CSA Pickup #11

Simply irresistible. I was supposed to help out at the CSA today, but the truck was about an hour late, and I had to run to rehearsal, so Matt drove me out there and then whipped around to retrieve the veg. I know, he's too good to me. I came home to find it piled in bags on the counter, a fantastic pile of late summer.

We got:
5 ears of corn
a huge eggplant
bag of green beans
bunch of curly parsley
tomatoes, heirloom and otherwise
a head of celery
bunch of carrots
and two big green bell peppers (my crisper drawer is being taken over by green bell peppers. anyone want some?)
Of course, this 'present' and the fact that it was dinnertime triggered a frenzy. In about five seconds, I came up with the perfect summer meal, composed of recipes I'd been idly dreaming about. We had John Thorne's take on Riso in Bianco with tomatoes and mozzarella and basil, from Pot on the Fire. I just can't emphasize enough how wonderful this book is. It's so thoughtful, so inspiring, so well-written, so hungry, and so homey. Just re-reading it was enough to make me order the three books of his I haven't read. Riso in Bianco is an Italian rice dish that essentially treats arborio rice like pasta. You boil it in a big pot of salted water, drain, and toss with toppings, which in this case included mozzarella cubes, and tomato, garlic and basil warmed in a little olive oil. It's very good, and obviously very open to interpretation.
We ate the Riso in Bianco with fresh boiled corn and a version of Amanda Hesser's (Pearl Oyster Bar's) Salt and Pepper shrimp, dredged in corn flour, quickly deep fried in the shell, and covered in salt and pepper while hot.

While we ate, we watched Al Gore talk about how hot it's going to get, and now the dishes wait as I consider why Obama still fails to get a rise out of me, even as I'm proud of him, proud to hope to elect him. I'm still scared. Hopefully not scared stupid, this is no election to turn away from, but waiting, wanting, a full year in office, before I really will feel like there's any solid ground under our feet with this man's administration. Maybe the real answer is that there is no solid ground anywhere, and never was, and it would be wiser to stop pretending and work with what there is. That's scary, but at least it's not paralyzing.

We have a new lease, a home for a year. A good year.