Too Much Cooking, Not Enough Writing

What happened? Here it is, the mid-point of the calendar year. Summer is cruising along at full speed: a regular drunken boat. The sun is shining, the strawberries have begun to wane, and the summer squash is on the rise, proliferating, as summer squash does. The farmers' markets are bustling, and our farm-share boxes are getting heavier, if ever so slightly.

So why is it that I can hardly bring myself to write about all this?

Aside from the fact that it's much easier to write about the idea of food than about actual food-- perishable, transitory, and often more functional than delicious-- it would be safe to chalk this reluctance up to a lack of necessary idleness. To put it otherwise: I've been spending so much time scrambling to figure out what to do with a single summer squash, a sole bulb of kohlrabi, or a handful of pea pods, that the aftermath of an evening's dinner and cleanup finds me wiped clean- - a blank slate, fresh out of ideas.

Some of the improvisations have been successful. Some have achieved merely subsistence-level adequacy. Perhaps this, too, has been a factor. Who wants to write about (let alone remember) yet another pasta-with-greens-and garlic dish?

But summer's bounty is upon us all the same. Last week's farm share consisted of the following:

a bag of mixed lettuce
a nosegay of kale
three green onions
a crown of broccoli
a crown of cauliflower
a baggie of snap peas
a bulb of kohlrabi

As ever, the vegetables were gorgeous, albeit rendered all the more precious by their limited quantities; everything arrived clean, delicately packaged, and pristine. Once again-- we had our dear friends J. and E. in town-- we made grilled pizzas with the sautéed greens. Only this time I completely botched the pizza dough, and so at the last minute, with the toddlers fast approaching bedtime, we had to scramble to get everything ready. H. ran out to buy dough from a local pizzeria, and I hustled to get the pizzas on the table before everyone's nerves unraveled entirely.

How humbling. I now realize my error: the water I used to activate the yeast was far too hot. I'm ashamed even now to admit it: the water was nearly boiling. I'd heated it in the electric kettle, watching it approach the boiling point with a dull, innocent gaze. Instead of waking up the yeast with a warm bath, I murdered it. The dough, which never rose, sat inert and massive on the stove-top, hardening slowly into brick. Later that evening, I threw it away.

The pizzas themselves were perfectly adequate, thanks to the new dough.

Somewhat more noteworthy was a frittata we made the next day with the remaining ingredients from the farm share box: sautéed cauliflower, kohlrabi, and some leftover rice. The frittate was pleasant, especially when flanked by a bright salad of micro-greens from the local farmer's market. I was especially pleased by the kohlrabi: what pleasant little bulbs they are!

Today's farm-share brought some new developments, and I've been straining to think about how best to use it all:

a bunch of swiss chard
four bulbous green onions
crowns of broccoli and cauliflower
a summer squash
a small green pepper and one hot pepper
two heads of lettuce

Come to think of it, I ended up using much of this share in tonight's dinner, a humble fried rice dish made with one of the green onions, the yellow squash, and the single hot pepper, along with some corn, egg, and rice. Heck, that's already a substantial portion of the share.

What both excites and troubles me about the farm share is the micro-managerial impulse it awakens. Much of this, I am sure, derives from the novelty of the experience-- again, this is our first time trying out this sort of thing. But there's an intrinsic structural difference as well. Indeed, how different it is to receive a half-bushel box of produce than to wheel a cart through the supermarket-- or, for that matter, to stroll through some open-air market, following your nose.

In the latter cases, after all, you're the one doing the selecting. With a farm share, you simply open the box. Yet having the challenge of selection removed from the act of buying vegetables adds a whole new set of challenges. It also-- perversely-- adds a whole new layer of selection as well. What needs to be used first? Which elements belong together, and which remain incompatible, demanding separate dishes, separate meals?

The experience is, in the end, one of basic husbandry: how do I get these vegetables to yield one, two, or even three meals? How can I swell their ranks with rice, pasta, eggs, beans, or dough? Like a cured meat product, the vegetables have been reduced-- and thus elevated-- to the status of flavoring agent.

Vegetables, in other words, are the new bacon. Now there's something to get excited about.