To inspiration and vegetables

It’s Wednesday, which means that I get together with a few friends for coffee and breakfast, and we chat and discuss our successes and challenges from the past week. It’s great. I’m very thankful for them. Our meeting excites, inspires, and motivates me to get in the studio and try new things, rather than focusing on making tangible contributions to my inventory. (I’ll get to these newish projects in an upcoming post. However, this blogging project seems to be focusing on what happens in my time off… so the work discussion will come when it comes.)


It’s Wednesday, which means that it’s the day when my vegetable delivery arrives. Matt’s Organics is a wonderful local company that delivers a big bin of mostly locally grown organic fruit and veggies to my door every other Wednesday. Its like Christmas comes every other week… My friends can vouch for my giddy joy upon the bin’s arrival each time. The best part is that I never know what I’m going to get. I can make a few requests- they know I love green beans, beets, melon, grapes, brussels sprouts, and kale but know I detest mushrooms and lima beans. Almost always I get bananas, and almost always I eat one while I’m unpacking the box. I know there will be plenty of fruit, greens, salad veggies, and cooking veggies. Past that, who knows. I get a lot for that $36…. Two week’s worth of veggies, in fact.

Since I never know which foods will be stocking my pantry, the dishes I cook with what I get are pretty varied. The beets, sweet potato, and onions from the last delivery turned into a roasted vegetable mix that went on top of creamy polenta. More sweet potatoes were cooked with black beans in a stew. Spinach was sautéed with garlic and olive oil, and eaten with a friend’s risotto. The constantly changing supply of veggies inspires exploration in cuisine, and that makes me really happy. It’s fun. Tomorrow I know I need to make something with red cabbage, to finish off the huge head of the stuff that came two weeks ago. Not sure why, but getting my veg delivery has made me much more conscientious about not letting one thing go unused. For that, I’m thankful. Hmmm. I have a few sweet potatoes left, too. Good thing they’re tasty. We’ll see what they become. I’ll figure it out.

Anything that inspires, whether the muse be a gathering with friends, a torch, vegetables, a few rods of glass, or a sautee pan and butter, is OK in my book.

(straining neck looking out to my front porch) Is it here yet?