A veggie treasure hunt

Cooking at our house has taken on a new dimension since we joined a CSA-like program recently. Previous menu preparation involved extremely detailed planning of meals for the following week, and a strictly adhered-to shopping list based on those meals. Except, of course, if the Hero was along on the shopping trip, in which case nonapproved items appeared in the cart on a regular basis due to his belief that, "Hey, we need four pounds of bacon!"

Now we have the food BEFORE we know what we are going to do with it. Occasionally we don't even know what it all IS. But we figure that it is a mark of healthy eating to have a certain percentage of food in the refrigerator that is unfamiliar to you.

Possibly because we failed Kale 101 once before (having cheated by giving away some to neighbors), kale appeared, perversely, in our very first food basket. Coincidentally, my weekly cooking lesson called for making a tossed salad with: kale.

The Hero was horrified upon hearing that we would be eating the kale raw.

"You're not going to cook it?" he said, as if facing the prospect of eating raw duck. 

"Don't worry," I said confidently. "I'm going to massage it first."

Now he was worried.

Rubbed with oil, tossed with other salad ingredients and some additional oil and vinegar, it was actually pretty good. We still had half a bunch of kale left.

"The rest is yours," I said. "You can come up with something to do with it."

"I'm not going to massage it," he announced. "Maybe we should cook this batch."

With so many vegetables, we decided to keep a list on the outside of fridge of things we need to use up. We did this because we like lists. Lists give us a sense of accomplishment. Plus, the Hero, like many men, can open the refrigerator and divine that there are NO leeks anywhere inside, despite having looked for only 0.3 seconds, and despite there being several large leeks right at eye level. Lists help reduce this behavior, although they do not entirely eliminate it ("The list says we have three zucchini." "Well, then, we have three zucchini." "But I don't see --" "Don't make me come over there and find them." etc.). 

The Hero was very taken with this list idea, and announced that he had made additional categories in addition to the original vegetables. "See? Now we have Fruit, Beverages, Dairy, Miscellaneous...We can keep track of EVERYTHING we have left."

"Or," I said, "we COULD just open the fridge door and SEE what we have left."

But the list is more fun. And we can't wait to cross kale off the list.