green

I bought a pound of peas at the farmer’s market that cost me more than five dollars, and I thought, this is crazy. Five dollars for a pound of peas! But they are bright green and so so crunchy and they taste like sweet and like summer, and the peas in my garden are still only as high as my hips.

People spend five dollars on less all the time. You might spend five dollars on a beer or a pack of cigarettes or a very fancy coffee drink or a Big Mac, and I hardly spend five dollars on those things ever at all. Whereas these peas will make me happy all week long, if I don’t eat them all at once.

This evening after work I will pick up my first CSA box, filled with fruits and veggies from a farm a few miles north of town. These mysterious boxes will come once a week all summer. I don’t get to choose what’s in them - whatever is ready for picking each Wednesday morning is what I will get. Today I expect strawberries and onions and maybe beets. It’s going to get thorny when the arugula and parsnips start coming in, because what do you do with these things? I guess I will learn.

Craigslist magic has got me my first chest freezer. There’s nothing like frozen blueberries in March to remind you that the sun will be back. But it’s a not-so-fine line between throwing plastic bags of berries in the chest and pickling kohlrabi, which is more than my current putting-over proficiency allows. Sure, I jar jam. I grow carrots. But I don’t own a food mill. I don’t make my own yogurt. I’ve never brewed a beer or a jug of wine. I’m not sure where on this slippery slope of urban homesteading I will settle.

For now I’m crunching peas. I will miss going to the farmer’s market for little indulgences like this. I’ll still swing through for eggs and bread. But for the next few months my veggies will be whatever grows in my garden (the kale continues to thrive while the slugs have consumed all the pole beans) and whatever comes in the box. Lettuce, anyone? I have a whole lot of lettuce.