Farmshare, Week Two

It is CSA day!  I am posting on CSA day!  A little late, mind, since there was a birthday party to attend tonight, but nonetheless this is two solid weeks of actual reportage.  Shocking.

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As you may recall, last week's spoils were:

1 Dancine Lettuce
1 bunch assorted herbs
1 quart baby greens
1 bunch asparagus
1 bunch green Onions
1 bunch rhubarb
1 pint black shell beans

1/2 pound chanterelle mushrooms
1/2 dozen duck eggs
Pumpkin/sesame seed red fife crackers

--and while we are not as far through that as we were with Week 1 (due partially to it being stupid, stupid hot out most of the week and not really wanting to cook because it made heat), we have done credibly, if not always well.




I look all pink and delicious, don't I?


This is where most of the rhubarb went: Week 1's, and over half of Week 2's, and then most of the asparagus and some green onion bulbs besides.  In fact, it made me feel downright housewifeian: Two pots going on the stove while I made croutons with some home-baked bread in the oven, and a whole timing thing that only worked out because P. made it in the door with the baby spinach just in time.

Alas, that for all that work, it wasn't very good.

I mean, it wasn't terrible: It just wasn't very good.  It had a strong rhubarb and slightly onion flavour that wanted for roundness and depth.  We dumped a bunch of Parmesan cheese in it to attempt rescue, ate our dinner, and kind of learned our lesson on that one.  Pink soup, you were meh.  We will not make you again.

Rhubarb failure continued with Friday's breakfast, rhubarb and blackberry french toast (we had decided we needed to start using eggs already).  This is not pictured, because I cannot be assed to photograph my food when I've just rolled out of bed, but P. apologized for it and deemed it FailToast, so I gather he was not happy with his creation.  Rhubarb is not kind, guys.  Also, when we're using French bread for this, we will henceforth use more eggs.

Things picked up Saturday night, which is also, sadly unphotographed.  Having worked a hot long day at the bookstore, I came home and promptly passed out face down for a nap, and P. put together a really very good stirfry out of the rest of the asparagus, green onion, green garlic, chanterelle mushrooms, baby bok choy (last of that fruit market stuff!) and some tamarind, oyster sauce, etc.  It was basically a veggies cleanout, and it was delicious because my head hurt and I was starving and yum.

The other thing we learned that night is that pink grapefruit drizzled with a touch of buckwheat honey is basically the best thing on earth.  Guh.

Then on Sunday we went to our local for brunch and didn't cook some more.  Here's my best-beloved P. performing the typical behaviour of his species while I harass him with a camera because he just looked very sweet that day.




Serious tea is serious.


By the time we got back to cooking food it was Tuesday, and we had some eggs to use like a mofo, so I baked some green onion bread and made fancy egg salad (a whole whack of duck eggs, green onion, green garlic, mayo, honey, capers, and some of the herbs from the Week 2 batch).



Open-faced sandwiches seem to be a thing now. Also, salad is good.  And I don't know why the cow looks like he's coming out of my sandwich.

The egg salad sandwich was another of those eight-minute super simple things that tasted really, really good: We piled some baby greens and tomato on top of those suckers and it was pretty much done.  The salad, which is what we did with the Dancine lettuce, the rest of the black morels, some chanterelle mushrooms, and a bunch of the baby greens -- plus some almonds and strawberries that were fading -- was also nice and cold and pretty simple.  I still have a bit left in the fridge.



The laziest dinner.

Since we were continuing all lazy and leftovery: In going through the fridge earlier this week I discovered, among the various frozen food things my roommate left behind when she moved, a package of Loblaws hamburgers.  And well, they were frozen, and they were there, so we thawed them and Wednesday's dinner was hamburger time.

This did actually manage to use CSA food: the rest of the baby greens, more of the interminable green onions and garlic, and that's the last of the chanterelles up there caramelized, with some red onion.  The ketchup is actually CSA too: Made by one of the farm families and bought as an extra in Week 1.  The mustard isn't, but it's locally made at a preserves store in Kensington Market, and was worth the five bucks, as it is amazing.

Hamburgers themselves: strictly okay.  Toppings?  Awesome.  Next time we want burgers I'll just get some ground beef and make them, instead of eating things my roommate left in the freezer because they are there and free.

Dessert, however, was a highlight:



Heh heh.

Just some fruit that was about to go: mango, apricot, strawberries, and blueberries.  But I also poured some Chartreuse in, and let it soak for a while.  And...yo.  Also: Damn.

The crackers, again, got eaten in and around things.  There is no photo evidence of them as yet.  But they were good.

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So for a kind of lazyfaced, too hot, low-maintenance week, we didn't do too badly.

The leftovers:

Assorted herbs
1/2 bunch of green onions
2 or 3 pieces of rhubarb
Shell beans, which I didn't even touch
1/2 dozen duck eggs

--and our provisions for Week 3:

10 Garlic Scapes
6 pieces Rhubarb
1 quart strawberries
Green Onions
Lettuce
Dill

1/2 dozen duck eggs
Oyster mushrooms
Cheddar, paprika, and spelt crackers

Goat milk cheddar, which was not included in our share, but they had some there and the price was right.

We are thinking fish.  And something to do with that damnable rhubarb that'll probably involve caving and making a pie.

And that has been This Week in Local Eating!

Science Fiction. Sexual Harassment. Missing Stairs.

I don't often get the treatment other colleagues describe at SFF conventions.  It's been a good while since I was harassed.

I don't really know why.

I have theories.  I came into prodom somewhat protected -- always around a peer group that was very connected and very assertive.  I am, in public, quite reserved; to the point where I'm probably not that Friendly Nice Author being nice in public.  I'm six feet tall.  My face has never learned to hide the things it's thinking.  I have had long-standing troubles with people trying to violate my boundaries in the past, and now when someone does so, the thing my face thinks is murder.

Honestly, I have no fucking clue why I'm so rarely a target.  And why I've been able to deal with what comes my way, so far, quite handily the second the dial hits murder.  It gives me, I'm sure, a skewed perspective on the problem.

Because I know who many of the people who do this shit are.  Rene Walling took me flat by surprise, but Jim Frenkel was someone I've known not to be around for years.  I have a whole list in the back of my head, passed ear to ear and woman writer to woman writer.  Just in case.

#

Okay, no: wait.  There's one guy.

A local conrunner sort, who seemed to get a little mad at me back in 2004, when I was a baby writer and made politely clear I didn't need his creepy grandfatherly guidance to find my way around my own profession.  Every few years or so he makes public comments about my tits in professional spaces.  Or tries to kiss my hand, and when I take it away, calls me bitch. Or grabs my friend's ass in a convention hallway.  Or throws a full-on tantrum because he would like a book signed, and I am daring to spend a few minutes mid-conversation with another (woman) colleague.

And then I remind him with my face and my voice and my height: murder. And he kind of skitters behind a rock for the next few years, "punishing" me with his shunning, being gloriously not my problem again.  I've been telling myself for a while, since the last time, that the next time he makes a false move I am going to finally bring the hammer down on that asshole.

This is, I realize, a missing stair situation.  I know how to deal with this guy.  He's not, to me, a major problem.

He's not a major problem to me.

Mary Robinette Kowal posted today about not posting Jim Frenkel's name in connection to his sexual harassment of Elise Matthesen at Wiscon, and all the reasons she hesitated -- all the reasons people hesitate.  They hold true.  I have not made noise about this guy because I work at the bookstore, and the bookstore maintains itself as neutral space within the community, high above everyone's slapfights, for good or ill -- and I'm starting to think it ill.  I have not made noise because he's involved with an award, and I'm pretty sure that if/when I do say something, I shut myself off from that award forever, because petty people do petty, petty things.

I have not made noise because it has, to date, just not been enough of a problem for me.

(When he grabbed my friend's ass I came very, very close.  But it was her call.)

No; that's not the whole thing.

Really, I have not made noise because I am afraid that if I do, everyone knew and no one will care.

#

I am thinking about the things I knew about Jim Frenkel.  I'm thinking about Elise, who I admire and respect and call friend, and how maybe if we all had a little more in the guts department when it came to the things we all know, she wouldn't have had to deal with this.

I'm thinking about benign cowardice, the not my problem sort of too busy and but I need that professional opportunity cowardice, and how it is probably the worst kind going.

I'm thinking about noise.

I know why we handle this the way we traditionally have: By warning other women in the industry who not to be near when they're drunk; who not to get stuck in the elevator next to.  But I am getting to think that we're doing ourselves a disservice, here.  Because there's a dual message that comes in, when you say Just between you and me.

It's that if you stick my head up and lay down the truth about what this guy does, everyone in the local prodom and fandom will mutter and shuffle their feet and look away and oh, look at what time it is.

I tire of our collective cowardice.  A community that does not have your back is no damn community at all.

#

A parting thought.  The thought I'm turning over tonight, privately:

Y'know what?  If I injure my career over reporting a harasser?  So fucking what.

I did not get into this profession to make it on the backs of my colleagues.  And I did not get into this profession to sell my morals alongside my books.