My Promise

I know. I know. I have been a very bad girl. I have not been keeping up with my blog and I have no good excuse. It's not that I haven't been thinking about my blog. In fact, I've been thinking about ways to make it better and I've taken steps. I really have! You want proof? Okay, here's just one example: I've been dragging my camera into the kitchen while I prep and cook every day so that my blog could be made more interesting and visually dynamic through the inclusion of photographs of the food experiments about which I write. Here's another: Since my photographs were rather flat and dark, I had J lug a desk lamp into the kitchen to properly light my work and photo space. Here's a third: When the desk lamp wasn't working to my liking, I dragged J to Ikea to buy some under-cabinet lighting for my task/photo area. Want more? Okay: When J couldn't find the right screws to install said under-cabinet task lighting, I tied the light cord to my cabinet handle and levered is against the edge of the cabinet to achieve better lighting in the meantime. I could give more examples, but this is getting a bit crazy.

Needless to say, I've been doing a lot of cooking and photographing. Obviously, I have not been doing a lot of writing and posting. Sorry. My bad. I am working to rectify that. I will make a concerted effort to post something (howsoever short) each day until I return to school. Not every post will be fascinating, but there will be posts.

I am sitting at the moment in World Wide Plaza in Manhattan, sipping an iced (decaf!) Americano. I need to leave in a few minutes to pick up J and some of his family members, so I need to be quick with today's perhaps-fascinating post.

While J and his family went to see Wicked today, I made a rather half-hearted attempt to go to my school to start setting up my classroom. When I couldn't find a parking spot, I hit the gas and headed down to Union Square. It is Wednesday after all and I did have my shopping bags and cooler bag in the back of the car.

This was my first completely solo trip through the green market and it was fun! I made a quick sweep through the entire swath of vendors (thanks for the advice, Alice Waters) and doubled back to scoop up the long, hot chiles I cannot identify, handfuls of plump green jalapenos, and the reddest and least-expensive roma tomatoes in the market from one vendor. A couple of stalls down I scooped up red mustard greens, kale, and a couple of pounds of tomatillos. Across the way I bought fresh red and yellow onions, black Tuscan kale, and a new funky type of cilantro (cilantro delfino) that I had never tried or heard of before. I was told that restaurants buy this type of cilantro because it keeps better and chops up more finely. Down around the corner I bought beefsteak tomatoes, warm from the hot August afternoon sun. Up the way a bit I scooped up the sticky long green pointy fingers of okra that will find their way into my favorite oven "fried" recipe before being gobbled up with spicy cocktails. I even found a couple of less-expensive pints of sweet hybrid strawberries.

What am I going to make with this bounty? Wouldn't you like to know! I'll write about it soon. I promise.