read an article about a farmer at the farmer's market who gets frustrated with customers who ask for the greens to be cut off their beets, but then turn around and buy chard. Sure, it makes him more money, but beet greens and chard are the same thing, and it's so wasteful! (He ought to put a sign up to that effect, really.) I understand his feelings.

Then I learned that radish greens are edible. They're a lot like kale, but not quite as strong.

That was a little disturbing. When you buy radishes in the supermarket, you usually buy them in a bag, without the greens attached at all. It would never have occurred to me that you could eat them except that that was mentioned in my new cookbook, 660 Curries (which I really recommend).

Today, I read in my CSA papers that carrots are related to parsley and that the greens are totally edible.

And now I'm pissed.

Did you know that you can eat carrot greens? Did anybody? Because I sure didn't, and given that the most common way to buy carrots is with the leaves detached, it would never, ever, in a million years have made sense to me that I was buying carrots (and radishes, and beets) without a valuable source of nutrition. Like white wheat flour, with nutrients just removed from it altogether.

Not that I particularly *want* to eat carrot greens - if they're anything like the parsley they're related to (and they sure do look the part), I'm positive I don't, in fact - but why is it that I only just now found out that it is an option? How many more things am I totally, blindly ignorant of? Things that ought to be common knowledge?

It's like finding out how easy gluemaking is, all over again. It's not about making glue, or even knowing how to make glue - it's about not even knowing I had a choice. It's like being 11 years old again, and the only school-sponsored education about my period was in fact an ad for commercial products, so other, perfectly good ideas weren't even thought of - the choice was taken away from me. It's like all sorts of these little moments built up, until I'm actually very annoyed. It's not like that, it is that.

I am not a happy Connie.

(The carrots at the CSA also came sans tops. I *am* emailing to comment on it. I'd just rip the tops off, again, parsley, ick, but then I could put them in the swap box.)