But first... we got another of those incredibly huge onions from the CSA today! John doesn't like them because they have more hair than he does! (HE said it, not me!)
So, the potatoes.
The potato harvest is in at Cochran's Produce. I picked up our 50# bag of red potatoes today, for $16. We did this for the first time last year. I know, I know. This sounds totally crazy. But we actually ate 'em all. We stuck them in the root cellar under the front porch, and every week we'd pull a few out, and make oven-roasted fries, or use them in soup or stew. These potatoes make, hands down, the BEST oven-roasted fries. We ate most of them that way! But you can get potatoes at the store, any time, right? So it seems kind of crazy to buy them in 50# sacks. So let me try to explain why I'm so happy about them.
a) the entire bag only cost $16. That's $0.32/pound. This is probably not the absolute cheapest that you can find potatoes, but it's a pretty good price for really good potatoes.
b) they come from Grace, ID, which is 139 miles from here, according to MapQuest. We are buying local, and in season, and supporting a small farm just up the road from here. We buy the red potatoes, so we are, in a small way, casting a vote for farmers to grow more than russets.
c) when we get snowed in, we just don't worry about it. Anyone (especially us, apparently!) can live on potatoes for several days, no matter how long it takes to shovel out the driveway, where the plow plowed us in!
d) there's something really fun about buying 50# of potatoes. It's like saying, 'Yep. I'm planning ahead.', and 'I'm going to be here long enough that I won't be swearing about having to move these potatoes.' Heck, I like just carrying them to the car, and having all these men wondering why I don't need any help.
e) there's also something really fun about looking at John, and saying, 'If you run downstairs and grab some potatoes, we can have fries for a snack.' Or, alternatively, having him look at me and say the same thing.
f) come springtime, there will be a couple of them left. The eyes will have started to sprout, and we'll cut them up, and go plant them in the garden. Later in the year, we'll dig up the tiny baby potatoes and roast them with garlic and onion and herbs, all out of the garden. And that will be dinner, because it will be so fresh, so sweet, so flavorful, so packed with pure goodness that it makes your toes curl.
g) finally, I guess it just makes me feel really, really competent. I have now lived long enough that I can buy a 50# bag of potatoes, and know what I'm going to do with it. I know about how long it will last, and how to keep them from sprouting, and how to ensure that they don't just rot in the basement. And that helps me with my version of the nerves that everyone is suffering from just at the moment. The economy might go to hell, but I'm going to have enough potatoes for the winter. And that's not nothing. That's something.
Isn't that funny? That a bag of potatoes can mean so much on so many levels?
But I have to say that the temptation to buy ten pounds of local peaches, grown not more than 10 miles from here, was almost more than I could bear. Next year. Next year, I'll try my hand at homemade peach preserves, to go in the homemade yogurt, alongside the toast made from home-baked bread, and spread with homemade jam from homegrown grapes, and maybe even a home-laid egg from our home-raised chickens.
Do I really HAVE to go to Socorro and live in a studio apartment for six months? I'm homesick already, and I haven't even left yet.
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