4 Weeks at a Time

As I left work today, I had one sole concern: what to do with spinach. I had not gone to the grocery store at lunch to buy feta or ricotta cheese, so that spinach triangles or cannelloni were out. In fact, as far as I could tell, for most recipes that used whacking great loads of spinach, I was missing the key ingredient that made it appetizing.

At the back of my mind, I was mulling my squash. I already knew it was destined for soup - predestined almost. There was no way, I was going to eat an entire acorn squash by myself. And it had had the audacity to be a large one. I was unsure if I should roast it before turning it into soup or if I could get away with boiling it. I had an uneasy feeling that roasting it would give the soup-to-be more flavour.

Wednesdays have become a new day of panic. For on Thursday, I can get my basket for the next week. After my utter inability to find non-rotten fruits and vegetables that would last an appropriate amount of time before becoming rotten that looked mildly edible at my local grocery store, I had taken the plunge and joined a local organic fruits and vegetable club at a local greengrocer. The store is a greengrocer in every sense of the word. It's small, feels slightly like a step back in time and it's the only place I've ever been in that received an order of edible flowers. They do fruits and vegetables.

I was iffy on the organic portion. Organic is a nice fuzzy term that means a lot of different things. The only thing various definitions have in common is a higher price than for normal fruits and vegetables. I had reached the stage though where I was willing to pay a slight premium for something that I would actually eat.

When I went to pick up my first basket, I knew that this was going to be better. I had my fruit presented and explained to me. I was instructed on how to store my lettuce.

So far I have had grapefruit - both normal and breakfast (still not sure what the difference is), blood oranges, mango, plums, mandarin oranges (the best I've ever had), more cauliflower than I knew what to do with, many different types of apples and pears (I know that I don't like Gala or Ambrosia apples. I do like Red Delicious. I'm still working on the difference between a red, green or Bartlett pear.), golden beets (you cook them like the red ones which didn't help me at all!), tomatoes (even out of season organic tomatoes are tasteless and not ripe), baby baking potatoes (incredibly cute), and a whole bunch more.

The club is simple. You pay in advance for four weeks. Every week you get a basket of fruits and vegetables. You don't say what you would like this week. The store tells you what you are getting. You can look it up online on Wednesdays. This leads to the Wednesday panic. You know what you have left in your fridge and now you can see what else is about to descend on you.

I'm trying to be somewhat systematic. On Wednesday, I see what is coming and how well it goes with what I have. If it would mesh well with what is coming, then I won't make a concentrated effort to get rid of it. If it doesn't go with what's coming, then I try and figure out how to use up what I've already got.

Hence, my concentration on using up spinach and squash. My new problem is the discovery that I have a cauliflower and fresh green beans in my fridge. Who knew? They were under the spinach. Oh yeah, that's the other problem. Storage. There just is simply not enough space in the crisper for everything I currently have. And more is coming . . . .