Okay, the FIRST THING I want to say is that if you read my KDHX Kickstarter post and donated, then THANK YOU! They made their goal plus a little over $8K, and I’m so excited that the project worked and so, so thankful to everyone who contributed. Except now we have to coordinate when we wear our t-shirts because showing up in the same outfit is embarrassing.

The SECOND THING I want to say is that I hope I’m conveying how happy I am right now. I really can’t tell because I have the same headache I got last Friday before the Paul McCartney show, and while it’s dimmed a bit for now, for most of the day(s) it’s been so intense that I feel like a deep sea diver about to hurl all over the inside of her helmet! Isn’t that happy?!

The THIRD THING I want to say is that as of today, I officially used all of Week 2’s CSA box! And I’m super excited about it! Even with the Headache That Never Goes Away!

After receiving Week 1 of our CSA box, I decided that I was going to have to change my plans. Specifically, I was going to have to make plans, and that the first step was to plan to put stuff in bags and actually use the fridge’s crisper drawers that I always forget about. While we used about half of Week 1’s box within a couple of days, everything else wilted quickly. It didn’t mold. It didn’t slime. It just dried up, got all floppy and unappetizing and Graham says the carrots and radishes froze, and since he’s the one staring into the fridge in the middle of the night, he’s probably right.

So I thought about getting some plastic produce bags from the grocery store, but that’s a problem. For one, they’re plastic. It’s illegal for grocery stores in Seattle to provide plastic shopping bags or Styrofoam containers to customers. While you can buy those weirdo gas-venting produce bags like they have on infomercials, they’re crazy expensive and I don’t think I’d re-use those the way I currently re-use regular flimsy plastic produce bags (cat poop, okay, I fill them with cat poop when I clean the litter box). So instead of a) buying some bullshit scam bags that probably wouldn’t keep my produce fresh, b) stealing a bunch of flimsy produce bags from the roller at the store or c) continue letting my CSA stuff go to waste, I decided to use regular Ziploc bags that could be washed after each use, you lazy fucking animal (that’s me, to myself, in my head).

And immediately after bringing home Week 2 of our CSA box, that’s what I did. I separated mine and Courtney’s stuff, bagged mine up (leafy things got a damp paper towel in their bags), and sat down for the next step of my new plan.

I made a list.

While I had a vague idea of what to do with Week 1’s box, I wasn’t satisfied with the planning portion or the way I decided “fuck it” one night and ate cereal for dinner before getting drunk on four beers and passing out at 8:30pm. I was going to use the entire CSA box and for that, I needed to know how. The list you see in the photo represents all of our produce from Week 2 plus a few grocery store extras. And I actually did it. I stuck to the list (mostly, the days I made stuff were flexible), I made every single thing on it, and all of Week 2 has been used in a responsible, delicious way.

Which is not to say I’m confident that every week will be as productive. I just got the list for Week 3’s box, and I went down the line like “don’t like cucumber…don’t like zucchini…I guess I can figure out the golden beets…wtf, more basil?!” (Not that there’s anything wrong with basil. It’s just that we already grow some in our own garden and I couldn’t even get through the huge bag from Week 1.)

But I guess cucumbers are good for juicing and I do have a juicer, and also a new BevMo opened nearby and I’ve been pretty excited about checking it out. So…cocktail party, anyone? With a concentration in cucumber-basil gimlets? I start working from 9:30am to 6pm next week so I don’t have to go to bed before sunset anymore. I can be fun again (maybe), I swear (I hope)!