Art of the Odd

Last night, I just flat forgot to post. So I’m backdating another entry. (Is it cheating if I admit I’m doing it?)

How’d I forget? Um… Well, after my lesson with Amara, I picked NovySan up from work, we took the rental car back, then we picked up a friend of Ben’s who’s vacationing in Santa Monica and took him to dinner at Lula. (Which isn’t as good as Finn’s, but I did like my chile relleno. And the sexy matador pinups in the bar are a definite plus.) So, by the time we got home, I was fried, and just flat forgot. (And after thinking to myself, “I’ll have to post when I get home,” too.)

After driving to Wyoming and back between Tuesday evening and this morning, with too-brief stops at both parents’ houses and one restless night with an aggressively affectionate cat, it was nice to take a long nap this morning, followed by a late lunch at Finn McCool’s and hours just hanging out on the couch. (Okay, so I’m working while hanging out on the couch, but thank goodness I’m not driving.)

I’m at my mother’s desk, looking at my 8th-grade picture and my friend Thessaly’s business card. There’s a pecan pie in the oven (my mother makes amazing pecan pie — I almost won’t eat anyone else’s), there’ll be brisket soon, and I’m going to go upstairs and get a bit more whiskey.

NovySan and I subscribe to an organic fruit-and-vegetable delivery service. Every Tuesday morning, a big box of organic produce shows up on our doorstep, delivered by a tall, attractive man with a near-black ponytail down past his waist. I’ve never had a conversation with him; by the time I get outside to retrieve the box, he’s closing up his truck and on his way to his next delivery. Sometimes I yell “Thank you.”

Anyway, this has increased our consumption of fruits and vegetables, introduced us to varieties we might not have tried otherwise, and often forced us to get creative, since you can only eat steamed cauliflower so many times in a month before you begin to despise the very look of it. (This is where recipe sites are a lifesaver. My favorite is still the advanced recipe finder at Cooking Light — which also searches Sunset and a few other magazines. It’s not only searchable by ingredient, but also by cuisine and type of dish — so when I want a recipe that incorporates grapes and isn’t a dessert, I can find one.) But sometimes, the produce starts to pile up, and the next thing you know, there are three bunches of yellowing collard greens smothering a bundle of sad, soggy carrots in the crisper drawer, and you sigh deeply, toss the whole mess into the compost bin, and berate yourself for wasting food and money.

Last week, I made a decision. From now on, I’ll check the produce in when it arrives, and make note of how much of what thing we received, and when we need to use it by. And to keep track of all this, I’ve made… A spreadsheet. Specifically, a Google spreadsheet, which I’ve shared with NovySan, so we’ll both know just how many acorn squashes we’ve got, and when we need to use them by. (Another site suggestion — The World’s Healthiest Foods has tips on how to store various foods, tells you how long you can keep them, and has great nutritional-data graphics. Of course, just Googling the particular food you’re interested in works, too. Except with things like onions and potatoes, whose use-by date is designated in my spreadsheet as “whenever,” since those seem to keep until… Well, until they go bad, really.)

I feel so organized.

…to add to my sadly neglected “Food I Have Loved” set at Flickr. (It’s not that I haven’t loved any food since NovySan made those kebabs; it’s just that I haven’t gotten any decent pictures of any other beloved foods.) Dinner was amazing, and very, very simple. I made the suggestion; NovySan made it happen. Polenta (made from an instant mix I found at Whole Foods, rather than the polenta in a tube we normally get — it has a much nicer texture than the stuff in a tube, and I’ll be getting more very soon), topped with green onions, bell pepper and chard sauteed in garlic and olive oil, and topped with freshly grated pecorino. Pretty, healthy, and seriously one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.