There’s a trap I fall into sometimes, and it’s called “life is so perfect for everybody else.” As in, nobody else’s hair frizzes into an ‘fro when August rolls around, or struggles to stay in shape, or gets obsessed with celebrity gossip in lieu of keeping up with their perusal of Nabokov short stories. Nobody at work sits at their desk cursing their job responsibilities, and nobody overdraws on their bank accounts or screws up their first attempt at home haircolor. Right? It’s so easy to romanticize, even when your good sense chides you for playing such a ridiculous mental game.

And then I discovered the food blogosphere, which is like being James Stewart in Rear Window. Except it’s a million little windows into the lives of others, and these people know they’re being watched. There’s an intimidating polish and structure to the whole thing. It’s not a complaint, really—I’ve found honest, sincere friends and incalculable inspiration here, after all—but it’s rare for someone to chat about a spectacular flop in the kitchen, or the mind-numbingly boring sandwich they eat everyday at noon.

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The corn-and-tomato inundation has begun, and every week, our CSA share gets heavier and heavier. Last Thursday—pick-up day!—the plastic handles of the bucket-like bag dug themselves deep into the creases of my bent fingers. And in order to make it from the drop-off cooler back to my car, I had to lean to one side, awkwardly swinging myself in a forward motion. So the real fun started at home, after the heavy lifting, as we stood in the kitchen and puzzled over the fate of our new friends.

With no grill to our name, we relied on Mexican flavors to imbue the ingredients with a summery taste. Not that they needed much garnish—food this fresh doesn’t need to be masked by spice or ever meet a flame to be rendered delicious. But hey, we’re partially in this CSA thing to stretch our creative muscles, and so here’s what we cooked up.

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For the past month and a half, it’s been all about the vegetables. So, unleashed at the farmers’ market last weekend, we lunged greedily at the berries and stone fruits with outstretched arms. Some people may have found all the lunging a little bit intense—awkward and socially out of place, perhaps—but we were okay with that, since our greediness was rewarded handsomely. Apricots, three pounds of sour cherries, a quart of sweet cherries, a ripe cantaloupe? Procured. And taking into consideration the quart of blackberries and the huge bag of peaches we picked in Purcellville immediately thereafter, the people may have been right in deeming us a tad overeager. But guess what? All of that fruit is either cooked up or residing in our bellies, save for two pounds of pitted sour cherries that lie chilling in the freezer, awaiting their sentencing (which will likely include significant pie time). And we still had room for the contents of our CSA share. Never fear, dear readers! Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

This week was all about food-blog inspiration, as we eschewed cookbooks and magazines in favor of some delicious things that Kristin, Andrea, Shannalee and David have all waxed poetic about. So I guess you could call this a shout-out to my homies, although I’m too much in awe of their talents to elevate myself to fellow-homie status. I am failing to hatch a more appropriate and deferential slang term, so maybe I’ll just quit while I’m ahead. Yeah, likely a good idea. And then I’ll make some more of their featured recipes, because they made my on-hand ingredients shine, fruit and vegetable alike.

Ahem. Stream of consciousness aside, here’s where all the veggies went.

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I have two competing sides of my personality: the antsy one that craves new adventures, and the homey one that wants nothing more than to live life as a series of comforting routines. It’s a yin-and-yang dynamic that shoots me off on a road trip one weekend, then renders me homebound the next. I imagine it’s not uncommon to find this sort of split personality, the kind that makes you use all your energy on something exciting but requires a battery recharge before your next attempt.

After a solid five weeks as a CSA subscriber, I’ve realized that getting my weekly produce share complements both sides of my personality. There’s a fair bit of comforting sameness as the weeks fold in and out of each other; every Tuesday, I read through the weekly e-mail from Farmer John, telling us what to expect in that week’s bag. On Thursday, I swing by my local dropoff point after work, thumb through the offerings, and enjoy a quiet night of veggie-washing, wine-sipping and recipe-procuring with Ted. And with so many raw ingredients to work with, I’m able to content myself with lots of calm puttering around the kitchen. At the same time: having your weekly vegetable allotment dictated to you? It’s a challenge, and we’re constantly hunting down ideas and recipes that will use up our entire share without requiring us to give up our social lives. Never before have I made this many new dishes in a week, or eschewed “dinners” of peanut butter and toast for so long, or learned so many new cooking techniques. Belonging to a CSA program has asked a lot of me, and it’s given a lot back. It calls me to expend mental and physical energy, and then it recharges me with the best food I’ve ever had.

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I thought I was done with living out of boxes. Far away from college now, I no longer have to switch dormitories every year or shuttle between Washington and Chicago as the summer waxes and wanes; I’ve got a lease, people, and the quiet stability that comes with one. Right?

Not this week. With contractors here daily to renovate everyone’s kitchens and bathrooms, and “all personal items” ordered out of those rooms (that’s a lot of personal items. Like, a lot), I’ve been stumbling bleary-eyed through my life. You know, trying valiantly to ensure that I don’t leave the coffee-maker napping on my counter after breakfast, or my dishes anywhere in, on, or near a dishwasher, drying rack, or cabinet. Somehow, though, I actually managed to eat all my CSA vegetables. Aren’t you proud of me? Admittedly, though, I’m too tired to remember how I achieved such a feat. A recap is in order, to jog my memory:

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Another week, another Popeye-approved amount of vegetable matter ingested. Not to pat ourselves on the back prematurely, but I think we’ve already gotten the hang of this CSA thing! Last week, Friday night rolled around, and we settled in to cook an arugula- and basil-infused pasta dinner instead of trolling the Web for takeout menus, as is our usual end-of-the-week routine. That means a) we’re saving money for our upcoming Mediterranean vacation; b) our antioxidant consumption has skyrocketed; and c) we’re learning so much about cooking. And having fun together while doing all of the above!

I’ve been a lifelong baker, but experimentation in cooking was never my strong suit. My dinners suffered, therefore, on account of this inexperience (and combined with my crippling post-work laziness and an unhealthy dependence on peanut butter). So please excuse my self-congratulatory words, because this newfound ability to cook real weeknight meals really does deserve a gold star! And a gold star, too, goes to Ted, who singlehandedly prepared the chicken stir-fry with snow peas that you’ll drool over below.

Without further ado, here’s how we used this week’s CSA box contents, with only a bit of the cabbage and red scallions leftover to use in tonight’s vegetable stir-fry.

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When’s the last time you wrote a letter? As in, an honest-to-God, pen-to-paper, put-a-“Forever”-stamp-on-it-and-drop-it-in-a-blue-mailbox letter? I’ve been exchanging cards with my grandmother recently, but other than that lovely occasional correspondence, I rely on the U.S. Postal Service to pick up my Netflix envelopes, the odd thank-you note, and not much else. Last summer, though, was the first time in my life that I made biweekly trips to drop letters in the mailbox, and rushed home every evening to see what our mailman had left. My boyfriend had left America for Siberia (as in, “You’ve been sentenced to exile in Siberia!”) to spend six weeks teaching English. (Did you know that Ted is fluent in Russian, and proficient to varying degrees in…let’s see, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Sanskrit? I’m so glad that I’m allowed to brag here, because you should really know how ridiculously smart this guy is.)

On the Russian border with Kazakhstan, at the base of the Altai Mountains, the lines of international communication weren’t exactly thriving. His town’s post office housed the one publicly-accessible Internet portal, but the connection was lazy and the post office only open during Ted’s working hours. Our text messages to one another were mostly lost in transmission. And so even though letters took upwards of two weeks to move between Washington and Siberia, it was clear that they’d be our most reliable means of communication.

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In the, er, glory days of high school, my friends and I eschewed the cafeteria in favor of a stretch of linoleum outside the math department, where we’d sit with our backs against the lockers and eat lunch. It was a quiet place to talk and people-watch, a pursuit that was especially rewarding on the days that my junior-year math teacher made an appearance. He’d saunter out of the math department toward the water fountain, where he’d wash produce for his lunch. And by “produce,” we’re not talking about a baggie of baby carrots; more like entire heads of lettuce. Or whole cucumbers. Or a bunch of radishes, if he was feeling especially whimsical. (To put this all into context, I should add that he was a regular wearer of Hawaiian shirts, and a ukulele player who used a Kermit the Frog puppet as the singing dummy to his ventriloquist.)

Last Thursday, I felt a flashback to those math-teacher moments of old, as I myself stood at the sink washing a entire bagful of vegetables. But I had a good excuse! I’d just picked up the bounty that was my first CSA share.

Signing up for a CSA program (community-supported agriculture) means you receive weekly deliveries of produce from a local farm based on whatever’s blooming, and this marks my first year as a subscriber. (What can I say? Local produce tastes good, and now there’s no way to avoid eating my greens. Plus, I like a good kitchen challenge.) Graceland Farm’s summer program began last Thursday, and it’s been a vegetable-infused whirlwind! I thought I’d let you in, dear readers, on some of the fun—and, okay, the utter craziness—of it all.

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Show of hands: Who here is excited about the three-day weekend?

Are you ready to stand over the grill flipping burgers, hungry friends gathered alongside? To don your shades and take a bike ride under the blazing sunshine?

To watch baseball, the ultimate warm-weather sport? To spend the first of many weekends poolside? To see the Sex and the City sequel, no matter how terrible the trailer looked?

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I can feel summer creeping into the air. This morning, I was wrapped in a light blanket of humidity as I walked into the office; it’s not overbearing yet, but having braved my first Mid-Atlantic summer last year, I know how thick that blanket will be by July. And with that first hint of the coming season, I caught myself thinking back to the summer of 2009, when I was a freshly-minted college graduate living in the city.

With the aid of Craigslist, I’d snagged the master bedroom in a house with dirt-cheap rent. My three roommates and I lived in Bloomingdale, a neighborhood in D.C. near Howard University, where all the neighbors sat on their front porches and called out friendly hellos as I walked by. There may have been chicken bones lining the sidewalk, but everyone took pride in keeping their little rowhouse gardens well-tended. Noisy liquor stores stood next to hipster-approved schools of yoga—the neighborhood definitely had character!

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