CSAs and Monterey

Yes, I’m still here. No, nothing terrible has happened – I’ve just been super busy, as usual. I went to Florida for a quick trip a couple weekends ago and I am still wiped out from it. But, life must go on.

In any event, here are some updates, random thoughts, and so on.

A lot of my “food attention” has been spent lately on the idea of sustainable eating and what that means and how to achieve it. Have you ever done one of those online carbon foot print calculators (like this one: http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/index.htm -- this is just one of many, many out there)? They can be quite depressing. I did a couple recently and was dismayed by my results! I realize that I’m not perfect, but hell, I thought I was on the right path – shopping at the farmers’ market, making my own cleaning supplies, recycling – all that jazz. Apparently not. Sigh. Actually, I took this quiz as part of an online class I was participating in through Coursea (you should definitely check this out, there are a ton of free, interesting courses you can take). This particular course was a six-week course about the US food systems, and it was absolutely fascinating and enlightening (I got an A, in case anyone was wondering). The professor was actually very reassuring about the poor results from the quiz, and just how overwhelming these topics can be in general. I mean, no one can ever eat perfectly, even if you’re a vegan, or follow a raw diet, or only eat organic, local produce. There is always room for improvement, and even just making an effort counts for something. In that vein, I joined a CSA out here! I’ve been looking for one for a while now, and it finally all fell into place. This particular one is with Farm Fresh to You, and they deliver to my office, which is super-convenient! It’s all organic and locally grown, and I’m getting a delivery every other week, which is perfect, because in the past I’ve had trouble keeping up with weekly deliveries (I mean, that is a lot of produce). So far I’m really happy with it! I also finally joined Slow Food USA. So, good things happening in that department.

I’ve been kind of all over the place with my cookbook challenge – a recipe here and there, but no real direction. To that end, I’ve decided to focus on one chapter at a time, starting, naturally, with desserts. Yum. I’ll keep you posted.

What else, what else? OH! I almost forgot! The brother and I (and the dog) headed down to Monterey Bay two weekends ago for a day trip – it was so much fun! We took Highway 1 to get there, so it took a while, but the view was gorgeous. Alex made an awesome soundtrack to listen to on the way, too – all my happy music. We stopped at a farmers’ market in Santa Cruz and at a little produce further down where I totally loaded up (10 kiwis for a dollar! 10 avocados for a buck! It was chaos). We had lunch at Phil’s Seafood Market in Moss Landing – I was so excited to eat here, as I’d seen the place featured on Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Phil won! OMG it did not disappoint! Alex had a warm lobster roll that was delicious (although not as good as the ones at the Clam Shack in No-where-ville, MA). And I had the cioppino, Phil’s winning dish. It was just amazing. First of all, the portion was huge – I could’ve gone swimming in that bowl of broth! And it just had every kind of seafood, and it was all perfectly cooked – clams, mussels, shrimp, calamari, whitefish, and Dungeness crab. I have officially decided that Dungeness crab is my favorite – although snow crab legs and red royal is close behind. We also went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was great, and took a trip to the beach. It was dog friendly, and Wyatt just had a blast.  We wrapped things up with a stop at Fisherman’s Wharf to get sat water taffy. A very successful trip indeed.