An ode to salsa fresca

I think I could eat salsa fresca until I literally exploded into a big mess of tomato, onion, pepper and intestines.

It's become my Monday ritual after picking up the CSA veggies, and it's one of the only ways that I will eat raw tomatoes! I think most people are aware of my particular feelings about tomatoes... I hate the insides! They're so smushy and yucky, and I like my vegetables to be crunchy!

I'm going to be very sad when the tomato season is up and I can no longer make my delicious salsa fresca. I'm considering going out and buying a bunch of veggies, making a huge bunch of salsa and freezing it! But I'm not sure if it would be as yummy as it is when it's fresh. I think I may have become a fresh salsa fanatic, I'm a snob who can no longer stomach store-bought salsa!

Lauren's Salsa Fresca
2T olive oil
2T lemon or lime juice
1 bunch cilantro, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
Freshly ground pepper
Salt
Hot sauce
4 or 5 tomatoes
1/2 green pepper
1/2 onion
1 sweet banana pepper
1 Jalapeno pepper

1. Put the oil, juice, and spices in a medium bowl (I use a tupperware container that can go right in the fridge).

2. Dice vegetables. Put them in the bowl with the oil and spices and stir. Add hot sauce, salt and pepper to taste.

I love the State Fair

Seriously. Where else can you not only purchase, but be acceptable to society walking around with a 1/3 lb slice of bacon, fried, caramelized with maple syrup, on a stick?

I won't be buying one of those today. I will be buying cheese curds though! And, perhaps for old times' sake, Jaime and I will buy the giant pail of Sweet Martha's cookies and go to the "All The Milk You Can Drink For $1" booth and have ourselves a good time!

Oh, memories of being 17 years old, and having the metabolism that let me get away with eating 30 chocolate chip cookies in one day! Wow.

Nomenclature

I've been thinking a lot lately about name changing. I don't know how I feel about this.

I want to emphasize now to Ryan: no pressure, no pressure. Seriously! I'm perfectly happy with the way that things are.

My mother didn't take Poulter as her name, which lead to myself (and my sister and brother) being given two last names--or, two middle names, which is how it functionally operates: though my full legal name is Lauren Ann Buchele Poulter, I use L.A.P. as my "full" name.

I have a few friends (Paula, Elise) who kept their birth names completely intact at marriage. I have one friend that hyphenated her last name with her husband's. I have unknown number of friends and associates who just plain old took their husband's last name at marriage.

And, of course, there's my sister; she and her husband both changed their last names to his maternal grandfather's traditional Norwegian name.

The thing is, though, that she didn't like Poulter. I actually like Poulter. It's who I am. I've had it for 24-plus-and-counting years. I always imagined that at marriage, I would go with "Lauren Poulter His-Last-Name", for all professional and personal purposes (I call this "going HRC" for the recent near-Democratic nominee for president.) There's just no easy answer for me. Ryan has not taken kindly to suggestions that he might change his last name to Poulter!

What is more interesting, perhaps, is women that I've encountered who married, took their husband's name in some capacity or another, and then were divorced, yet kept their married name. How peculiar! I would think that would be such a masochistic choice!

Of course, there's a story behind all this: I remember very, very vividly, when I was in the third grade, my mother instructing me that I ought never to hyphenate my name when I got married. Yet, when I was 16 and she re-married, what did she do? Hyphenate her name! (If you're keeping score at home, that marriage lasted only three years.)

I think, at the end of the day, I might be too stubborn to just take a new name, regardless of whether or not I like it.

To all readers (yeah, both of you. Ha!): if married, did you (your wife) change your (her) name? What was the motivation? I find this subject intruiging.

Ryan Birthday Recap

It began officially with Ryan waking me up, saying "I swear I'm not gay. PLEASE don't be mad at me!"

Apparently Ryan had a dream where a certain friend named Collin decided he was gay, put the moves on Ryan and I walked in on the situation and became very angry. So to clarify, no, sweetie, I don't think that you are gay! And if it turned out that you were, I would be more hurt than I would be mad.

The rest of the birthday was much less silly. Jason and Brad Gausman showed up early, tapping the keg of Grain Belt Premium (The beer of exceptional quality!) while I cooked Ryan his favorite breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy, with eggs over easy (gross) on the side. Drinking commenced.

Patrick, Steve, and Liz showed up. We watched the Twins game, there was Goofy Golf to be played.

In addition to all the friends that were in attendance, my parents, my sister and her husband, my step-brother, his wife and my niece Abby, and my other step-brother Nate showed up. Quite the crowd, I must say! I had purchased 20 (!) bratwursts in expectation of half of them being eaten but they were ALL polished off in good fashion.

Drinking of Grain Belt continued.

I must say, both Ryan and I were a little disappointed that no Glanzers showed up at the party! Ryan had a phone call with his mum that was very detail-filled, leading him to believe that perhaps they would surprise him with a visit! (I don't want to embarrass him, but he's a bit jealous that they pop in on his sister for visits and have only visited him a few times! Plus, Glanzers, all the Poulters were in attendance! You were showed up! :) )

Never the less, a successful birthday party, if I do say so myself. Happy birthday, sweetie! Hope work on Monday isn't too painful! :)

The negative: I got so caught up in socializing with my family and friends that I forgot to grill the cabbage or the sweet corn!
But luckily, my darling friend Jaime showed up later in the evening and after preaching the wonders of the CSA program to her, I was able to pass along the a few sweet corn, a green pepper and the 4lb CABBAGE! Thank god for wonderful friends!

shrugging

Big River Farms and the CSA

I've been yammering on about the CSA for a few weeks now, so I thought I might share some information about what a CSA is and why Ryan and I are supporting it.

I found out about Community Supported Agriculture through my sister, Kate, last summer. It was her first year doing a CSA and she and her husband split a share with another couple. The only thing I really remember her mentioning is beets, lots and lots of beets (see my previous post for my non-love of beets).

This spring she asked if Ryan and I would be interested in splitting a share with them. It was pretty reasonable, at the time: About $450 for a full share, so about $115 each for Ryan and I. I definitely think we're getting our money's worth!

Another really appealing aspect is the locality of it. Big River Farms/MN Food Association is located in Marine on St Croix, about 40 minutes outside of the Twin Cities. So, we're "eating local", such as it were. MFA just got organic certification, so it's there's that feel-good aspect.

I think the best part about BRF is that one of the purposes of their farms is to train new immigrants to Minnesota how to farm in this climate. A lot of them were farmers in their home country--true to recent immigration patterns, largely they are Hmong and Hispanic. I'm a total softie for things like that, so I like that the big box o' veggies I pick up each week is also helping to strengthen the rural Midwestern economy, keeping the small-farm tradition alive and letting hard-working people earn a living off the land, all while treating the earth nicely.

Any hope of my becoming a farmer myself surely died with my 4-H career at age 9 or so, but nonetheless I like to think that Grandad Wes would be proud that I'm doing this very small part to help small farms!

More info: Big River Farms/MN Food Association

(More) Vegetables

Got more CSA veggies yesterday (this was week 8 of ... 12? 16? How long is the growing season? ETA: CSA deliveries continue until Oct 27th... 18 weeks!) More corn, more onions, lots more tomatoes, more summer squash and basil and green peppers. And more beets.

Beets are weird. Today I tried a pretty well-reviewed recipe from All Recipes for roasted beets with sautéed beet greens. The beet greens were pretty tasty, with toasted sesame oil (best oil EVER, fyi), garlic and pepper. The beets were a different story. They were roasted... but they were still beets. Beets are so weird! They are bright red and they're so sweet, but they're a root vegetable! But I threw some salt and pepper and some fancy vinegar from the Asian grocery store down the street (I LOVE the Asian grocery store! So cheap and so Asian!) and they were tolerable. I think Ryan liked them. Not that either of us are going to run out and buy more beets at the market.

So, the current veggie stock:
• 1 3lb cabbage
• 4 green peppers
• decent amount of green beans
• 1 red onion
• 1 summer squash
• 1 tomato (would have put it in the fresh salsa I made today, but it didn't look quite ripe)
• 4 cucumbers
• 7 ears of sweet corn
• Basil

The upside of this is that Ryan's big birthday barbecue is this Sunday, so I will make up grilled cabbage, boil the sweet corn and chop up some of the green pepper and cucumber for a crudité plate!

Hosting a party = forcing friends and family to eat my vegetables before they go bad. I love it.