Peak-Season

Have you seen this? It is cool! It claims that asparagus, collards, peas, spinach, and strawberries are all currently in season here in the Hoosier state, although the only strawberries I've seen at the farmers' market so far were $6 a carton. I'm sorry, I cannot afford to pay six dollars for strawberries at the market when I can get them for a dollar at Walmart (If I were truly ethical I would forgo strawberries altogether rather than buy them from Walmart, but that's not happening) or $2.50 at Kroger.

I'd been hoping to try my hand at preserving this summer, since I love jam so much, and I'd thought of maybe making strawberry-rhubarb preserves, since those are nifty, but when you think of how much the fruit reduces, it's clear that such a project would bankrupt me. I think instead I'll wait until July, when peaches are in season. You can make peach jam, right? I'm not sure I've ever *seen* it, but I don't see why it wouldn't work; store-bought pectin heals all wounds, right?

This entry's kind of dull, but relatives keep complaining about the dry spell

I am. So tired. I woke up this morning to the sound of someone knocking on my door, which was odd - I padded sleepily to the door in my boxers and Wolverine t-shirt and called out, "Who is it?" There was no answer but I opened the door anyway to find my building maintenance guy, here to change the filter in my furnace or something. It's kind of embarrassing to be caught sleeping until 9 by someone who has no doubt been up and working productively for hours, but what can you do.

I've been going to the gym a lot, which is good, but if there's anything duller than spending two and a half hours a week on the elliptical machine I have yet to hear of it. I know I ought to be running outside, but the elliptical gives me data, which is nice, and it's located in the same room as the weights, which is convenient. Today I worked out with free weights for the first time, following the instructions on one of the posters with the hair band bass players with brightly-colored musculature. I can bench press 20 pounds 30 times, which is deeply unimpressive but I'm afraid to do more because if I go to failure my arms will give out and I'll hit myself in the face.

Today was my weekly serving shift at the soup kitchen. Because people's assistance checks run out, we're always really busy at the end of the month - last week I think we served 187 trays. Not quite so many this week but still a very decent turnout, and not much downtime. Sometimes it's slow enough to grab a bite to eat (last week we had an AMAZING fruit salad with fresh berries and pineapple) but today there was a steady stream of patrons. I love absolutely every part of this job, from pouring coffee to mopping, but it certainly takes it out of me. The three-mile walk doesn't help, either.

My German class is still achingly dull, though yesterday we had an amusing reading passage about bears - all about how the baby bears are suckled, and then the Mama Bear (this is what it said) teaches them to fish, swim, climb, and pick berries, all the while keeping a lookout for the male bear, who would kill the Bährbabys if given the opportunity. (Is the German word for baby bear not the cutest thing ever? And how I love that irregular plural!)

Yesterday I had my German reading group, which met at the Badger's house out in the 'burbs. It is completely lovely, his house, filled with books and a big piano and an attractive tapestry. He had laid out a variety of German beers for us as well, and urged me to taste a horrid smoky one.

So that's what I've been up to. It's not much, but it's keeping me pretty busy - I don't know when I'll have time to draw the comic J.H. recently commissioned; hopefully tomorrow.

Meme: Michael Pollan's 12 Commandments

I recently read Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire, which was really good - I learned a great deal about apples, tulips, weed, and potatoes. I'm looking forward to reading his other books as well.

Michael Pollan gets a lot of press from Serious Eats, a food blog I read regularly. Today there was a link to Pollan's 12 Commandments. I have to say, some of them are pretty tough for me.

1. "Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." Grandma, you read this blog - what sorts of things do you think this means? Blue yogurt from a squeeze tube? Saffron foam? Scorpions? I have eaten only the last of these, and I stand by that decision, but on the whole I expect my grandmothers would recognize what I eat as food even if they might not enjoy it.

2. "Avoid foods containing ingredients you can't pronounce." Yeah, I violate this one, in one particular way - I eat vegan margarine. I got into the habit when I was staying with my aunt and uncle in Northern California and I just like it. I know it's wrong. Feel free to shun me. I'm also not great at prononciation in general - nicoise olives are out, I'm afraid.

3. "Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot." Except for honey - the honey buried with the Pharaohs is still technically edible.

4. "Avoid food products that carry health claims." What about oatmeal? The Quaker Oats canister sings the praises of whole grains and heart disease. But in general I agree with this one - food is neither medicine nor poison.

5. "Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle." The middle is where they keep peanut butter, jam, pasta, beans, and flour. I need those things.

6. "Better yet, buy food somewhere else: the farmers' market or CSA." This one I do.

7. "Pay more, eat less." Okay, so here's where it gets really tricky. Krista and I are, I am proud to say, on the USDA's Thrifty Food Plan (note: that link is to a PDF file). That means that this month I am supposed to spend $33.60 on my food. (It's based on age and sex.) This is the cheapest food plan the USDA has, and it's my goal to stay as close to it as possible.

8. "Eat a wide variety of species." I'm not sure what this means exactly but I don't think I'm doing it. There's not really all that much variety to be had out here. I did have bison the other day, on a pizza.

9. "Eat food from animals that eat grass." I don't buy beef, and chickens don't eat grass. Neither do lentils.

10. "Cook, and if you can, grow some of your own food." I do cook, but my apartment is too dark for even a windowsill basil plant. This makes me really sad.

11. "Eat meals and eat them only at tables." That I do.

12. "Eat deliberately, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure." This is the most important, and it can be hard - I tend to mindlessly graze, and there's never anyone to eat with, especially now that Krista's gone. But now I'm going to have a turkey burger and some baked yam fries (from a Serious Eats recipe!) and some local spinach, and I will eat it with pleasure.

Summertime

So after my very brief slacking off time (last Wednesday afternoon through this Monday, inclusive), I have begun the summer semester. I am only taking one class and, as we will not be learning how to say at any point, es ist für Babys. I really did not mean to sign up for German for Reading Knowledge, as the idea of only learning one aspect of a language strikes me as stupid and wrong. Speaking, listening, reading, writing - these are the tasks involved in learning a language. We are only learning ONE of these. What a waste of time! I don't have any burning wish to go to Germany to talk to anybody but my Tante Claudia and her family, but still. Plus it's a language-learning style that's completely alien to me. Normally when I learn a language, I memorize hundreds of vocabulary words and a few verb conjugations, then automatically pick up a sense of the grammatical structures and sentence patterns. This is what I've been doing since high school, when I learned how to learn Spanish. But all we're doing in this class is learning to recognize grammar structures and translating text. This is not how I roll. And I do not like to roll in ways other than the ways to which I am accustomed. I am not flexible that way.

On Monday I am having a dinner party. This was sort of unexpected - I had promised my beau that I'd roast him a chicken to celebrate the end of exams, and it got put off for awhile, and then he asked if we could invite this couple we sometimes socialize with, Amity and Tawrin (Amity's the one who has the splendid dinner parties) and then I suggested we make a thing of it and invite Kari and the Werewolf, too. The trouble is that my beau is the world's fussiest eater, and apart from the chicken he might not eat anything I would make. He balked at roasted potatoes, for instance, and suggested that he make mashed potatoes using his mother's recipe, instead. I feel that this is a very heavy dinner for this time of year. He also wants to make No-Bake Cookies for dessert, and I am hoping I can convince him that these are not a proper dessert for a dinner party and I will make a pie as well, or pots de creme, or something. Then he can have No-Bake Cookies and the rest of us can have something else. Feel free to chime in with suggestions!

(He also said in the invitation that there would be "drinking, maybe some smoking, maybe some games" at the party, and now I will have to tell the guests that no, there is no smoking in the apartment, please. Also that the only games we have are chess and Set - not even a deck of cards or a game of Scruples.)

Krista's mother and father and elder sister and younger brother are all here for a visit. Tomorrow they're going to go down to Chicago for the youngest sister's graduation. In the meantime I feel very out-of-place in my apartment - I've been keeping out of the way, but other people's families are so insular and take up so much space, literal and figurative. I will miss Krista over the summer but it will be exciting to have the apartment all to myself.

Upcoming plans include a Futurama marathon at someone's house tomorrow, farmer's market on Saturday, dinner party on Monday, IU's last home baseball game on Tuesday (peanuts, a flask of bourbon, and possibly necking under the bleachers - maybe I can compromise on the No-Bake Cookies), and a soup kitchen shift on Wednesday. Plus I've been to the gym every day this week! Summer is off to a good start.

Reach for the stars

On Wednesday, just as I turned the corner into the last leg of my run, SClub7's song "Reach for the Stars" came on my iPod, giving me exactly the jump-start I needed to finish my run in stride. That 99 cents is now officially worth it.

I'm now done with everything (unless Joan decides to make me redo my Tarski paper, heaven forbid) and it's clear that vacation does not suit me. It's nice not to feel like I have to be doing philosophy, but I really don't know what to do with myself. This morning I went for a run and got caught in the rain. Now it's still raining and I can't think of anything to do besides read or watch more Heroes. I mean, what are you supposed to do with leisure? I can't even go for a walk. I wish I still played with toys.

Also I want to buy ingredients to make chicken with green sauce and fish tacos (they have a lot of the same ingredients, and I picked up some tomatillos at the Asian grocery store yesterday) but a) it's raining and b) we're in need of many heavy staple items (flour, vegetable oil) and I know I won't be able to carry everything. I'd make Cufflinks drive me but he's in Missouri for his father's graduation. Krista's sister is coming to stay with us tomorrow (when did I find out about this? Oh, about ten minutes ago) and I want to cook as usual, but I really don't want to cook for three people when probably two of them won't notice what they eat. (This was a source of tension when Krista last had a guest - they ate my pasta alla puttanesca but nary a word of praise, nary a yummy sound.) It makes me feel (irrationally, I know) resentful. So I'm not sure what I'll be doing. Maybe I'll make chicken with green sauce and then make lots of leading remarks about how I don't think it's poison.