Fun with Produce!

Monday afternoon I picked up our second delivery of our CSA produce. Here is a photo of what we got this week.

From the top left, we have field greens, kale, rhubarb, garlic scapes, a head of lettuce, strawberries and asparagus.

We have eaten more asparagus in the past 2 weeks than in any other time in our lives! Corey helped us discover that when we grill the asparagus it tasted a bit like whatever we last cooked on the grill (burgers, steak, etc.)! Corey and Jim also discovered that asparagus can be very useful when trying to keep the baked beans from getting all over the rest of the food on the plate!

I had to do some research to see how I could use the kale and I came across a Four Cheese and Kale pizza recipe. This looked and sounded good so that is what I made for dinner tonight. I chopped up the last 3 spears of asparagus and a few of the garlic scapes and sauteed them with the kale. This went on top of the pizza crust along with a 6-cheese Italian mix from Sargento. It was delicious and a keeper of a recipe!

This weekend I will buy/pick some more local strawberries and make a Rhubarb and Strawberry Crisp. This CSA produce share has been a wonderful gift from Tucker and Corey.

While Corey was home he pulled out the horseshoes and played a bunch of games with his friends and Jim. This first photo documents that accuracy is important and the second one shows Corey in action.

Tomorrow is Field Day at school and I think we are ready. The weather is supposed to be good and we have a good number of volunteers scheduled to come in to help. This has been a crazy week at school preparing for Field Day, going in early and staying late.

Tomorrow (June 11) is my Mom's birthday.Happy Birthday, Mom! I am so glad that most of the year we live close so that we can be an active part of each other's life. Have a good day.

Hope all is well.

Sunday Summary

Corey has been home with us since Tuesday and it has been nice to have him in the house again.

Wednesday was a beautiful weather day and Corey rode his bike over to school at the end of my day and we took my 15 mile route back home. We had a great ride together!

Jim ran in the Corporate Challenge this past Thursday night and was generally pleased with his effort. I didn't walk or run this year because that was my night to volunteer at the hospital gift shop.

Friday night Jim and I walked in our local Relay for Life, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. My school had a team for the second year and we were once again the top fundraising team! Jim and I walked 7 miles, 28 laps around the track, before leaving around 11 PM, when the rain got steady and heavy. A bunch of other teachers (young teachers!) were planning to spend the night at the track, with at least one person from our team on the track all night. Mother Nature had other plans though, and when heavy thunderstorms rolled in around 1 AM, everyone had to move into the school gym. With no weather reprieve in sight, the event was shut down at 2 AM. I did not know this however and when I returned to the track at 6 AM, my whole team was gone and only a nice pile trash remained where our tents had been! It was a great event though and a good fundraiser for a great cause. We enjoyed seeing some folks that we haven't seen in a while as well as spending some time with my teacher friends in a social setting. Here are some photos from our Relay for Life.

Yesterday we 3 took a short bike ride to Lugia's for an ice cream cone! Here is our annual photo with Corey at Lugia's!

Last night we had hoped to go to Hose 22 for dinner, having heard good things about this place. When we arrived shortly after 7 PM we were told that the wait for a table was an hour, which was more than we were willing to wait so we ended up at Capriani's in the plaza just on the other side of the O'Rourke bridge. We had a good meal. As we were driving around to find a restaurant, the clouds were very unusual, and since I usually always have my camera with me, I took their picture. Fortunately, nothing serious developed from these clouds.

We rented the movie Invictus last night and it was very good. It was about how Nelson Mandela worked to improve the national rugby team in South Africa.

This morning dawned cold and rainy, 20 degrees cooler than yesterday. I went to church because my bell choir was ringing and we played a beautiful piece with a cello.

We 3 had hoped to take another bike ride together today, but we decided to be fair weather riders and stay home! We certainly have and can ride in the rain, but prefer not to!

Corey will be going back to Syracuse tomorrow, but doesn't start his job for another week, so he may do some hiking with a friend.

There has been a major change in our front yard and that is the result of having the huge maple tree taken down. Back in January when a huge limb fell out of our neighbor's tree, falling across the road and missing me in my car by seconds, we decided to ask the town to look at our tree which was of the same age as the neighbors tree. The town took down our neighbor's tree shortly after the limb fell because the tree was starting to rot in places. The town agreed that our tree was in a similar situation and said a crew would come by and take it down. Corey awoke on Thursday morning to the chainsaw gang hard at work on the old maple. In retrospect, it may have been better if we had warned him that this might be happening!! So here is a before and after photo.

The front yard is now more open and much brighter. More light comes into the house when we have the front door open and we are thinking that we should have less leaves to rake in the fall! The town is supposed to be back to grind out the stump and then plant some grass/weed seed! Jim tried to count the rings in the stump and came with with 55!

This is Field Day week at school, with the actual event being on Friday, June 11th. If you have any influence over the weather, it would certainly be nice to have a good weather day on the 11th. I love Field Day, but it is a lot of work getting to it, but always worth it!

Hope all is well.