Boston Organics delivery, and other food notes

[magid]

Small box, some fruit.

• a bunch of spinach
  
• a smallish eggplant
  
• six smallish zucchini
  
• a largeish delicata squash
  
• six small yams
  
• seven yellow onions
  
• two oranges
  
• two Satsuma tangerines

And a dozen eggs. Happily, my getting home late tonight didn't mean frozen spinach. They're starting to offer organic cheese from Neighborly Farm in VT; it's too much to hope for that they'd be kosher.

I really can't complain, though, given that my cheddar-holic tendencies have been quite indulged recently. I have four (count 'em: four!) kinds of cheddar just now: Cabot's kosher sharp cheddar (with holographic hechsher!), Tillamook's kosher medium cheddar, Joseph Farms' "cheddar longhorn cheese" (which is "California natural," whatever that means), and tonight's Butcherie find, Royal George kosher mild cheddar ("handcrafted with milk from grass-fed cows"; also, cholov yisroel, though a link to the manufacturer didn't turn up in any preliminary Google searches, and I'm not going to spend more time on it now).

In addition to a recent chocolate tasting opportunity (ah, the glories of 70% dark, and the indulgence of many flavors afterward!), I was gifted with some lovely chocolate bonbons by Max Brenner. I'm totally amused that the ribbon around the box has "chocolate by the bald man" running along one side.

Monday nights are my role-playing nights, so I always need to make something in a hurry if I don't have portable leftovers. This week I made pasta shells and added half of the baked winter squash left from Shabbat, sauteed onions and red chard (that I'd found after buying spinach for the soup. Ooops.), black pepper, nutmeg, cumin, and cayenne, plus some of two cheddars. Weird, but good.

edit 2300: I got home later than planned because I couldn't bring myself to stand around waiting for a bus that would come in n minutes, for some value of n between 1 and, perhaps, 30. Moving is much better than standing around in the cold. So I started walking along the route, carrying my groceries. I realized that there was one pretty long stretch between bus stops, so of course, that's where I was passed (locals: I made it from in front of the Butcherie almost to the intersection of North Harvard and Cambridge St. in Allston). Interestingly, though only one 66 bus passed going in my direction, four passed in the opposite direction.
For future reference, it is just under an hour from the Butcherie to my house, taking the long way along North Harvard rather than the footbridge across the Pike. /edit

Comments

[fairdice.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, though only one 66 bus passed going in my direction, four passed in the opposite direction.

This might be perfectly reasonable, even with busses running on schedule and in equal numbers in both directions, if you walk at a reasonable fraction of the speed of a bus.

Suppose a bus starts the route every half hour, and it takes the bus half an hour to get to the other end (at which point it waits half an hour and then turns around and goes the other way). And suppose you walk at one third the speed of a bus, so you walk the route in an hour and a half.

If you just miss the 3pm bus and decide to walk, then you'll walk from 3 to 4:30, and arrive at your destination just before the 4pm bus would have gotten you there. At 3:45, half way along, you are passed by the 3:30 bus.

Coming the other way, though, you certainly pass the 3pm, 3:30, and 4pm busses, and you might well see the 2:30 just before it arrives, right at the beginning of your walk, or the 4:30 just as it's about to set out, right at the end.

I feel like I've been teleported back to 6th grade brain teasers...

[queue.livejournal.com]

And suppose you walk at one third the speed of a bus

I was going to say that this didn't seem reasonable at all, but the 66 bus goes about 6 miles in, according to its schedule, 30-55 minutes. That's 6.5 to 12 miles per hour, a third of which is 2-4 miles per hour walking pace, and I believe magid's walking pace is slightly faster than 3 miles per hour, so that actually is a good assumption.

[magid.livejournal.com]

These were the brain teasers that I never quite managed to make mine, too.

The busses were on an every 20 minutes schedule (and as it got later, I assumed the busses will be less slowed down by traffic; it was already 8 P.M. when I started walking, well after rush hour). I had no idea whether the last bus was on schedule, though, and this route is notorious for being slow after 7 P.M.. Either I'd catch the bus farther along, or I'll end up walking home (which wouldn't've been an issue had I not been wearing socks that had already worn out; my feet were hurting from them). Apparently I was walking a little faster than 3.2 mph, and that was fast enough that I was only passed the once on the 2.5 miles left on the route.