It's gonna be the future soon...

http://www.capeannfreshcatch.org/

Dan and I are looking for someone else who loves tasty super-fresh fish caught by local fisherman and delivered later the same day to join the Cape Ann Fresh Catch Community Supported Fishery with us. Their Cambridge dropoff site is near Dan's work, so he can pick up. Deliveries are Mondays.

Up until approximately a year ago, I would not eat fish (sushi and canned tuna excepted.) The texture and the smell both turned me off. Dan's assured me that I needed to try fresh fish. My very first meal made from the Cape Ann delivery changed my entire opinion of fish. For the entirety of last summer I actively looked forward to those Monday night fish dinners.

Respond if you're interested, please, and I'll answer questions or refer them to Dan. :)

(First off: I really like this icon, but it really DOES need to be even fatter.)

A couple months ago when contradictacat and I started getting our farm share vegetables, the lettuces were the most difficult to keep up with. Those have tapered off, but now I find myself drowning in onions. This is very strange because I LOVE onion and use it in almost everything, but I just am not cooking enough to use them up. Luckily, they last. But does anyone have any tasty onion-specific recipes or ideas for me going through these faster? (Putting them in my morning oatmeal is NOT an option.)

Yesterday (Sunday) I spent most of the daytime wandering around Porter and Harvard squares with zapf, witticaster, and bleemoo. It was an all around good time. (Even the bad parts were good. Yes this makes sense.) One of the things we did was visit Tea Zone, which is only blocks from the Pie Hole. I got some strawberry black tea and some very berry herbal tea. I'm drinking a cup of the latter right now, and it's amazing. It's like tea fruit juice. I approve wholeheartedly.

I finally got my laundry done tonight. Dragon: slain.

It's a quarter to 1am, and I'm about to take out food from the oven. Sigh. However, this dish uses up about half of the farmshare veggies that were sitting in my fridge, which means I might actually have a chance of finishing all of the vegetables from last week before picking up this week's order! That would be yet another dragon slain.

Still need to find a Boston bike map.

As a small step towards resolving the conflict within me after last weekend, today at lunch I spontaneously sang a short ode to my burrito. Being NOT Twitter, I can share the lyrics with you here:

Oh, I'm so glad I have you, burrito / you please me in such a tasty way
My stomach was growling / so I went out prowling / and saw people crowding / your cart
And now you're much closer to my heart
...my stomach.
Oh, I'm so glad I have you, burrito / you please me in such a tasty way!

Sure, it could use some tightening up, but it was spur-of-the-moment, and I'm proud of it.

Did you know that half a banana mashed in with 1.5 avocadoes and made into guacamole is really good, albeit slightly too much banana?

I have in front of me (though rapidly diminishing) a taco salad made of four corn tortillas warmed and layered around a bowl, filled with vegetarian refried beans, ground turkey/onion/garlic/taco seasoning mix, lettuce, tomato, black olives, shredded cheese, sour cream, and above-mentioned guacamole.

Om nom nom nom! I'm sad I didn't think to invite anyone over to share. But now I have leftovers!

Tonight I cooked a dinner that included mushrooms, although cooked in olive oil this year. There was a point where I opened the jar that contained the sauce I wanted to put on my food, saw fuzzy bits, and - I admit - stared at them for a bit wondering if I could somehow avoid chucking the whole thing in the trash. However, I ultimately gave in to the pressures of learning from my mistakes (did I ever actually make a post explaining the stupidity that led to that bout of illness, or is my reputation as someone to allow to cook your meals safe amongst most of you?) and did in fact throw it out.

So, in short, nothing fuzzy was involved in the cooking of tonight's dinner, and I'm on track to enjoy more of this year's Lunacon than last year, even if this year I'm only going for two days.

Note to self: next time you try making baked tofu, either cut thicker slices or bake for a shorter amount of time. While what you have created is still tasty, it is probably more accurately called tofu crispies, and might be good for breakfast as it'll probably stay crunchy, even in milk.

Just added to my juldea 101 post (which is at the top of my journal in a friends-locked post, if you didn't know):

I love Thai food. This is best described with a brief anecdote: During college, when I lived in campus housing and thus only a short walk from campus, a small Thai restaurant called Pad Thai opened along the route between my apartment and campus. Pad Thai served a lunch special for $5.01 that was rice-or-pad-thai with two choices of main dish and (I think) a spring roll. I began stopping there for lunch regularly on the way to class. Then more regularly. Then I was eating there every weekday for lunch. Then they began giving me extra options for the dishes than were usually offered, often going out of their way to make me something special, as well as giving me larger portions and things like free Thai iced tea. Then I began paying them weekly for my daily lunches (paying $25.05 on Monday.) Then they began only charging me for four days (paying $20.04 on Monday.) Then one semester I went to a first day of a new class and someone recognized me as the girl from Pad Thai. This arrangement went on for at least 8 months until I went away to Boston for the summer, and when I returned my schedule was a bit more screwy and I couldn't make it there every day again. But I still could have eaten Thai food every day, and chances are if you ever want to go out for Thai and need company, you need only but ask.

This weekend's party was hella fun, so thanks to laura47 for inviting me and ingratiating me to the people I didn't know.

We flavor-tripped! If anyone doesn't know about Miracle Fruit, you should. It's a real berry that binds to your taste buds to make sour and bitter things taste sweet. It's completely legal, non-toxic, etc etc, and these days you can buy pills of the stuff online. laura47 had several boxes shipped to her for the party, and there were trays of normally bad food that we all selected from. Some of the things I ate and their changes:

lemons tasted like the best lemon candy, sherbet lemons. I seriously put whole slices of lemon into my mouth like oranges and sucked on them, and mmm.

limes were very similar and turned into limeade-like flavors

dill pickles were ruined as they tasted like sweet&sour pickles :(

bananas tasted the same

strawberries turned into the most delicious thing ever

Babybel cheese wheels tasted like cream cheese frosting

sliced ginger was like candied ginger

Guinness turned into some kind of odd ... completely non-foul, non-beer fizzyish drink. I'm normally fine with Guinness anyway, but this was something special.

cucumbers I normally HATE, but they became a very non-offensive melon flavor

raw cranberries were so tasty I had to remind myself not to eat too many or I'd hurt my stomach

Vodka and lime juice was a sweet, tasty drink. People who drank raw vodka said it tasted like soap.

There were people taking swigs of vinegar like it was juice.

I had orange strawberry banana juice which was amazingly sweet like a kid's drink.
I know many other people tried other things, boozes and other foods, but the acids I was eating but not tasting got to my stomach and I stopped trying things for fear of feeling ill. But still! The stuff is amazing, and I can't wait to try it again. I need to try it with dark chocolate!

Um, what else. For such long nights (I got very little sleep over the weekend) there's not much to share that's not "you had to be there"... I took a (clothed) bath in the master bathroom's jacuzzi tub that has color-changing lights, and that was nice and warm and comfortable. I went on a $150 grocery run for the party. I watched people spin colored light-up poi balls. There were movies. There was a lot of chilling, sitting around chatting with people about crazy things. laura47 stressed out about her party duties and taking care of people. A guy did some awesome hand juggling with pool balls. I didn't play a single game of pool or Race for the Galaxy, which I'm still boggling about! I sat on the porch for sunrise. I bought chocolate mint Bailey's and didn't even crack it open. I watched YouTube videos and spouted memes at people. I nearly sliced the tip of my finger off cutting a loaf of bread, and still managed to take off a good disc of skin. Ow.

So all and all a good couple of days partying, a good escape and relaxation... though not a lot of sleep. Thank you laura47!!