Weekly Local Booty 12/14-12/20/08

Thank you everyone for the incredibly kind comments on my last post. There are times when immersing oneself in information can become a bad thing. Reflecting on the current situation and the relative helplessness it can lead to are tough to deal with at times, and it helps to make sure that you take the "heavy stuff" in moderation and make time for the fun. I am generally very good about this, but at times I find myself overwhelmed. I think it is something that all of us who are concerned with the state of things, the sustainability of our current situation, with minimizing our impact, feel - without moderation it can really start to bog you down. I appreciate all the comments and have been (and will continue to) take the advice given. Brett and I are going to enjoy this chilly day in Mid-Missouri by playing games together and making a tasty dinner. I might try to get a little reading in as well, but thankfully, the books I have in "queue" are not heavy or depressing, quite the contrary. And though I always say I will do book reviews and then forget until I am immersed in another book, I will try to do reviews of the ones I have yet to read.

Anyways, on to the real purpose of this post, this week's local booty! You will notice that there isn't nearly as much here as we usually get, we have a lot of local goodies around still: peanut butter, almond butter, tahini, salsa, jam, pickles, walnuts, pecans, chestnuts, pasta sauce, locally produced chocolate, apples, squash, potatoes (sweet and regular), kidney beans, onions, garlic, and the last of our community garden tomatoes that were ripened in a paper bag. With the "non-locals" starting to show up at the Root Cellar, I have also starting using the stash of local veggies and other goodies we froze over the summer from our garden, CSA, and the farmer's market. I did pick up some non-locals this week, but they are a minority of the ingredients planned for use in this week's meals.

I didn't make a trip to Uprise Bakery this week as Brett is doing fine on coffee and we are planning a chunky soup eaten with tortilla chips for this weekend. I considered stopping in for breakfast on my way to work but we had some seriously crazy winds yesterday morning here in Columbia.

Here is this week's haul from the Root Cellar, this ran about $30.















Starting from the bottom right: lots of shiitake mushrooms, 4 lbs. of purple potatoes (we really like potatoes), cayenne peppers, carrots, 2 avocados (not local, obviously), a bell pepper (not local), and a bunch of Red Russian Kale (not local, from Colorado). I also got a St. Louis produced Fitz's Root Beer; it's just not pictured here.

I forgot to talk about fantasy football/football picks last weekend, and I know how very disappointed that makes you all, so I will fill you in on what happened. Our team snuck into the playoffs, the first of the two games was last weekend. Unfortunately, we lost our playoff game and thus our fantasy football season is over. We are both very pleased with the outcome, neither of us thought we would come even close to doing as well as we did. In football pick news, Brett had gained a slight lead on me - but we split on quite a few games last weekend - I now have a 3 game lead since I "swept" in the games we split on. "Fucker" was his response to this outcome. :-) We split on 3 games this weekend, so we'll see how it pans out.

Song of the Day: "Lullaby of Birdland" - Dexter Gordon and Lionel Hampton

Have a great weekend everyone!

'Til next time.