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God bless federal holidays. This last week has been so insanely busy that I haven’t had any time to get stuff done—cooking, cleaning, laundry—and today is the catch-up day that I’ve been needing for ages. Last weekend was very much consumed with dealing with a sick kitty (Kesey, who is doing much better now, thank you). So a lot of what we got in week 3’s delivery has been sitting untouched in the fridge for nine days. But the beauty of vegetables directly from the farm is that they last considerably longer than grocery store produce that has been trucked in from who-knows-where. For lunch today I made a stir-fry with the Chinese cabbage and spring onions from last week’s delivery, and they were still fresh and tasty.

So this week we got some more of the same—basil, garlic scapes, salad greens—but there was a little something new—the radishes, and…kohlrabi! Is that a weird-looking vegetable, or what? We got our delivery on Wednesday, and that night we were going over to our friends’ house for dinner. Before we left I did a little quick internet research on what the heck they are and how the heck you cook them. The internets said that the bulby part is the only part you eat, so I whacked of the greens and we showed up at our friends’ house with a weird spikey purple bulb in-hand. We sliced it up and sautéed it with olive oil and some herbs, and it was delicious! I hope we get another one! I later regretted throwing the greens away. I’m sure that they could be cooked and eaten like turnip greens, but it was too late by the time I realized that.

Today I used both this week’s and last week’s basil to make more marinara and pesto, which I put in the freezer. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the garlic scapes. I think I might pass them off to a coworker who told me she wanted to try them—frankly, I’m getting a little sick of them!

Today I figured out how to back-date my blog entries, so I’m going to move all my blog posts over here from onyahisaloser. This will allow me to just take that whole she-bang down, and still be able to search for recipes and the like. It’ll be my weekend project!

Today’s CSA share has a lot in common with those we’ve seen before—garlic scapes, Chinese cabbage, baby onions, and basil. What’s new is the salad greens, cilantro plant, and the cutest little bunch of lavender. And the cameo from my cat, Navin.

I decided to shake things up a little and try something new with the garlic scapes. I took a cue from this recipe from an adorably-named blog, and made garlic scape pesto. Of course, the version I made was altered to cut way back on the fat and calories. I chopped up two scapes and blended them with 1 T each of olive oil, grated parmesan, and toasted pine nuts. I tossed it with whole wheat pasta and some sautéed mushrooms and spinach. It was really good—the scapes have a very fresh flavor that somehow manage to taste like spring. If I were to make it again, I would endeavor to chop up only the more tender parts of the scapes; the woodier bits at the ends made for some grittiness in the pesto.

Another project for the evening was to wash and trim the salad greens. I sampled each of the different greens as I was washing, and discovered this uber-delicious green called purslane. It’s crazy-delicious! It’s so flavorful—kinda citrusey and tangy and I can’t wait to eat it in a salad.

I forgot to weigh myself before I went swimming yesterday, so I’m tracking my weight a day late. I lost 0.2. Again. Given the bachelorette happy hour and dinner, bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, and wedding that happened in the last week, I shouldn’t be too bummed about a 0.2 loss. But I was kinda expecting the weight to start falling off now that I’m exercising more ambitiously than I ever have! Grrr… This week looks like a far more normal week, food-wise. Here’s hoping that I’ll see something exciting on the scale next week!

I am loving the swimming. Every other day, I’ve been getting up between 5:30 and 6:00 and heading directly to the gym (though on weekends, I do let myself sleep in a little). Sometimes on the drive there I feel groggy or achy and think to myself, “This is gonna suck,” but every time, as soon as I push off from the wall for the first time, I suddenly feel awesome. I take the first 100m really slow and make long, stretchy strokes that warm up my muscles and feel soooo good.

My routine, in case you’re curious, is to swim my mile (1650m) in 400m chunks. I swim 100m freestyle, 100m breaststroke, another 100m freestyle, then 100m backstroke.* Then I pause for one minute to drink some water, adjust my cap, and de-fog my goggles. After I do this 4 times, I swim a 50m “victory lap,” then I am done! I try to consciously alternate between focusing on speed and focusing on form, but I confess that sometimes I get lost in the music and realize that 200m have gone by and I haven’t focused on anything other than Gogol Bordello.

Within the next day or so, I should receive a package from SwimOutlet.com, which contains a kickboard, fancy anti-fog goggles, and a swim cap designed for people with lots of hair. I’m excited about all three! The cap and goggles will hopefully save me from all the adjusting and de-fogging I have to do every time I swim. And I am thinking I need the kickboard because I don’t feel like I am working my lower body enough. My arms, shoulders, and abs are surely feeling the burn of all these workouts, but I have yet to experience butt or thigh soreness.

I keep reminiscing about my childhood swimming days. For example… one day, during practice when I was about 9, Coach Scott (the “big kids” coach), pulled me out of practicing with the other kids and spent a half-hour working with me in my own lane. He took the time to show me what I was doing wrong with my freestyle strokes—the above-water stroke should be low and wide and the below-water stroke should be an s-shaped push through the water. I’d kinda just been flailing my arms in circles. That half-hour he spent with me did more to improve my swimming than countless hours of unguided practicing.

I also keep thinking of Coach Brian (one of the “little kids” coaches). He had this enormous booming voice, and when I would swim breaststroke in competition, I’d hear him booming “go” over and over, one “go” for each time my head popped out of the water. I was never an awesome swimmer, but he was always so encouraging, and I still hear him in my head.

The only downside of the whole swimming arrangement is that regularly getting up before 6:00 am is making me a pretty lame person to be around in the late evenings. I should make myself go to bed at 10:00 pm, but I’m having a hard time doing that. Instead, like a child, I whine, “no, I’m not tired, I can watch the Daily Show,” then I promptly fall asleep on the couch.

*When I described this routine to my mom, she pointed out the conspicuous absence of the butterfly. Yes, that is true, I’m holding off on it for now, because it is hard and I have always sucked at it. Maybe someday I’ll feel up to the challenge?

Since I didn’t really get to dive in to my Week One CSA share until 4 days into the week, Week Two feels like it came up pretty darn fast. Here we see a not-too-different batch of veggies from what I got last week—I got another batch of green onions, garlic scapes (yay!), and basil (but more this time! Double yay!), and the enormous Chinese cabbage is pretty similar to bok choy. New this week is the parsley, tarragon, and mustard greens.

Right away, I used the parsley and one of the green onions to make a batch of tabbouleh. I used this recipe, but also added a can of chick peas, because I think it’s wicked-yummy that way.

I was going to use the mustard greens to make this pasta recipe tonight, but I realized too late that I didn’t have enough sausage. So I instead whipped up the same chicken piccata I made a few weeks ago, but I swapped in mustard greens for the zucchini (and used a second green onion). This was tasty, but probably not the best use of the greens. The bitterness of the greens would be better complimented by something spicy-sweet, like sausage, than something acidey, like lemon sauce. Lesson learned for next time—I didn’t really have any idea what mustard greens taste like. I read a few blogs on which folks likened them to spinach. Those folks was wrong.

Tomorrow night I will commence to make more of the garlic scapes dip I made last week. It is so freaking good. Tonight I bought a bunch of carrot and celery sticks for munching, as the pita chip munching was starting to add up, points-wise. I’ll make pesto from the basil this weekend. My plan for the tarragon is to let it keep growing, and see how the cats do with having an herb in the house. As for the Chinese cabbage, I’m thinking a nutty-flavored fried brown rice for next week’s lunches, using the rest of the green onions and some Egg Beaters, but I haven’t arrived at the recipe of my dreams yet.

I still have a lot of chives left from last week. I’m thinking I’ll make a chive-y egg dish for breakfast on Sunday, but that won’t even use a quarter of what I got. Some people at work have said they’d be willing to take them off my hands, but I’d much rather find a way to use them myself. Any suggestions??

I have finally accomplished a much-needed upgrade to a web hosting service that’ll allows for WordPress! Which is a good thing. But it’ll take me a bit to get everything up and running. Check back!

PS – You can still access everything that was here before at www.onyah.com/oldsite.

The past week has been nuts. Both Steve and I were in a wedding this weekend, so we’ve been out in Middleburg for the last few days. Earlier in the week, I hosted not one but two bridal showers and had a bachelorette party night out. So much craziness!

Wednesday was the night I hosted the first shower, but it also happened to be the night of our first CSA pick-up. While I did have time to lay out the loot and take a photo of it, I didn’t have time to start cooking any of it until today. I took the time to do a little research on the best way to keep these specific items fresh (for example… bok choy should be loosely wrapped in plastic; oregano should be wrapped in a paper towel in plastic, etc.). I’m thankful that I did the research, because when we got home this afternoon and opened everything back up, it was all still fresh and green. Awesome.

With the exception of the garlic scapes, everything we got was something I had heard of and cooked before. So I had to do a little research on the garlic scapes… they’re the green shoots of the top of garlic bulbs, and they’re trimmed off in the spring. I found this very simple recipe for a White Bean and Garlic Scapes Dip, and made it this afternoon. So so so good! The garlic scapes taste exactly like I expected, like a garlicky green onion. This dip is smooth and flavorful and even more point-friendly than hummus. It makes me sad that the scapes are only available once a year!

I decided to use the bok choy and green onions to make a stir-fry recipe that I’ve made many times before (it says to use napa cabbage, but I’ve used bok choy in the past). The website reviewers were kind of lukewarm about this recipe, but I’ve always thought it was really tasty—the combo of honey and chilies is snappy and delicious. I’m making it tonight for dinner and will have the leftovers for my lunches this week.

I’ll use the basil to make this Basil Marinara on Monday night, which I’ll serve over whole wheat spaghetti with turkey meatballs. The quantity of oregano that we got is way more than we can possibly use, so I decided to take a stab at drying it out, using this very high-tech method!

In other news… the swimming has been going swimmingly. I have successfully continued to go to the gym every other day since it opened. In my last post, I said my goal was to swim a mile in 45 minutes, and I was doing that by day 4. Every time I go, I get a little faster, a little stronger, and I feel myself working harder on my form and technique. I’m loving it so much more than working out with Jillian Michaels on DVD.

Today was my first visit to the gym*, and it went as smoothly as I could’ve imagined. Our alarm clock went off at 6:00 and I was poolside by 6:20. Steve and I both went, but he didn’t join me in the pool—he elected to use the weight and cardio machines that I am still afraid of. I had hoped to swim a mile (1650 meters), but I ran out of time, and was only able to swim 1400 meters. But I guess that gives me something to aspire to! A quick check of Wikipedia shows that the fastest time for a US Women’s 1650 is 15:24. It seems reasonable for me to aspire to pull it off in thrice that.

Some observations about my gym experience:

- Before 7:00 am, the place is pretty empty. I was alone in the pool for the first half of my swim, and there was only one other person taking a shower at the same time as me. I had worried it would be crowded—I guess I didn’t need to. Let’s hope it stays this way!
- They use saline in the pool instead of chlorine. I remember thinking that it might be weird somehow, like it would smell salty or I’d be extra buoyant. But it was no different. I was swimming for 20 minutes before I even remembered that it was saline. My hair seems to appreciate it, though.
- There are TV’s everywhere. The TV’s in the locker room were playing reruns of Saved by the Bell on TBS. Not what I was expecting to see at 7:00 in the morning, but I was entertained.

We were back home from the gym in time for me to do my hair and makeup, eat breakfast AND drink coffee, and make it to the bus by 8:15. I can feel a little soreness coming on, and it just makes me so excited, and so proud of us!

* You should know that, when Steve and I refer to our gym, we pronounce it with a hard G, like Homer did in the episode of the Simpsons when he started attending an all night gym.

The scale showed a teeny little .2 loss this week, which I am OK with. I went a little nuts at a Memorial Day cookout, and ended up exceeding my points by the end of the week. But since I still saw a loss, I can say that it was worth it! Chicken wings, guacamole, cherry pie, and too much beer… mmm-mmm.

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m about to go make my lunches for this week. I’m whipping up some whole wheat pasta with roasted eggplant and tomatoes, and I got some Parmigiano-Reggiano to grate over the each portion. 1 T of it is only .5 points, and packs so much more of a flavorful punch than the low-fat Kraft crap I’ve tried in the past. Cheese is totally one of those foods that I am willing to splurge on! I’m also going to chop up a bunch of fruit, then I’ll be making this Chicken Piccata with Summer Vegetable Pasta recipe for dinner (I’m particularly excited about it—I love anything that has capers)! Yet another Sunday spent in the kitchen.

P.S. at 9:00 PM: The piccata was so good I almost died. Seriously. I will be making it again and again.