CSA week 1, part 2: spring garlic

 

See that weird looking thing with the roots in front of this picture? That’s spring garlic, sometimes called green garlic. It’s basically garlic that is picked early, and it isn’t as strong as regular garlic. I had no idea what to do with it, so, Pinterest to the rescue!

We tried a recipe called Green Garlic Fettuccine, except we used spaghetti. It wasn’t bad, although I kept eating pieces of garlic “skin” that I didn’t like. I did peel the garlic, but it probably has that all through the bulb, or whatever you call garlic.

 

Anyway, the consensus was we would cook this recipe again!

Stay tuned to see what we get next!

 

CSA week 1: radishes, spinach, and pasta, among other things

Geoff and I have been talking about doing a CSA since the first summer we were married, and it never really worked out. This year, however, a CSA share came up with a drop-off location at Geoff’s work. So, we signed up!

I’m a terrible vegetable eater. If I had my way, I’d never eat my veggies and if I did, it would be broccoli. Every night. So this is perfect for me because it gives me a chance to get out of my veggie-comfort zone. I decided it would be fun to blog about it. The CSA is 20 weeks, so I can’t guarantee that I’ll blog about it every week, nor do you want me to, I’m sure. I figured it would be interesting to talk about the recipes we try and the things we get in the box.

This week we got:

Lettuce
Baby spinach
Radishes
Spring garlic
Strawberries
Spring onions
Fresh pasta (1 pound of wheat spaghetti)

We decided to do the pasta add-on because we love pasta and figured fresh pasta would be fun to try.

Right away I wrapped the lettuce and spinach in paper towels and put them in a bag in the fridge. This seems to have kept them fresh, thank goodness. I have trouble with eating a whole head of lettuce, despite my best efforts so hopefully this keeps it fresh. The strawberries we ate right away because, yum! They were so red and delicious, I was sad that we only had a small box! Oh well, hopefully we’ll get more.

I’ve never had radishes or spring onions (which are basically just onions that are pulled early in the season, I guess) and I’d never heard of spring garlic, so I did some Pinterest-ing!

I pinned a few things, and we tried this recipe for the radishes and onions. I don’t normally like onions and was surprised that these really did taste sweet! The radishes weren’t bad either. All in all, we really liked this recipe, and it was easy. The lemon really made a difference, so if you make it, don’t forget that part. We used half the fresh spaghetti and I totally didn’t take any pictures.

To use some of the spinach and an apple, we made this salad. Um, delicious. We left out the almonds because we didn’t have any, and I’d honestly take it to work if the apple wouldn’t brown by the time I ate it. Hmm, maybe I will still try. Anyway, no pictures of that either because this idea only came to me recently.

Since this post is getting long, I’ll save the spring garlic recipe for another day. Stay tuned.

The post you’ve seen before

I feel like I read this post every few months. The one where a blogger admits that they’ve started running. That they didn’t realize it could actually be fun. That a few months ago they could only run 30 seconds at a time, and that was rough, and now they’re running a 5K.

Now it’s my turn.

On April 17 I went for a walk outside. Geoff was at school and I didn’t have the energy to get into the car and drive down to the gym, so I went for a walk. This was two days after the Boston Marathon bombings, mind. Something that hit home like no other recent disaster, because my dad was at mile 24.2. I have no idea if that’s what prompted my random, I think I’ll try to run a little bit idea, but that’s what I did.

The next day I started the C25K program. I cannot recommend it enough for anyone who literally wants to go from walking to running in a few months. For that person who thinks you can’t do it? You actually can, with this program. The first week I ran for 30 seconds and walked for a minute. That wasn’t bad. Then I started running for a minute at a time. OK, getting tougher. Last week I ran for 15 minutes straight. On June 8 I ran my first 5K.

Here’s the cliche part of the post. If you’d told me at the beginning of April that I’d run a 5K in 2 month’s time, I’d have laughed in your face. I’d have told you I am not a runner, I have no desire to run, and that if you saw me running you better run too, because clearly something’s coming after me.

Am I a runner now? Can I call myself a runner? With one 5K under my belt and another planned for the Fourth of July, I think I can finally call myself a runner. I have a PR, I have a goal, and I have a plan. Will I be running a half or full marathon any time soon? Probably not. At this point the idea of running for 3-4+ hours straight really isn’t that attractive, but I’ll no longer laugh in your face if you suggest it.

For now, I’m enjoying my shorter runs, and the accomplished feeling that comes with achieving a goal that used to seem unattainable.

 

That time I was famous

I recently discovered Buzzfeed. First of all, best website ever. I could lose myself in the funny articles. (I definitely don’t read it for actual news because, let’s be honest, it’s not a real journalistic website and people shouldn’t treat it as such.)

Anyway, the other day, when I called Geoff on my way home from work, he told me I was on Buzzfeed. Um, what.

It’s true. This article, which I hadn’t yet read, features my keys. That’s right, “Get ahold of a gym keychain”? My keys.

My favorite part is that I actually do go to the gym and use that keychain!

Sadly, though they linked to my old blog (thanks for the source!) I have yet to become blog-famous. At least I’m Buzzfeed-famous.