Cookies........to......Veggies!

Cookie season is finally over and passed, and between the kids and my husband, our cookie tally ended up at $70….that’s TWENTY boxes of cookies!! (I will not take too much blame here, except for the simple fact of storing them in my house…bad idea!) Albeit, that is $70 of delicious, only once-a-year goodness, but I think we’ve had our fill of sweets for the remainder of the year.

Thankfully, it seems that everyone’s sweet tooth is wearing out; perhaps I’ve discovered the secret to cutting back on junk….let them eat all of it until they get sick of it. (!)


Despite this great observation, I have noticed an increasing trend of junk food around our house and it is driving me CRAZY. I have made a conscious effort to not buy as much junky snacks because if it’s in the house, that is all, and I mean ALL that my four year old can think about. Last time we were at the store together, I even went out of my way to tell her that we wouldn’t be having chips and fruit snacks in the house so often and I wouldn’t be buying them this time. Of course, later that evening when my husband made a quick run to the store for a missing dinner ingredient and she tagged along, he bought her a bag of chips and a box of fruit snacks at her request…….ARRGH!

 I am extremely thrilled that we signed up for a CSA share this year! CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and you pay up front for a growing season’s worth of vegetables. Once a week for twenty weeks starting in June, we will receive a big “mystery box” of veggies; that’s how we’ve been selling it to the girls anyway and so far they are very excited about what might be in there and all the new ones we’ll get to try. A great thing about the farm we chose is the strawberry social, where CSA members can come and check out the farm, see where their food comes from, and pick their own strawberries. It should be good for the kids to see that our food doesn’t just magically appear at the grocery store for us to put into our carts and then our cupboards. Living in a townhome in a city hasn’t given them too much exposure to gardening in general, so I am ecstatic about this experience. Especially since we’ll have so many vegetables we’ll HAVE to start eating better. I suppose we could really start now, but it looks like we’re waiting until June.

COOKIES!!

I am one of the leaders of my second grader's Girl Scout troop, and by default I am once again the "cookie mom" this year; a title given much prominence in the scouting world in an attempt to cover up the less glamorous side of the position. They even make cookie mom badges for the daughters to proudly display on their vests for everyone to see; but surely it is the moms buying these for their daughters, and not the daughters begging to have one.

So this afternoon we (I dragged my husband into this mess with me) contemplated on whether to take the van or his truck to pick up the cookies; you need two adults for this duty, one to drive and one to count the cases as they're loaded in. We had 50 cases to pack in (in case you're wondering, that's 600 boxes total!) and five of us, so with lack of a babysitter we chose to crowd into the truck, leaving the back open for the cookies. Of course this meant we needed to clean all the crap out of the truck first.

An hour later, we were finally on our way to the warehouse. We pulled into this truck lot where we gave them our troop number and verified how many cases we were picking up; we were then told to follow the cones which led to eight different loading stations, one for each type of cookie. At each station we had to approve that we had the right amount of cases, they’d load them in, and we’d drive on to the next one. In a matter of minutes we had all our cookies, and after verifying once again, and signing over my life to claim responsibility for said cookies, we were on our way back home.

            Upon arriving, we decided the cookies would be safe in the locked topper until I could get them distributed to all the girls during the week. But after careful consideration; realizing how popular those cookies are and that they just might melt on this unusually warm February day, I decided we probably better bring them in the house. So, all the able bodies of the family (everyone except the baby) spent about fifteen minutes marching in and out, stacking all the boxes along the kitchen wall.
            So here I sit, gazing at the atrocity across the room, dreading the work I got myself into. I have two months of this yet to go, and it’s only just begun.

Cravings

I love food. I love it to the extent that every time Matt and I decide we are going to cut back on eating out to save on costs, I start to crave any and all food that is prepared in any other kitchen but my own. At times I wish I could go back before we went down the road to discovering food. Back before countless episodes of Iron Chef America and Top Chef, back before the experimentation in our kitchen with new ingredients and new flavors, back before our date nights at far-too expensive restaurants with food that should have remained out of our reach. All these things have only accomplished in turning the two of us into what I can only dub as food snobs. Although I am still happy eating the usual home fare, I would much rather be dining on gourmet cheese plates, risotto, and steak au poivre.

But at this time, on our constricted budget, I will have to make do with the occasional late night snack of bread and cheese (read: baguette, garlic-infused olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and parmesan cheese), and dream of the day when I can sit down to an exciting dinner that will satiate the food nerd waiting within.