Foodie Sinner

I need to confess something.

(Hi, my name is Carissa, nice you meet y’all.)

Now, back to my confession. I am a foodie sinner. My sin? Wasting food.

You see, I love food. I love it so much. Think back to the beginning of a special relationship: do you remember how excited you were to see each other? You couldn’t get enough of each other! You would do anything to get as much as possible of that person!

Well, that’s how I feel about food.

And I, like Jessi, feel really strongly about real food. Don’t get me wrong; I love processed food too. J. P. Licks ice cream? Yes, please. Annie’s mac and cheese? You betcha. Cape Cod salt and vinegar chips? I’ll have a truckload, thank you, and put it on my tab. But I think real food, as opposed to what Michael Pollan calls “food products,” deserve the majority of my attention. So when my dear high school friend started her own Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, the opportunity to prepay for 20 weeks of fresh, local, organically raised food and support my Lyders was just too good to pass up. So I bought half a share at Luna Farm and said, “Thank you, Lord, for my daily bread. And kale and cucumbers and bok choy.”

So every Thursday, my kitchen looks like this:

At first I tried to eat it all within a week. My sweet Lydia reminded me that long before supermarkets existed, people stored up their harvest for times when the bounty was less… well, bountiful. So I started shoving things in my freezer.

Y’all, this is what my freezer looks like.

I hate to waste food. So I tried to make vegetarian dog food. Turns out they’re natural carnivores. Dang. I’ve pickled more cukes and radishes than I care to count. I’m afraid my face is permanently puckered. I can now proudly sneak grated squash or zucchini into anything. Try me.

(I love pickles. And re-purposing jars.)

But I’m still managing to let food go bad. I reached for a cucumber at the bottom of my crisper yesterday and my fingers went right through it. Yes, that is disgusting. But more than anything, it’s sad. I let some of the most delicious foods in the greater Boston area go bad. And there are plenty of people in the greater Boston area who don’t even have rotten cukes to eat, let alone fresh, local, organic ones.

So I’m feeling a little unworthy of the bounty this season has blessed me with. I need forgiveness.

And I need new recipes for cucumbers and zucchini!