T Minus Four Weeks

Today marks exactly four weeks prior to my start date in London.

Despite two weeks away (a week at the corporate mothership learning my new job and then a week at the in-laws for Christmas) we have made great progress on the London prep. I have booked tickets for us and the cats (flying out Jan 23), we have temporary housing, we have a storage locker for the stuff that is staying and are getting moving estimates for the stuff that's coming, and we've picked out what is what for each of those categories. We have started packing the non-essential stuff that we are leaving behind, and Mary is shifting into "clean the freezer out" mode. It's starting to get real!

The two trips were very successful in their own rights as well. The work trip was mainly to introduce me to my new job and team, and went well. There are a lot of interesting projects going on, and I really enjoyed talking with all the folks I met. I also got re-introduced to the joys of recreational math via Project Euler and will likely be using that to refresh my Perl skills. I haven't used it in a while, and even when I did I allowed myself to succumb to the laziness that Perl inspires rather than keeping myself disciplined into writing decent code. The new group uses a lot of well-structured Perl, so hopefully that will shame me into behaving.

Christmas was fun, and it was nice to see my in-laws. It's always a pretty chill affair, and we were able to relax and chat and unwind from all of the London madness. Per our request for folks to avoid durable goods we got mostly gift cards, though we did get a bunch of travel books for England and Europe which we plan to use quite extensively.

Go Mode

Every sufficiently close relationship tends to develop it's own language. Sometimes, I feel like Mary and I speak entirely in code. An example of this is "Go Mode". Go Mode is when one of us gets so focused on doing something that everything else -- no matter how important -- falls by the wayside. An example of usage is "Bill, I know you are in Go Mode, but you still need to eat." One generally uses it to describe the other spouse, and tries to pronounce the capitols.

After quite a while of nothing much at all going on with the move, every imaginable thing was suddenly getting underway at once. In part, we have a handful of related things we wanted to get squared away before leaving (doctors visits, a week-long trip to CT for me for work, Christmas travel) and December seemed like the perfect month to schedule absolutely every one of them. Suddenly, we were both in Go Mode all the time.

Now, we finally feel like we are getting stuff done. As of Thursday our visas have been issued, and those should be getting FedExed to Mary's office as I type. We have appointments with several moving companies, and have selected a storage place for the things we are not bringing. We've picked a travel date, and I have reached out to the travel agent to start getting the ticketing process (more of a process due to the cats) underway. We even have temporary housing almost squared away! I place to live! How novel!

The way to really tell that I am finally out of Go Mode though? I actually slept through an entire night last night, without once waking up to mentally iterate through our many to-do lists. Take that, Go Mode.

My Voice Is My Passport. Verify Me.

As part of the visa process, we have to go in and "have our biometrics taken." Biometrics! It's sounds so scientific and futuristic! We knew that this would involve fingerprinting, but what else? It had to be more, because if it was just fingerprinting then it would be called "having our fingerprints taken." But this? This is Biometrics!

I, being fascinated by the world, am dying to find out what this means. Will there be retinal scans? Voice printing? Will state-sponsored phrenologists be called in to map the complex geometry of our skulls to prevent Tom Cruise in a rubber mask from infiltrating the UK? We'll know later.

Update: We have now returned from the biometrics and....it was just fingerprints. High-tech scanning of the fingerprints into a computer, but still. They also took another photo. This time, smiling was ok as long as no teeth showed. I went with the blank stare again, just in case.

She's Having His Baby

Fetch the royal dummy!

Hereditary rulers in modern times fascinate me. I can see how lineage could make a difference in olden times. When you couldn't ride across the kingdom in a single day, having a broad network of people who through trust, fear, or purchase could be relied on to enforce your rules would be key. Maintaining the various mergings and divisions of those networks via marriage and birth is the easiest way to make sure that folks stay in line even after you die.

In modern times however...just...how? How are there still kings? I do realize that unlike some (I'm looking at you, Kim Jung Un) the royals in the UK are actually figureheads, more preservers of culture than setters of policy. Still, It's fascinating.

So now a royal baby is on the way. I had actually been hoping for this, because I am curious to what extent the average Londoner cares about the royals. The run-up to this little bundle of joy's birth will be the perfect lens through which to view those feelings. Do they actually care? Or are the royals just their version of the Kardashians with worse teeth and more corgis? Can I pick up a commemorative plate? Will we get the birthday off from work?

Kafka Needed To Laugh More

I am not a big one for bureaucracy. At work I try to impose the minimal amount of process needed to keep things moving smoothly, and when faced with byzantine systems in real life I get a little loopy. Our strategy for dealing with this is generally to treat it all as a large absurd comedy. Getting our visas has had some great gags. First off, when I was speaking with my immigration lawyer about the process, she mentioned that one step would be carried out by "mister visas". She continued talking, but my mind immediately started spinning. Did she just say Mr. Visas? She does have that accent, maybe she didn't. Oh, she said it again! Maybe...it's...a dude? Named Mr. Visas? Who does visas? No, it must be some kind of fast-food visa procuring chain? But....that also makes no sense! I am happy to report that it is, indeed, the latter. I got an email from her with contact info for the agent at Mr. Visas who will be handling our request. Weird. I guess any sufficiently complex task presents a niche to be filled. That email also included instructions for getting our visa photos. This included a full two pages that not only laid out the twenty guidelines that the picture must conform to, but also had examples of compliant and -- much more entertainingly -- non-compliant pictures. We spent the train ride home yesterday giggling over them.

I am sure that there will come a time in my move when different word meanings will stop making me giggle like a little kid, but today is not that day. Get that dummy out of there!

There will be no sassiness in your photo, you little minx.

Open mouths: Not just unflattering, also non-compliant.

Calm down, Mona Lisa. They were very adamant that there be no smiling. There were many different examples of non-compliant smiles. I have no idea how I will keep a straight face for this, not to mention a "neutral expression".

I like to imagine that this woman, thwarted in using her headshot, went home and picked the most non-compliant background she could find just to needle the visa processor. I may be investing a stock-image photo with too much malicious intent. Mary's first comment on seeing her was "How did they not call her out for that smile?"

A New Chapter

When I created this, I named it after my general attitude towards blogging. I feel that to have a blog worth reading you need to write about unique experiences, to write with a unique voice, or -- in a perfect world -- both. I felt I had a little of both, then proceeded to write over a hundred posts about vegetables. Now that I find myself going on a fairly unique adventure with a move to London for several years, I hope to be a bit better about posting my experiences and thoughts about the whole thing here. We'll see how that goes.

CSA 2012 Week 11

It's midsummer, so it's officially time for me get to behind on posting the CSA pictures and watering the plants. Like clockwork, I am. Hopefully the chard on the roof isn't all dead.

More corn is always welcome. We tend to sneak it into various soups and dishes that don't necessarily call for it, and it brings a nice sweetness and crunch. Love it. Quite a mix of tomatoes this year. I don't recall getting as many cherry tomatoes last year as we are this year, but I am sure that if I looked back I'd be wrong. Green beans It seems early for a rutabaga, but they keep well so it's fine if it ends up sitting for a bit. Rutabaga is probably our favorite root veggie, so it's welcome even if it is early to the party.

I have nothing left to say about potatoes. Towards the end of the season, broccoli plants start sending off a bunch of smaller offshoots which look like slightly leggy florets. We got a huge pile of them this week, and ended up roasting and tossing them with chili-garlic paste. Roasting makes most things better. Onions These bell peppers got roasted and made into a salad. We've swapped pickup sites this year, and due to the logistics of the new location our veggies are spending a bit more time un-refrigerated. This has lead to some stuff arriving slightly overripe or -- in the case of peppers -- already with some soft spots. It's tough to use this many of them in such a short amount of time, though roasting helps to extend the runway. The farm is aware of the issue and trying to adjust the shares a bit to compensate.

CSA 2012 Week 10

More corn! It's odd, because corn is the crop that is most often shown when the news wants to demonstrate the drought conditions, but I feel like we are getting a ton of it from this farm. I think we'll finally grill some (with delicious Chorizo Brats from Paulina Meat Market) and then wing it with the rest. I cut out two recipes for corn ice cream that Mary is not at all on board with, but I am dying to try. We'll see if I can sneak that in. A giant bag of yellow and green beans. The bulk of these will go into a salad with dill and sweet onion, the rest will probably just get steamed. Fingerling potatoes do well in potato salads, so we'll likely pull one of those recipes out. Shockingly brightly-colored orange eggplants. We made caponata last week, but we also have a pasta recipe that calls for either zucchini or eggplant, so we'll probably swap this in on that.

So, about that cantaloupe...I guess they really like the weather. While last week's was absurdly small, this is one of the largest I have seen. We're scheduled to get another this coming week, so I am curious to see if they will continue to grow until we need a separate box just to hold the melon. Shallots, garlic, and onion all came bundled together. Nothing has a specific destination yet, other than the bean salad (these are supposedly vidalias and the salad calls for sweet -- serendipity!) More lovely tomatoes. These are going into the aforementioned pasta dish with the eggplant, and getting sliced and eaten with salt. Mmm...tomatoes. A honest to goodness, full size green pepper. We always seem to get a wide variety of sweet and hot peppers from this place, so sometimes it's nice to see a plain ol' bell pepper. Ah, the simple things.

CSA 2012 Week 9

This week's share felt a bit smaller, but it's hard to judge the farm harshly. There are currently four counties out of over a hundred in Illinois that are not deemed at an emergency level of drought, and the non-drought ones are all the urban area around Chicago. Yikes.

This week the full-sized tomatoes begin! We also got a nice mix of various cherry and grape varieties. mmm....tomatoes. This rather large bunch of basil will get pestoed. I have read that if you blanch the basil before making the pesto that it will stay greener, but time will tell if I will go through the effort. More glorious corn. A bunch of this got used for our favorite corn recipe. So good. Though we have been grilling a fair amount this summer, we haven't actually grilled corn yet. Weird. One gigantic cucumber. This guy is just massive. It went into a simple tomato, cucumber, and feta salad.

This cantaloupe is evidence of how spare the veggies are. Generally fruit only goes to folks with the fruit shares, but I think the veggie harvests are so far down they are scrambling a bit. Red potatoes The New York Times had a big article on ways to use eggplant last week that proved to be well-timed. We had a few from last week still, so we made caponata with those and some of this batch, then will use one of the NYT recipes with the rest of these. Aside: White eggplants actually look like eggs. Weird! A big bag of small sweet peppers. These run the gamut from green to red, and were used in the caponata and here and there. We did our roasted pepper salad, but used last week's share for that.

CSA 2012 Week 8

Very darkly skinned blue potatoes. They are less shocking on the inside, though still quite distinctly blue. Assorted sweet peppers. No specific plans here, which means we are probably in trouble since peppers tend to come in landslides. Our first tomatoes of the year are these cherry tomatoes. These ones will be getting roasted along with the potatoes for a salad. Not finding the recipe online oddly, though I feel like that's where it came from in the first place. A bunch of greens, which we have declared to be mustard greens. Going with the old standby of winter green pizza, along with some of the chard from the garden. Kohlrabi got honey-buttered.

More glorious corn! Part of this will get banked, and part will get made into a side with leeks. Oh man, I go and shoot my mouth off about being done with cucumbers and what do we get a huge new batch of? That's right. These are pickle-shaped, so I will probably either do another batch of the ones we tried this year (which were fairly traditional) or attempt another batch of Science Pickles. Sweet onions Oh okra. We have found a recipe that I like for this (cut it, salt it, roast it) but Mary's still not entirely on board. Also, I need to prep it when she's not looking, because it really is a horror show inside those pods with their sticky oozing goo.

CSA 2012 Week 7

Despite the weather, the CSA carries on. Not too much exciting to report from last week. I did make a double batch of my mojito cucumber sorbet, and it came out well. I think I may fiddle with the portions a bit more, see if some extra rum smooths it out more. Still, it's not rock hard so that's a step in the right direction.

We are very excited because it's corn season! Corn and tomatoes are two clear favorites when it comes to veggies, so we are always overjoyed when they appear. We made corn and tomato pie with some and froze some for later. Onions A small head of orange cauliflower and a small head of romesco cauliflower. Both got roasted and dressed with brown butter. Garlic

We appear to be on the comedown from cucumbers at this point. We got one english (seedless) and two of the more normal variety. The assorted baby squash is very assorted this time around. Not sure what we'll do with this batch just yet. We don't love eggplant, but we've found a few recipes that we like. This got grilled with some zucchini and dressed with goat cheese and a balsamic reduction. Oh cabbage, my vegetable nemesis. We used this for a recipe that we call "Polish Grandmother Stuffed Cabbage". And, as always, potatoes.

CSA 2012 Week 6

Week six, and things are going well. We aren't feeling too terribly far behind on anything, and we're getting a nice mix. The weather continues to be insanely hot and dry, and I wonder what things will look like later in the season. It seems like everything has been pushed forward by several weeks, so what will we see come late august? Good thing we like cooking greens and winter squash, I guess.

Holy cucumbers! We are pulling out the stops and making a double batch of sorbet with these, as well as a few other dishes. I am also making pickles with the cukes from last week, so it will be a very cucumbery weekend. Four tiny little baby artichokes. No idea what we'll do with this few. We may just prep 'em and freeze 'em. Fingerling potatoes. We are actually keeping up with potatoes so well that we had to buy some last week. Madness! We think that this is a gigantic white beet and are moving forward on that assumption. Most root veggies are somewhat interchangeable, and they are all good roasted (as this guy is fated for) so if we're wrong it won't be the end of the world. This is sprigariello which is a sort of broccoli-flavored winter green.

Green beans A giant pile of zucchini. We totally remember not getting much zucchini last year, but apparently we were very wrong. No worries, we are baking up another batch of zucchini bread and have a zillion sides that take it. Red onions We get kohlrabi rarely enough that we pretty much always make the same dish with it. Eh, when you find something you like, why not stick with it? This basil will go into our chicken with basil and peaches, which is just so very much better than its name leads you to think it will be. Carrots

CSA 2012 Week 5

We missed week four due to travel, and a friend picked up the share. It's always interesting to hear other people's experiences with the CSA. We have been doing it so long that we're old pros, but talking to newer folks brings us right back to how it was to start.

Three heads of garlic including one gigantic one. Mixed baby squash, which appears to be mostly pattypan. We have a great recipe with feta and basil for this. Arugula A really oddly shaped head of green cabbage is destined to be slawed A huge bag of pickling cucumbers. I am not sure what we'll do with these suckers. I may take a stab at vaccuum pickles again, or I may make sorbet. We'll see how the week goes.

Broccoli Kale Onions These green beans are to be wed to bacon for a new dish. Lucky ducks. More new potatoes. We are already falling behind on potatoes, so we'll need to get cracking on those soon.

CSA 2012 Week 3

Broccoli These fava beans got shelled and frozen, to be dealt with later. They actually need to be shelled twice, since there is a tough membrane around the beans themselves. Last time, we did that via cooking, though in theory freezing will do the same. We'll know how that works when we get around to using them. The first new potatoes of the year. Not the last. This purple kale ended up getting sacrificed to the busy-week-before-a-week-out-of-town gods. They are mighty. Spring onions

Purple carrots We found a great hot and spicy slaw for this napa cabbage. Of course, that only used half this giant head, but baby steps. Beets with greens (which we used, this time.) Zucchini Garlic scapes will go into a garlic lover's rub for grilled chicken.

CSA 2012 Week 2

More potatoes carried over from the previous year, these were blue on the inside. Golden beets with huge greens. We've taken to using the beet greens in general, though I am pretty sure this batch got binned. Kale Spinach This is what actual baby carrots look like. I am sure we should be gaga over these and do somethin' fancy, but we always just treat them like normal carrots. I think they went into salads. There is actually a small bunch of cilantro hiding in here, like a spicy vegetal Waldo.

This green garlic was pretty much proper garlic at this point. It had very well formed cloves, and a noticeably woody stem. Crazy weather. Turnips Leeks Red spring onions These english peas got shelled, frozen, and the made into a great pasta this week. Red leaf lettuce

CSA 2012 Week 1 (finally)

Boy I had big plans to actually be on top of things this year. I was going to be get these posts out quickly, link recipes, the works! Yeah, not so much. Life has been very busy lately, so here I am five weeks in and totally behind. I am going to do a quick dump to where we are now, then hopefully be better about keeping up going forward. We are doing Nichols Farm again this year, which is the one we did last year. We did nix the fruit share, and have been buying what we want (i.e. not 100 pounds of apples) at the Farmer's Market. With the weather being so bonkers this year, it's a bit of a mystery what we'll be getting when, so it's like a whole new adventure!

Green onions Snap peas Arugula Red beets Mizuna is a fancy looking, slightly bitter salad green. We planed our own lettuce this year in a fit of madness, so we started out behind the eightball on salads. Potatoes which they store year to year (new potatoes come later.)

Kohlrabi We really don't recall them sending much Lettuce last year, but this time we got it right away. Spinach We have fully embraced the cooking of radishes. It cuts their heat a bit and makes them taste a bit more like a turnip. Green garlic