Weekly Local Booty 10/26-11/1/08

We actually got quite a bit of booty from our gardens this week, so our farmers' market trip was a little smaller than usual. With the three days of freezing weather last week, we had to pick all the peppers and tomatoes off our plants. There were a lot of tomatoes. As is the case with Missouri weather, it has proceeded to warm up, and we are experiencing temperatures in the 70s. It's gorgeous, but it is also frustrating since our plants our dead from the freeze.

Check out this week's container and community garden booty:















Petite bell peppers. I washed, destemed, and froze these.















A poblano and a ripe New Mexican chile.















We've got hot banana peppers and lots and lots of tomatoes. The banana peppers have been used in cooking. The tomatoes that were partially ripe were placed in the window in our computer room to finish ripening. The green ones were placed in a paper bag where they will ripen over time. I've been picking through them every few days, taking out any that are soft or show any signs of spoilage, and moving the ripening ones to the top of the bag. As you can see, the tomato plants were making a valiant effort to produce another large round of fruit, it just froze earlier than usual this year. The Roma was covered with tomatoes, we had thought it was pretty well done for, but since it no longer have to compete with the squash, it got a "second wind". I'll be using a few of the green ones to make fried green tomatoes. Yum!

Check out this week's farmers' market booty. This ran us $33.















Starting from the bottom right: new potatoes, a turnip (the purveyor we got the sweet potatoes from threw one in and told us to eat it raw), 2 "Energy" Herbal Oats granola bars, a loaf of our beloved Uprise Bakery ciabatta, 3 leeks, spinach (!!!!!!!!!!), a large jar of dill pickles, and sweet potatoes.

I also got some other awesome "local booty" today. I got a few books from a local alternative store, The Peace Nook. I don't buy books very often as we have a great library in Columbia, and I also have a university library system at my disposal. But occasionally, books come along that pique my interest that aren't available through these resources. These are the books I buy, and The Nook generally has them (or they will order it for you) - 'cause they have a lot of my kind of reading material. I've had a list of a few books I've wanted to pick up, and this is what I chose:















I know you all can see the titles - though the picture is horrible (I had to use the flash) - but let's start at the bottom. World Made By Hand by James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler also wrote The Long Emergency, and I've been a long time fan of his blog, Clusterfuck Nation. This is a novel he wrote about the post-oil world (with a little climate change thrown in I think), I don't read fiction very often, so I'm pretty excited. The next book is Crisis & Opportunity by John Ikerd. I had the privilege of meeting Ikerd at a book reading/signing of one of his other books, A Return to Common Sense. Ikerd is a professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri - where I work. This book is a collection of essays about the opportunity for sustainable agriculture in a peak energy/climate change future. The last book is Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin. This is a fairly "old" book. It was first published in 1981 and revised and reprinted in 1993. The title of the book is pretty self explanatory, and I've never read any of Elgin's other work, so I can't say much beyond that.

I am a huge nerd, I adore books - especially non-fiction - so this was the highlight of my weekend!

I wanted to share a picture of Gabby. She has a "thing" for bags, and was quickly interested in the bag the potatoes from the farmers market came in. Luckily I was snapping farmers market booty pictures so I was able to get a few of her playing in the bag. I love this one - check out at that smug look on her face!















I'm looking forward to a day of football tomorrow, with some cooking and laundry thrown in for good measure. Brett and I do informal "weekly picks" and I am 3 games ahead as of right now. We split on a few more games than usual this week, so we'll see how it pans out. I'm sure none of you really care, but my fantasy football team is 3-3. We are currently second in our "division". A lot of our players were on a bye last week so it was pretty ugly. We appear to have a better chance this week - I hope Plaxico Burress has a better game - we are "playing" an undefeated team. Football makes winter better.

Have a great weekend everyone!

'Til next time.