What to do with 10 pounds of tomatillos; or, The reluctant reform of a chocaholic

My partner and I joined a CSA for the first time this summer.  We'd been excited about the idea for awhile , and so we have enjoyed the weekly vegetable surprise: what will we get to cook this time?  The share forces us to figure out new dishes to make that use up the particular vegetables we received, which is nice when we've been stuck in a dinner rut.  

It also forces us to eat our vegetables.  A lot of vegetables.


As part of the share, members are allowed to go to the farm itself and pick various vegetables.  Which is what we did this weekend.  This is what we brought home:

So what to do with 10 pounds of tomatillos??  The answer: make salsa verde.  The only answer, it seems.  There aren't many other recipes out there.  We have 4 containers of salsa verde in the fridge and freezer.  And still 4 more pounds of tomatillos.



All of this can be a little overwhelming for someone like me, who has had to work very hard to acquire a taste for vegetables.  In the last four weeks, we've made 5 eggplant dishes.  I didn't even used to like eggplant.  And yet, as I type this, there is an eggplant roasting in the oven.   I can smell its eggplantiness.  For lunch today, we ate seven different vegetables, all from the farm.  


Amazingly, I actually liked every one.


But there's no substitute for chocolate.

Industry associations say the darndest things

      Don’t you just love it when someone says something to make an argument, and yet it backfires and convinces you of exactly the opposite?

      The gas and coal industries are up in arms about the Obama administration’s grants to ethanol, wind, and other clean energy research and trade groups to promote their clean energies (“Oil Allies Protesting U.S. Money for Rivals,” New York Times, Sept. 2, 2009).  It’s not fair!, they cry.  No one is giving us money to promote coal!  When was the last time the government gave money to advertise gasoline?  The government is biased!  It’s playing favorites!

      Well—yes.  But that’s precisely the point: the government wants to influence consumer behavior.  It wants people buying less gasoline and more ethanol, less coal and more wind.  The whole point of the program is to promote clean energies, and your energies are not, I’m afraid, clean.  So of course the government is being “biased.”  With every tax, every government stimulus program for clunkers or back-to-work training, it incentives certain behaviors (and of course as a direct result “penalizes” others).  That’s the goal.

      So please, until gasoline and coal are as clean as ethanol and wind, kindly quiet down over there.

Unpleasant surprises

To all the doctors out there: please, please tell us, your nervous patients, what you are going to do before you do it!  I was at a new dentist yesterday, and was startled when she began working on my teeth with some vibrating-rushing-water-thing that was NOT particularly comfortable.  Of course, since this is dentistry I couldn't easily ask, what are you doing?  I had to wait until afterwards to ask.  She did a nice job explaining it then, but it was a little late.  I would have liked to know before.

In fact, I think it's almost always true that things are scarier when you don't know what's going on.  Even when what is going on is not that pleasant.  It's not knowing that is the worst, Margaret Atwood wrote in The Handmaid's Tale.  She's right.  The human imagination is too powerful.

Money and politics

Ben McGrath’s New Yorker article about Michael Bloomberg (it ran a few weeks back) raises interesting questions about money and politics. 

Bloomberg, of course, is a very wealthy man.  He has accepted $1 a year as his mayoral salary, and he has funded his campaigns himself.  McGrath notes this has avoided the “shaming hat-in-hand” routine most politicians must go through to raise money; Bloomberg’s wealth, the argument goes, has prevented corruption.  This is good.

On the other hand, Bloomberg’s wealth allowed him to “buy” his electoral victory, outspending every candidate the mayoral race had ever seen.  McGrath also mentions another counterargument: Bloomberg’s personal finances have allowed incredible concentration of power and wealth in one person.  Some have suggested he has essentially bought off criticism, silencing doubters with gifts and promises of gifts.

Some of this could be corrected with campaign spending limits.  But the concern about the concentration of power and wealth is interesting.  Is Bloomberg’s personal wealth a pro or con?  Both.

Perhaps, then, the real take-away is that the relationship between money and politics is a conversation we continually need to have, and continually need to watch.  

Put me in, Coach!

The Red Bulls coach has resigned, and so I want to take this opportunity to announce publicly that I would be delighted to take over. 

Which raises the question: if men can (and do) coach professional women’s soccer, can women coach professional men’s?  I would say—yes.  But will this ever actually happen in real life?  And to that, I’m going out on a limb and guessing—no. 

Which is sad for me.  Back to writing cover letters.

Many Happy Returns

I unfolded my New York Times this morning and read an article about the money the Treasury has earned on its bail-out investments:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/business/economy/31taxpayer.html
Yes!  I was waiting to read this story in a major news publication.  As wariness over the bailout has increased, and the deficit has grown, the government should be shouting this news from the rooftops: we made money!  We made money while easing the recession!  Seriously, 15% annual return, in this economy?  Sign me up!

The Federal Reserve too has done well:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0296cf1a-9594-11de-90e0-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1