CSA Week 11

CSA Week 11 Haul. August, 2008. photo Jenonymous/Group News Blog.

Note: This post was delayed roughly 36 hours in going up due to my travel schedule home from Denver. --Jesse

Mucho Food with Pix and More Lady-Plumbing Stuff

Hello darlings! Sorry for the lateness again; life has been coming at me fast lately (as per prior posts) and here, on this gorgeous last-bit-of-summer Saturday evening, I am finally catching up with the CSA post that should have been up earlier this week. Instead of pissing away time playing Age of Conan, I have spent the evening cooking, but more on that next week. My timing may be off for the rest of the season so please be patient.

However, as per my promise last week, I am supplying you-all with Extra Food Pron Photos!

Without further ado, here's the rundown of who's who in the group shot:

• 5 Peaches
• 2 Nectarines
• 1 wedge Raw Milk Blue Cheese
• 1 large but thin Ham Steak (smoked)
• 1 package (about half a pound) Frozen Sliced Beef Liver (grass fed grass finished; cows went to Harvard)
• 1 loaf Farm Bread
• 1 Large Squash (actually two Siamese-twin squashes joined along the long axis)
• 2 pounds Red and Yellow Artisanal Tomatoes
• 2 pounds Apples (Cortlands?)
• 1 head Wild Feral Dark Green Celery (very bushy, leafy, and herbaceous; nothing like the anemic stuff at the supermarket—a whole 'nuther plant in my book)
• 1 pound Green String Beans
• 1 bunch Basil
• 1 bunch Summer Savory
• 1 bunch Dill
• 1 small container Blackberries
• 1 large Cucumber

Being as I am still bleeding, and last week was a rough one, I mostly made salads with what I had and otherwise Minimized Effort.

I did manage to hang up last the Summer Savory to dry (see pic). Love the little purple flowers on it!


CSA Week 11 Summer Savory. August, 2008. photo Jenonymous/Group News Blog.

One Very Good Thing that I did was break out the Le Creuset Grill Pan and pan-grill the giant ham chop (see pic). This became part of a wonderful Scandinavian Salad, based roughly on the cucumber-and-cold-meat based salads of Finland and Scandinavia.


CSA Week 11 Ham. August, 2008. photo Jenonymous/Group News Blog.

Basically, I cut off 1/3 of the cooked chop and diced it. The entire large cuke got peeled and cubed. I also cubed one of the smaller apples, and tossed it with a little lemon juice to prevent browning. I added to this a VERY thick grip of dill, chopped up (stems, fronds, and all—a grip of dill about as thick as my index finger at the stem end, which is a lot for a single serving). This got tossed in my Salad Cube Thingie. In the little dressing chute I put a lot of white herb vinegar, some salt and fresh-ground black pepper, and a tiny smidge of olive oil (the ham when cold is very moist and fatty).

The next day I substituted a lot of the celery for the cuke and added some almonds, some of my Mutant Yellow Carrots cut into pennies, and added a smidge of mustard to the vinaigrette. I also took along some dried fruit as a snack; the past week I've been getting 4 PM cravings and energy crashes like nobody's business.

I also indulged in many Guilty Pleasures, as I started to have some serious food cravings last week—I think it's because my body and hormones are all fucked up from the D&C and blood loss from the biopsy.

Guilty Pleasure #1—fresh peach halved; pit removed, pit area filled with home-made Greengage Marmalade (from last week). Eaten as-is.

Guilty Pleasure #2—a nectarine, a few Shiro plums, a few figs, and the last of my peach ice cream (a box hanging out in my fridge all summer, picked at slowly), mixed with milk and sugar in the blender. That was dinner one night.

Less Guilty Pleasure: Asian Slaw: I shredded the two very tiny cabbages from last week (so that they wouldn't turn to mush) and salted them lightly. I then rinsed and added fish sauce, rice wine vinegar, some smoky sesame oil (seasoning grade, not cooking grade), and black pepper. This was VERY salty and yet very satisfying—I've been having these fucked-up salt and protein cravings all week.

Totally Unguilty, Zero-Calorie Pleasure: Stolen shamelessly from Freeze Peach Café, the place where my CSA has its pickups—Campfire Tea. To make: Get some loose Lapsong Souchang tea. Either use a REALLY big tea infuser or make one yourself by putting a goodly amount of loose tea in a coffee filter and tying it up into a sort of dumpling with kitchen string. If you are lucky enough to find decent Lapsong Souchang done up in teabags, use about 6 per quart or so. Put in a pitcher or jar of cold water and let hang out in your fridge at very least overnight. If you put this up in the AM before going to work, it'll be ready by the time you get home. Squeeze out the giant teabag if you made your own (or the commercial teabags) into the pitcher. You'll have a very flavorful, smoky iced tea, hence the name. Very good with a squeeze of lemon and/or a shot of whiskey in it. I like mine as-is but both variations are good also.

Final Guilty Pleasure from this Delivery: Take the ends of all the luxury cheeses that you have left that you want to use before cutting into any new cheese. Put on a cutting board with thin slices of fresh bread cubed up, figs from last week that are about to self-destruct, some blackberries, some mini tomatoes (also threatening to rebel/riot in the fridge), and a blob of greengage marmalade on the side. If you feel really decadent, also put a blob/shotglass of home-made pesto out as well, for putting on the bread. Add a small pile of rock salt on one corner of the board if you need it for the pesto. Make assorted little bites washed down with good red wine and cold water until you're full and sated.

Yes, I know that I've put on a tad of my weight back, but at this point I'm just happy to be motivated to eat right again. Yes, I'm still taking my vitamins and especially my iron supplement. Which leads me to…

Female Plumbing Update of the Week: I'm going to jump ahead to this week's fresh news.

I was bleeding as of this past Thursday, which meant that officially, I may Have Complications. It acted like it was going to stop, and then would start up again—fresh, watery red streaks all day (think thin red water—like watercolors diluted or when you cut your finger and run it under water) followed by a bunch of flow first thing in the AM when I would get up (makes sense if it was pooling in the uterus all night). I called my ob-gyn and she said that this may be normal and that I may be putting up with this shit until my next period, whenever my body gets around to that. She also said to sit tight until my pathology report. My follow-up is next Thursday.

So yesterday I bailed from work a tad early (I was the only one left in the office anyway) and when I got out of the subway to my destination (a schwank restaurant that makes killer cocktails—I was dying for one at that point) my cell phone started to beep and I saw that I had missed a call and had a voicemail.

It was my ob-gyn, G-d bless her. She called to say that I can relax this weekend; my path reports and biopsies all came back negative for cancer (thank G-d!!!). The actual physical analysis (ie when they take the uterine evacuate, aka the hideous bloody mess that they scraped out of me and actually LOOK at it carefully) seemed to indicate that I had an endometrial polyp, which can as a category bleed like a motherfucker even when tiny. They are also pretty much invisible to an ultrasound, because unless the uterus is filled with fluid, they tend to collapse against the uterine wall—think seaweed underwater (waving around all feathery) versus dry on the shore (collapsed and small). As such, a D&C can pass right over it—argh. My doc is hopeful that we got all of it out; however, if not, there DOES exist a procedure to find the little fuckers now that we have a culprit—basically the uterus is filled with water before the hysteroscopy, and then when the doc sees them floating up they can be easily targeted and cut off.

In the meantime, I've moved (in the past 48 hours) from the constant annoying "red water whenever I wipe myself" smudging to "nasty brown water with bits in it" smudging. I still can't get away with wearing just a panty liner, but I DID switch to thin-form regular long pads as opposed to the post-surgical weight diaper-feeling things that I was stuck with before.

I also still can't have any vaginally penetrative sex for at least another week, and this includes with myself/Silicon Joe, which is kind of a pain. I also can't go swimming or take a bath (thank goodness showers are OK), which sucks because I REALLY REALLY wanted to hit Coney Island this week, and had to turn down and invite for a trip to a beach house as well. This may be extended for a longer period, depending upon the status of my cervix—if I haven't fully closed up from the surgical dilation, it's at least another week. Fuck. Hating this.

Want my body back, kthxbye.

And I am still goddamned cramping—I was told that at this point it's probably from the biopsy site from my fibroids (I still have one protruding into the uterus but that doesn't seem to be the cause of the bleeding—except for now being as a piece got cut out of it).

Still, I am SO FUCKING GLAD that I got a GOOD Ob-Gyn. Again, my old one just said that my bleeding was "normal" and indeed if it is just that damn polyp that was doing it, we NEVER would have found it just from the ultrasound. I'd still be clueless and she would still be pushing an IUD on me as opposed to figuring out what was causing it.

Anyway, need to go Napalm my kitchen after an all-day cooking session (hint…tomato delivery…hint hint).

Be well and thank you everyone once again for your good wishes, recipes, ideas, and stories!

--Jen