The box of vegetables that’s delivered to my door every other week is a daunting prospect of consumption when there are two eaters.  At the moment, I am 11 days in to a 25 day bout of life sans The David (who is somewhere between 15 and 17,000 feet up on Mount Acancagua in Argentina, and also probably not dead.)

So only one eater will be consuming:
4 humongous leeks
1 bunch of dinosaur kale
1 bunch of chard
1 bunch of collard greens
2 stems of broccoli
1 romanesco (that’s the neato spirally one)
1 green leaf lettuce
4 little endives
1 bunch of celery
A bag full of baby bok choy

I read once that fats are an important part of our diet, not only because we need them for proper very scientific functioning, but also because they make things like vegetables taste good and us more likely to eat them.
Exactly right, sez I.
So most likely, much of the leafy green things will get chopped and then sautéed up in a bit of bacon fat and then mixed up with the crunched up bacony bits.  But how many days of bacony greens are we talking here?  4?  5?
Yikes.
And the leeks?
Man.  I like leeks fine, but this is leekier than I feel the ordinary girl is expected to get.

If you’ve got any great recipes or cooking recommendations for this lot, please share!

Also, come over and eat some?

For example, my tupperware pleases me to no end.  But it’s not just any tupperware, it’s Portionware!

The Portionware containers are marked with the exact volume of each vessel, so that you can control your portion sizes!  How very mindful, no?

Given that I don’t really know if I should have a 2 cup serving or a 1 cup serving of whatever it is I’m toting around for lunch today, I’m not so invested in this aspect.

But the pretty pretty nesting rainbow colors!  Whee!

If such a thing interests you, keep an eye out for a deal.  I got mine from Bloomspot and Fab.com.

I may be silly with my monies, but thirty bucks for tupperware is goofy, even for me.

if you were loving Downton Abbey and need a little more WWI era British aristoacracy in your life

then try The House at Riverton by Kate Morton.

I know, I know. Television ≠ books.  But still.  You gotta take it where you can get it.

1.  I was 13 when I had my first kiss.  It was at a dance during summer camp.  His name was Matt.  After summer camp was over, we had a brief period of exchanged letters.  In one of these, he sent me a drawing he had done especially for me of The Predator.

2.  High school was a time for much unrequited love.  I didn’t go to prom (though I desperately wanted to) and except for item #1, there was no kissing.  Perhaps one day I will scan and post some pictures from this era to help illustrate the teenage woes.

3.  In the beginning times of The David, there was an afternoon when we were talking about how we felt about one another.  We were both dancing around saying “I love you” for the first time, so instead I told him that he gave me a welling in my heart.  Ever since, “having a welling” has been one of our things.

wheatberry salad with kale, fennel, hazelnuts and orange

Does this picture give you a sense of the epic proportions of this salad?
I started out mixing things in my largest glass mixing bowl.  But had to resort to the bad mama-jama salad bowl to finish.

It’s chock full of good, seasonal, good-for-you ingredients, though… there’s no such thing as too much of it.  And it’s pretty awesome.
Wheatberries are hardy little buggers, so this salad really should hold up.  You can change up the ingredients to reflect what you like best, or what’s in season, but it’s generally easy to put together and once you’ve created a vat of it, it’s a happy little lunch.

look at all the goodness!

What Goes In
2 cups of dried wheatberries (you can find in the bulk section of Whole Foods)
2 bunches of dinosaur kale (that’s the nubbly, pebbly one – what a dinosaur hide might look like)
2 oranges, zest the rinds and then cut up segments of both
1 cup of hazelnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped in the food processor
1 bulb of fennel, cut into eighths and then thinly sliced
1/8th of a red onion, thinly sliced
6 ounces of goat cheese
1/4 cup of white wine or champagne vinegar
1/4 cup of olive oil
salt and pepper

What to do
- Cook the wheatberries – it takes kind of a long time.  Berries and about 8 cups of water go into a medium pot.  Bring to a boil and then cover and reduce to simmer.  Give it about 45 minutes to an hour.  Keep an eye out and make sure  you don’t run out of water.  The wheatberries are done when they are chewy, but should not be too hard.  But you decide how done you like them.
- Chop up kale.  I was feeling meticulous and I removed the ribs of the kale, but you could potentially leave them in.
- If you’re not familiar with segmenting citrus, you may want to skip this element and maybe just squeeze the juice as a part of the dressing.  Segmenting citrus can be messy and is a pain in the tuchis, but is something that a Maggie will do anyway.  But definitely use the orange zest!
- Thinly slice your fennel and the red onion.
- Toast the hazelnuts if they came raw, and give the hazelnuts a chop chop in the processor.   Other nuts would also totally work.
- Start dumping stuff in the biggest bowl you have.  Break up the goat cheese into little globs and start mixing.  The cheese should start to break up and turn into more of a coating than little separate cheese bits.
- Add your vinegar and oil, salt and pepper, and mix.  Taste it and add more salt.  Taste some more, reflect, and add more seasoning if you need to.

*sent to me in 2008 by my magical friend, Alysha.  

Even though this has been going on for almost 8 years, I’m about a decade too old and I have perfect vision, so I didn’t know about Oakland Art Murmur until just recently when I went to meet some friends there for the first time.

I wanted to escape the throngs almost as soon as I finished eating my street cart sausage, but am so glad we prevailed enough to push our way into the gallery displaying Jenn Shifflet‘s paintings, because I can’t stop thinking about them.

Falling into Place

I love the dreamy, ethereal quality of her work, and the way they feel like they could be a landscape from some faraway planet or an underwater depth.  Primordial ooze or the light and reflections of an otherworldly atmosphere. I love the fuzzy bokeh and the strange, sharply clear little details of plants or swirls of constellations or microorganisms.

And oh, do I love these colors.  These blues and greens speak the exact language of my little Maggie soul.

Wishing on the Wind

Dreaming in Turquoise

Anicca

Adrift

(Doesn’t this last one look like what Monet might have seen if he were holding his breath underwater looking up at his water lilies?)

I love that these paintings make me feel like closing my eyes to further bask in the soothing quiet, but that I need to keep them open to keep looking.

I love that Jenn was kind enough to share some of her images with me, so that I could write about and share them.

And I love that she’s making me think about something I like about being in my mid-thirties… being old enough to consider buying art that doesn’t get attached to the wall with tacks.

And then a few days later she’s specifically asking me if I can have a book of the week post ready to go in a few days time.

So, have at it!  Write a blog post!  I can do that.  Sort of.

It’s actually much harder to do for reals, but I’m sure it was good for me.

Funnily enough amongst the zillions of books from the past week, there was a book of official ALT photos and that’s the one I got to choose and write about.

photos of the mini-parties

So now I’m a real private blogger.  A blogger for money.  I’ll do what you want me to do.

Book of the Week:  ’ALT Design Summit – 2012′

As little as 30 minutes at a time.  Sometimes 2 hours or more.

In the dark.  On a sunny day.  On a treadmill.  Next to the bay.  Around and around the lake in my neighborhood.

Consistently for 2 years now and intermittently for 5.

And I hate it.

Every time.  The whole time.  I am filled with dread preparing to do it and I am not getting high when it’s over.

So why, then?  Why do something that I hate?

I have an uncanny ability to force myself to do things I’d rather not do.
Hate is not as much of an impediment for me as you’d expect

More importantly, I have a big dedication to exercise.  And not just that banal pleasantry of “keeping active,” I mean sweaty ass exertion, it doesn’t count if it doesn’t suck.
The fitness element is, of course, important, but exercise also keeps me in check across the board.  When I’m in a regular habit of exercising, my eating is more healthful.  If I take a week off, then my eating habits slide.  Into a bucket of cheesecake caramel swirl ice cream.

So, because I value not being in a constant state of inflation, I choose to subject myself to exercise.

And running?   Why does it have to be the absolutely most torturous form of exercise?  (Other than rowing.  Rowing can suck it.  Sorry.)

Primarily, it’s the calorie burn.  Weight loss is always foremost in my exercising mind.  And if it’s not loss, then for pete’s sake, it’s at least non-gain.  Pretty much nothing beats running when it comes to good old cardio.  Except cross country skiing.  Which blows in San Francisco.  I do not recommend.

That running easily sets you up for specific goals is a really close second reason, though.  Road races happen every weekend.  There is a 5K, 10K, half marathon, full marathon option to shoot for whenever you feel like shooting.  Committing to an event on the horizon means that you have to train in order to complete the event.  There’s a constant sense of plan and purpose.  And the races themselves are actually kinda fun.  A weird sort of fun that is over as soon as I start running (but comes back once I cross the finish line).  It’s the anticipation and the crowd and the ceremony of it all that’s compelling.

Sure, maybe there are a few other options that might meet these criteria, but those require owning a road bike and/or being a competent swimmer.  Even so, there wouldn’t be nearly as many opportunities for event participation in those sports.  (And then there’s the sunshine.  I shun it.  Those people on bicycles are always out there in the vampire killing sunlight.  It’s heinous.)

. . . . . . . . . . . .

I kept waiting to catch the running bug, like people said I would.  It didn’t happen, but I’m open to the idea that it still could.  Maybe as I get faster, fitter, stronger.

But it doesn’t matter.  I’m going to keep doing it.  And even if I hate it, every time, I do love that moment when I’ve finished and I can say to myself with grim certainty, “I fucking did it.”

After too many years of sad, sad singleton-ness in my days of yore, I like a little Valentine’s hoopty.  Not a lot.  But a nod of gratitude to having, when I am well familiar with the wallowing of have not.

I fear that I might succumb to a small amount of irrational wallowing next Tuesday, despite actually *having* a Valentine, so I’ve cultivated a plan to celebrate solo.

1.  I’m going to light candles around a framed portrait of The David, drink a bottle of wine, and sing Muffin Top.

Just kidding.

1.  Hour long massage and foot reflexology treatment.

2.  St Agur cheese.

3.  Pyjama pants and television programming intended for females aged 18 to 24.

I’m pretty sure that is going to feel like some really good hoopty to me.

Getting a massage pretty much trumps anything, but going to see The Vow by myself with a popcorn companion was a close alternative.

Anything tempting on your agenda?