Friday's Drawers: Fiddle Me This

Red leaf lettuce, rainbow chard, kale, green pepper, fiddle heads, sweet potato
vidalia onions, apples asparagus, peaches

This is our last week of our east coast farm share or this season.  We'll take a week off and then we resume with a local share, but because we are working 2 gardens this year - yup TWO! - we switched to a small share.  Anyway, we have a pretty good looking share this week....though it feels like it will be a good test in creativity.

Last year I didn't do well with the fiddleheads, so I am going to try again with a new recipe.

I am super excited by the peaches.  And vidalia onions, the official state vegetable of Georgia, look really good.  I am doing some research on some recipes for the onions.  A peach salsa might be a good combo.  Or maybe an apple, chicken salad with the onions.  Or both!

As for the rest, chard will probably be the red lentil chard soup, kale for kale chips are a huge hit around here.  And if I am going to turn on the oven (though in the cold rain having the oven on hasn't been an issue) I might as well roast the sweet potato, cutting them in half and coating them in a little olive oil and sea salt.

I did the same thing last week with the asparagus and oh.my.gosh. So good.  I ate some warm out of the oven, but then I ate the remaining ones cold with my lunch.

Photo (run) Op

One of the greatest perks where I work, besides the warm-fuzzy feeling of contributing to public health, and specifically the lives of brand new babies and their parents, is getting to spend my lunch hour running in the arboretum.

After running the arb for about a year, I decided to finally take my camera and show off some of the trails and gorgeousness that I get to experience just outside my office.

Here it is.

(Make sure you click on the little yellow guy/comment button on the left hand side to see the captions. That is, if you want to be inside my head.  Otherwise, just lace up and enjoy the show!)

Jealous?

Yeah. Thought so.

SO COME RUN WITH ME!!!!

Here was the route.

What's next?

There is this part of me that doesn't really want to put up a blog post anything ever again.  I mean running the Boston Marathon with the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team was the pinnacle.  I could just end all commentary right there.

But there are just too many thoughts running (heh) around in my head and I just *have* to put them somewhere.  There is the life-after, the healing, the weight-gain, the lack of toe-nails, so many things, not to mention this is kind of a food blog too.  I plan to get to them, but first I wanted to process a question that I've gotten a lot over the last couple weeks.

"What's next?"

To be honest, until I got the question, I hadn't thought about it. With every other race, I researched the next one before I even getting to the starting line on the one I signed up for! Part of it was because I liked toeing the line, part of it was because there was another goal  I wanted to accomplish (PR time, PR distance), and part of it was because I like following training plans because it is all spelled out for you.  And the easiest plan to follow is one that has a race at the end of it.

I can't say that this will be a pattern since I've only run what...5 races. Ever. In 9 1/2 months. Yikes!

9 1/2 months.  Hmmmm.... where have I heard that one before?

So what IS next?

I am going to do the same thing that I did the last two times I had a big life event happen after 9 1/2 months (Thank you Simon & Isabella!).

Enjoy new life.
Heal.
Be.
Love.

That may sound like I don't have a goal, but I will completely argue that one. The journey is the goal.  

And that means going back to the mantra David & I said during those first few precious months of our children's lives when were in new-baby-overwhelmed-trying-to-multi-task mode.  You can't multi-task well with an infant in your arms. Well we couldn't. So our mantra was.....

One thing at a time.

And right now, that is just run.

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Here is today's awesome trail mix lunch run.  I have run the Arnold Arboretum at least 50 times over the last year and some of these paths were new to me. I just never took them before.  It it amazing once you open your eyes to new possibilities and don't follow a plan.  I wonder what else I can find (me & my camera next time!) the next time I go out.