Hello, my name is Maddie, and I haven’t been on a vacation in two. years.

It all started so innocently, with the wrapping-up of two delicious weeks in Hawaii in 2008, where I devoured tuna steaks and soaked in the ocean air like it was my job. But the next May brought with it a supposedly wonderful thing called “college graduation,” in which you leave the all-expenses-deferred student lifestyle only to stumble upon a rude awakening called “student loan payments.” Hello, full-time job. Hello, entire post-graduate summer spent running through the D.C. humidity in a pantsuit trying to secure said full-time job.

And now we are here, two years later. Recession be damned, I secured that full-time job, and the ten precious, precious vacation days it offered. I also secured a rather alarming amount of real life-induced, vacation-starved burnout along the way. So starting tomorrow, I’ll be using half of my vacation days (and my entire tax refund) to fly to Croatia, sun myself on its beaches, and gorge myself on its seafood risotto. I will stay in a cozy little apartment, and take day trips to Bosnia, offshore islands, and national parks. The whole time, I will also be cursing myself for not living in Europe, where giving someone only ten vacation days would probably be considered a criminal offense.

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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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As an ethnic Jew with no serious investment in the religion, Chanukah means one thing to me, and one thing only: latkes! In college, I had a wonderful roommate who, having also fallen from the graces of the Tribe, shared my latke-centric outlook on the holiday. One year, she suggested we spread the love to our friends, most of whom had attended Catholic schools growing up and needed to learn the way of the latke. We would throw a Chanukah party! This was all fine and good until she revealed that her proposed guest list was twenty names long. That meant twenty latke-gobbling humans in our apartment, shoveling potato pancakes into their maws as fast as we could fry them up.

It didn’t turn out to be the epic disaster I’d vehemently sworn it would be. Nevertheless, four pounds of potatoes into our preparation, I was casting evil glares in her direction as I bloodied my knuckles over a washboard grater, the pile of potatoes turning an unappetizing shade of gray as they were exposed to air. Unsurprisingly, I haven’t made a latke since.

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Given my historical predilection for the stuff, I thought that I’d be constantly daydreaming about peanut butter during my week of PB purgatory. Happily, I’ve discovered that with enough delicious new recipes thrown into the mix, old familiars don’t beckon to me quite as convincingly.

I started simple for lunches, just to make the weaning process less painful. Mark Bittman’s hummus, in all its lemony and cumin-spiked glory, pairs perfectly with pita wedges and sliced vegetables. For dinner, I’ve made things more interesting: I roasted a chicken and turned the leftovers into a burbling pot of soup, complete with dill, celery, carrots, and brown rice. I spiced up a head of broccoli by roasting it with olive oil and garlic, then tossing in toasted pine nuts, Parmesan, lemon juice and zest (run, don’t walk, to Ina Garten’s recipe). I made a pan of roasted tomatoes from the same cookbook, magically turning the sad winter produce into concentrated pockets of garlicky, balsamic-y flavor. They’ll be amazing on sandwiches, over pasta, or alongside scrambled eggs.

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After a long day at the office, I love coming home to find little red Netflix envelopes waiting in my mailbox. Tearing open one of those perfectly-engineered packages is like opening a present, and feels all the more gift-like given what interesting surprise is waiting inside. In the past month, my queue has delivered me a historical drama about Genghis Khan, a forgotten Molly Ringwald tearjerker, a documentary on a rock ‘n’ roll choir made up entirely of senior citizens, and “The Sting” (featuring the very dashing Robert Redford).

If I can contain my excitement for five minutes before rushing to the television, DVD in hand, it’s the perfect opportunity to drag out a big covered pot and make popcorn the old-fashioned way. I simply heat up a splash of oil, throw in the kernels, and place the lid on tightly (it becomes clear why this is important in, oh, about a minute, when kernels start whizzing around like bullets in the Dutch oven). Even if I only manage to season the stovetop popcorn with a shower of salt, my tastebuds still sing like no microwave popcorn could ever make them sing. And then it’s really showtime.

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