radiopeter

I am, dear readers, a foodie. Without the snobbish connotations associated with that word, of course. Food is what brings us together and what makes us human. No other animals on the planet cultivate food the way we do. If they did, you can be sure I’d be clamoring to sit at their dinner table and taste what they have to offer.

Somehow growing up in Chicago gave me an adventurous palette. Could have been the fact that I took my first steps in my Dad’s restaurant. Could have been the eating adventures Mom and I would go on when I was the only child left at home. Or it could just be my Aqueerian nature. Whatever the case, Chicago provided the backdrop for the adventures.

I learned to eat with chopsticks at a very young age. I was never afraid of fish being served head-on. Entrails, liver, offal, and generally any animal or vegetable were passed before me and I partook. The only taboo to this day that has held up is shrimp. I used to have a mortal fear of mushrooms until I tasted something other that the canned dark-taupe limp variety. I wouldn’t eat raw onion. And I disliked raw tomato. But today I eat everything, and I mean everything, except shrimp.

Exotica was the shiznit for a while in my book. Snake (delish!), alligator (watery but good, amphibian tasting like frog), snails (eh, the sauce is the highlight), guinea pig (it’s divine!), raccoon (not bad, not good, meaty), ostrich (Raw Bar has the best), buffalo (Heartland’s buffalo chili is beyond), and the list goes on and on. Blood cake stew with intestines (smoky and deliciously chewy), steamed pork-fat (my new obsession), virtually anything Japanese, raw and cooked, and basically anything spicy on the Korean table is ok by me. Just not live baby octopi because when I ate one, it stuck to the inside of my cheek and squirmed too much.

Vegetables of every kind amaze me. Burdock, the newest thing I’ve been playing with, is flawless when done right as a flavoring agent. You can even eat it, but the prep is a bit much for me. Squashes and tubers, greens and beans, fruits and nuts, I’m all about it. Everything is an adventure in the kitchen these days.

I likes to eat. I does.

Food is also history, culture, religion, language, relationships, and ultimately in my world food = love. There is nothing more comforting or more satisfying than sharing a meal with my family or the people I care for. Dinner with friends is what I enjoy most in life, and cooking fills me up like nothing else.

I also find that men who enjoy eating are incredible in bed.

I’ve said this to many people, but the way you eat is the way you act between the sheets. This theory has consistently held true for the men in my life, past and present. If you want to know about how a potential lover will act, share a meal. Watch how he eats. It’s a 1:1 sign of how he behaves in bed.

But back to my point.

I’m right on the edge of releasing something massive onto the internets, and I’m close folks. Real close to making it happen. But, the foodie on the inside of my brain learned about Community Supported Agriculture last year, and I planned to make it happen this Summer.

A CSA is basically a farm, or group of farms, that allow you to purchase a ’share’ in their crops. Depending on the way the CSA works, you usually get regular deliveries of fresh produce. As you can imagine, there are quite a few out there, but after doing my internets research and checking around, I settled on Home Grown Wisconsin.

They offer a pick-up just a block from my house, and the price is right. Every other week for 20 weeks, I’ll get a box of veggies, a dozen farm fresh eggs, a pound of cheddar and a half pound of specialty cheese. All made by a cooperative of farms in Wisconsin, all for $515.

There is a full-share option, but I’m single and don’t think I can manage a box of veggies every week on my own, so I went with the half-share option, plus the eggs (I’m totally a baker) and the cheese because really, who doesn’t like cheese?

Thus far, I think this will be one of the more challenging food tasks I’ve set myself on. Random veggies showing up every other week, deciding what to do with them, learning to cook new things, dealing with a cheese overload, and baking up a storm with farm fresh eggs are all the tasks at hand.

June 11th, it begins.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 7:00 pm and is filed under blogpost. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.