It's the freakin' weekend

So, there will be no boring, self-important monologue about why I haven’t posted in nearly six months.

But! Now! Installed (as I am) in my own real one-bedroom which boasts an even smaller, narrower kitchen than my former home, I am suited wonderfully for the frequent dinner party for 2 and the occasional slightly crowded dinner party for 8, not to mention other configurations and guest-quantities TBC. (When spring arrives, there will be teas: delightful conversation-heavy teas in the best of company with the best of finger sandwiches and other delicacies, because I’ve never given up on my fantasy of having a salon.)

Since we last encountered our heroine she has become single, turned 30, quit caffeine, and acquired a personal chef client, a freelance cookbook-consulting gig, and an upcoming weekly vegetable-blogging assignment for a prominent DIY/lifestyle magazine (about which more later). This is on top of her full-time job managing a little record-label-that-could, as well as her new physical-fitness hobbies, running and Ving Tsun Kung Fu. (Today was my first Saturday off since mid-December.)

But enough about me. USG was closed yesterday due to our third snowstorm of the season, but today it was open and even thriving – much more crowded than I thought it would be, and with most of the wintertime vendors in attendance. But this photo (of organic farm Norwich Garden’s insulated tent-stall) is a pretty typical shot: it’s pretty much all root vegetables and tubers nowadays, where it’s not apples. And it’s apples almost everywhere. So it’s not much of a haul, but it was a welcome excursion for a work-free Saturday.

Hot and fresh out the kitchen:
1 ½ lbs. beets
1 ½ lbs. “Red Rose” potatoes
4 lbs. mixed bargain apples
½ lb. shallots
Total spent: $11

I also bought eggs from Northshire Farms, a maple syrup-sweetened lemon poppyseed muffin from Body & Soul which was very dense and had a not entirely unpleasant faint hint of Funfetti cake mix, and a gorgeous whole-wheat multi-grain boulé from Our Daily Bread with which I will spend the week making impractically-sized toast. Then I headed across the street to Whole Foods where I bought the greens, carrots, and other necessities our root-cellar of a market is currently lacking.

I’ll roast the beets and probably the potatoes (no doubt on separate occasions), and the apples I’ll make into applesauce, which will feature my new favorite spice to pair with apples: star anise. I know – daring! Nothing’s changed.