Spider

When I came back to this blog, I made a commitment to myself to post every day, and so I regret the two day hiatus. I ate at Kaygetsu again on Friday night, so I may post about it later this week. I also stayed at the Rosewood Sand Hill Road, which may look like a townhouse complex from 280, but is, in fact, quite the nice place, and my new favorite hotel.

Today was the Sunday Veggielution work day, and I finally lived my dream of cooking there with freshly-harvested produce. But before that, I helped turn the compost piles, and we saw an enormous spider carrying her egg sac.

Angela carefully moved her to where she would not be disturbed, and now I look forward to the last scenes from Charlotte’s Web.

Once I figured out how to set up the stove (still MIP, as they say on eBay) I started frying onions as quickly as Jeff could slice them. When they were soft and starting to brown, I added sliced zucchini. I was using a big canning pot, straddling both burners, and there was quite a lot of stuff inside, so the zukes didn’t cook quickly enough to get brown themselves. But they got tender, so I added chopped tomatoes. (Next week, we’ll have serious quantities of tomatoes, so we’ve already made plans for another burner so we can make pasta.) This was cooking down, when Lisa showed up with green beans. I added some (and some shelly beans from pods that had gone a bit too far) and then lots of basil. By this point, it had turned into something very like ratatouille, but without the eggplant, so that’s how I advertised it. It seemed like a lot while I was cooking, but it cooked down a fair bit, and got eaten up before everyone could try it. So, even more food next week, but that also calls for an earlier start.

I have to say that I was so happy while I was cooking it. It has been my own vision for Veggielution the whole time I’ve been involved: cooking the food we grow and then sharing it together. The kitchen at Prusch would be more efficient, but it’s halfway across the park, so quite separated from the rest of the workday. However, I could imagine having so many volunteers that there would be a happy crowd in the kitchen, rather than being isolated. We’ll see how the camp stove works out in the coming weeks.