I would say that not a lot has been happening around here, but that would be disingenuous. Plenty has. The middle digit of my weight has gone down again, I’ve started NaNoWriMo (sort of … writing from a different character’s perspective for 50,000 words), and I am finally out from under the tyranny of the CSA.
That sounds so spoiled — a first-world, white-people problem, if you will — but that was just too much food for two people. Really, unless you’re vegetarian or it’s a bad year, it’s probably too much food for a family of four. Also, there was way too much squash. With the exception of the pattypan squash recipe I got from Lesley, where Stephen thought they were diced potatoes, there was no getting him to help me eat all the squash.
If I never see a squash again in my life, it’ll be too soon.
Not to mention I didn’t already know how to prepare a good 60% of each share and, as my husband is colorblind, the responsibility for knowing whether something is “done” falls squarely and entirely on me. We don’t have a yard, so composting the unused organic matter became too much of a challenge. We don’t have room for a deep freezer and I’m pretty sure that, if I tried home canning, I’d give us botulism. Or worse, give botulism to someone I’d given home-canned veggies.
Belonging to a CSA wasn’t a complete waste. I have a better sense of what’s in season when, and I’ve been introduced to some new vegetables, and next year I’ll be able to dash over to the Farmers’ Market and pick up only what we’ll actually eat. (Insert pithy remark here: Silver lining! Learning experience! Et cetera.)
But that’s not all! Today I went to a lunch and learn where I was trained on the new Hands on Nashville portal for volunteer leaders. I had a difficult time finding the conference room – it was on a different floor of Cummins Station, outside of their office suite, and there wasn’t a number on the door – but I was sort of knocked back when the woman running the training greeted me by name. I went to lunch with her in April to talk about some of the issues I’d encountered as a volunteer leader and we’ve e-mailed back and forth a number of times, but still I was surprised, like a small child playing peek-a-boo or hide and seek baffled at an adult’s deftness in seeing her.
Lots to unpack there, for sure. But I have time, now that I don’t have to spend hours every Sunday scouring the internet to figure out what’s in my share and how to prepare it.