I’m a little late on this, but such is thus. There are more pictures in the gallery. Here’s what we got this week:

Rhubarb-1 bunch

Chinese Cabbage-1 bunch

Mizuna-1 bunch

Red Sails Leaf Lettuce-1 head

Bennett Buttercrunch Lettuce-2 heads

Romaine-1 head

Chives-1 bunch

Lemon Balm-1 bunch

We’ve enjoyed many delicious salads, gnocchi with chives, pasta with chives and that’s about it. This week we get some bok choy and garlic scapes, so perhaps there will be some stir fry in our future.

(and perhaps cooler than yours)
Today is day 3 of Mr. Bento Lunch. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mr. Bento, it’s an insulated lunch container made by Zojirushi. It holds 4 containers of varying sizes and functionality: a “soup” bowl, a “rice” bowl, a medium-sized bowl and a small bowl. It keeps cold foods very cold and theoretically it keeps hot foods very hot. I haven’t felt like eating a hot meal as of late. It also comes with chopsticks in a little case. Awesome.
The past couple of days I’ve been taking a salad of cold buckwheat noodles with peppers, edamame and a lemon-tahini dressing as my main course. The rest of the items I’ve changed up. I’ve taken cold lentil soup, carrots and hummus, cucumber slices, laughing cow cheese, cottage cheese or frozen mango chunks. It’s pretty fun and it’s nice having a good, tasty lunch every day. And I’m not the only one. Flickr has a group for Mr. Bento devotees and I’ve started posting (though for some reason my pictures aren’t showing up when I’m not signed in). I didn’t take a picture of my lunch on Monday but I did yesterday and today, so if you’re interested in my lunch, you can take a look here. Good times.

I’m back and I’m married. Three cheers for being married! It’s a good time. We had a wonderful wedding and a very nice honeymoon in Hawaii (first Kauai, then Maui). Hawaii was really delightful and I can’t say that I’m too happy to be back. I guess all vacations must end sometime though. *sigh*

We had good weather this weekend and hit up the opening of the New Canaan Farmers Market. I was really surprised at how much was there other than just flowers. We bought some basil plants, green onions, baby beets, rhubarb, rosemary bread and fresh mozzarella. I wanted to be careful with my purchases since Wednesday is our first CSA delivery. On Saturday evening I made a quiche with the beet greens, green onions and some feta. I used a biscuit dough for the crust since I wasn’t in the mood to roll out a pastry crust and the whole thing turned out really well. Very tasty. We ate it hot for dinner and cold for lunch the next day and I almost like it better cold.
Everything else has been planted or cooked and the kitchen is tidy. Lots in the fridge for lunch and dinner the next couple of days.

Tomorrow (Saturday, May 13) is Stamp Out Hunger http://www.stampouthunger2006.com.
All you have to do is fill bags with non-perishable food items and place the bags next to your mailbox. Your letter carrier will pick up the bags and take them to a local food bank.
Great things to donate are canned meats and fish, canned soup, juice, pasta, vegetables, cereal and rice. This is not the time to get rid of that four year old jar of jam; if you don’t want to eat it, they don’t want it either.

This is my last week in-in the office (working from MI next week) and I’m struggling to get things done or at least tidy before I go. Lots of things competing for brain space right now. I’m very glad I have the Palm to keep me organized-ish.

We had a lawncare guy come over this weekend to give us an estimate on grass-cutting service. He was the most knowledgable fellow I’ve talked to and spent a good deal of time walking around the yard with us, pointing out which plants needed a different type of food, telling us the pros and cons of various mulches and other useful things like “oh – that’s poison sumac”. Which he pulled out after cutting the lawn on Monday. I told him about the poison ivy incident from last summer and how I’d printed out information and pictures on The Internet but still couldn’t figure out what was good and what was bad. I pointed out to him the spot where I was pretty sure I’d gotten the poison ivy and he said “nope, it’s a weed” and pulled that out too. But 10 inches away from that was the woah, “you’ve got poison oak”. So now I know what poison oak looks like. And I’m not going to touch it on purpose.
So of course I was pulling a few weeds on Sunday, even though I told myself I wouldn’t; behind weed number three was a bunch of poison oak. I definitely didn’t touch it directly but I have no way of knowing if there was any transfer via the weed. I was wearing gloves, I washed my hands thoroughly afterwards and even changed my clothes. Hoping for the best here. I can’t remember how long the incubation was from last summer.

I am getting married in three weeks! My ability to sit still is greatly diminished.
I got a lot done this weekend but I didn’t sleep much. Can’t keep my mind from running. Jeremie and I put down 35 bags of mulch and that covered just the backyard. It looks very pretty now but the front yard will have to wait. Except for 15 minutes of finishing up the vegetable garden, I’m not spending any more time in the yard until after the wedding. I don’t need to get cut, bitten or have another round of poison ivy.
I’m so excited.

Yesterday my laptop died. It’s my work (and – I – have – it – so – I – might – as – well – use – it – for – everything) laptop, so I wasn’t responsible for fixing it but that means I also had little say in the resolution of things. I’m now on my second shell of the day and this one seems to be working ok. The first one had issues with USB so it got swapped out and this current one has a noisy fan, but I’ll take that over not being able to use my keyboard and mouse. I was really worried that I’d lose a ton of data since everything for the wedding is on my laptop, but most of my hard drive was ok and I think they got everything copied over. The only things that are missing right now are my Palm databases. I’m remaining optimistic, but if I lose those I will probably cry.
It will take weeks to get everything back to how I want it. So annoying.

Laptops and sunshine don’t mix well. I can barely see the screen but it’s so unbelievably gorgeous outside that I can’t just sit inside.

I’m spending the afternoon at Kava House and they have very comfy plastic adirondack-style chairs on their “patio”. Excellent for watching doggies, people taking their fun cars out and girls in impractical footware. Lots of motorcycles too. There’s a guy with what I think is a Gold Wing who keeps making loops around the block with his radio blasting.

Just heard: “I think you’re a chronological liar”

I love Passover and Passover food, but man I wish I could go over to Yesterdog and get a veggie dog. Instead I have popovers and cappuccino.

The latest from the I Tried It (so you don’t have to) files: Coca-Cola Blak.
Why did I try it? I saw it in the cafeteria here at work and several things made it catch my eye:
1. diminuitive 8 oz bottle – glass bottle
2. only 45 calories, which while more than diet is much less than a can of regular Coke
3. glass bottle!
I’d been curious about it for several weeks, ever since I read a blurb about it on slashfood, so I jumped on the opportunity. Coke Blak is a “carbonated fusion beverage” and is supposed to taste like a mix of regular Coke and iced coffee. Upon opening the bottle, I was met with the distinct aroma of International Foods coffee (think “that waiter.. Jean-Luc!”) and 10 minutes later that’s pretty much what’s on my tongue – faky vanilla cappuccino. Going down, it’s a tasty beverage with good mouth feel. It’s definitely a soda but less carbonated than standard Coke varieties.
The verdict? Eh. It’s not awful, but I can’t imagine anyone buying it more than once.

It’s sunny and 73F outside and I have flan. Kids, it doesn’t get much better.