By the smell of summer after she rains

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Now playing: Sherwood - Home
via FoxyTunes Like my friend Lauren, I'm branching out, learning and trying new things. I'm not doing this to celebrate my 25th year (although I think that's a great idea and that anyone with a bit of a quarter century crisis should try doing one new thing per day). Instead, I'm doing it because I'm tired of just yapping on and on about being green and making a difference--I'd be some kind of hypocrite if I preached it and didn't practice it.

So yesterday I bypassed the dryer and put my clothes out on the line. With the temp at 81 degrees, it seems that this would be easy, but I had to contend with the lack of a basket, the lack of clothespins, a lawn covered with attack plants and vicious mosquitoes. Still, I draped the line with an assortment of colors and sat back in the armchair, thinking that the clothes dancing over my jungle looked about as close to Central America as I can get.

Another new step is that I've joined a CSA. For 18 weeks (except in August, when it will likely be every other week) I'll receive a nice big box of produce --seasonal, fresh, and being grown just 74 miles from my neighborhood. The challenge of joining a CSA is just like that of deciding to eat as locally as possible: you have to be flexible in your cooking. Using the goodies of your CSA requires a change of mindset, just as moving toward locavorism does. Instead of pulling out the cookbook to find an appealing recipe and then jotting down the necessary ingredients, you start with the ingredients and then find recipes to accommodate them. Or you simply improvise and create the recipes as you go along. That's not so easy for me as a fairly new cook, so this veggie box will challenge me in many ways.

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Now playing: Copeland - I'm A Sucker For A Kind Word
via FoxyTunes