Summer Food is here!

Unfortunately I haven't taken any pictures to go with this post, but I wanted to write about some new exciting food we've been eating since summer started.

We changed CSA's this year to the Lawrence one (http://www.groundworklawrence.org/programs/CSA%202008%20Nwsltr1.pdf) and we have been very pleased. We just got a bit overwhelmed last year with all the leafy greens and our hearts ached for zucchini, carrots, tomatoes, corn, and all that kind of stuff. We have not been disappointed by our 3 weeks so far of shares from Farmer Dave. We've gotten green leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, green peppers, corn, and collard greens.

I've decided to change my cooking night to Thursdays so I can cook every week from the farm share, supplemented by what I get at the Lawrence Farmers Market on Wednesdays. The week before last I made salad with romaine lettuce and home-made croutons; a plate of fresh cucumbers and tomato slices with fresh basil and olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette; corn on the cob, and sauteed summer squash and zucchini with cheese on top (http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2007/06/cheesy-zucchini-with-garlic-and-parsley.html). And what a lovely dinner it was. I wish I had taken pictures. I'll work on that in the weeks to come :-)

Also, we got collard greens this week so I decided to eat them for lunch Thursday. Having never made them in my life, I looked up some recipes and made a great lunch: I made the stems following this recipe using swiss chard stems: http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/02/baked-swiss-chard-stems-recipe-with.html and I made the leaves using this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/SAUTEED-COLLARD-GREENS-15805. The stems were interesting, but I enjoyed them and the greens were really good. Ah, wouldn't my mother be proud of how I'm learning to cook... I must say, cooking from scratch sure does take a lot of time though! But I think my body will thank me in the future.

Now I just have to learn how to can and freeze this stuff so I can cook like this in the long New England Winter....

Parking Fixed (at least for the warmer months)

Ah, perseverance does pay off. You all may have forgotten, but quite a long time ago I posted about our parking woes here our our street. I mentioned the multiple tickets, limited parking, switching sides, and our quest to change an ordinance. And here we are, 2 years after we initially had a nieghborcircle and determined this to be an issue and we FINALLY got our street removed from the ordinance (which wasn't even actually on the ordinance, but that's another story). Anyway, we can now park on both sides EVERY night! Hooray! And no, the street does not seem any dirtier than it was when we moved everynight for "street sweeping".

Now we still have to do the every night switch thing in the winter (Dec 15th-March 15th), but that is city wide and will be a whole battle of its own; which we do intend to fight (not sure why I should park one side when it's NOT SNOWING!).

But for now, we will celebrate and park on both sides.