Glad *that's* been decided!

According to this Globe article, as of January 1, Robert McCloskey's Make Way For Ducklings became the official state children's book, while Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, became the official children's author and illustrator of the Commonwealth. Amazing, the powers of compromise.

And now that we have that settled, perhaps we can get some other trifling things settled, such as not slashing UMass funding by well over 10%, or getting plans in place to try to recover some of the cost overruns from the Big Dig, or something?

Side note: This past Saturday was the world premiere (review) of a Make Way for Ducklings piece, played by the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, which has free concerts around the metro Boston area this summer.

Plants and food

Last night I finally transplanted the rosemary I'd bought weeks ago. It still looked happy in its small pot, so I guess it isn't going to be warped for life for not having gotten more dirt earlier. I also planted the sprouting ginger, which already had green shoots and little white roots coming out of the new buds. It's exciting to grow some, but I never could figure out how/when I should harvest some when I did this last year. Perhaps I'll get a clue this year.

In the office, the creeping thyme seeds I planted for an orker are just starting to make an appearance, with more than a dozen tiny tiny pairs of leaves. It's the first time I've started herbs from seed, so I'm excited.

I keep wondering what part of the light spectrum the office windows filter out. The theoretically red lettuces growing in the office are light green, with only vague touches of darker color (the same kind on the porch are all dark red; well, red for lettuce purposes). The nasturtium leaves have discolored patches, and the flowers are all orange, rather than the variegated colors of the one at home (which has lemony yellow and deep red, as well as orange). The lavender I brought home and put on the porch doesn't have the bright green it should, after a year plus in the office window, and doesn't seem to be recovering, either; it stands out for having more subdued color. I think I'm only going to grow annuals/non-food plants at the office, after having the comparisons so blatant...
Anyone know something about this?

On the food side, I finally used the Chinese cabbage from the first farm delivery. I still have some turnips and greens from last week, but at least none from the week before... And I'm getting another boxful tonight. I really have to invite more people over.

The Chinese cabbage I turned into a salad, with scallions, Chinese noodles (the little ones, not the ones more like crunchy strips), and a salad dressing of soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, pepper, garlic powder, sugar, and just a touch of ginger powder. Yum.

And I finally tried to make vegan truffles using pre-fab vegan pudding. I discovered that this is not something I'm likely to repeat: the stabilizers in the pudding made the chocolate seize up much more than I wanted. Not that it doesn't taste good, but the texture is not what I would choose. I was happier with the not-really-gelled vegan pudding-from-a-box I used last time I tried. Perhaps there's some way to cook soy/rice milk down into something thicker; that would be much more ideal.

Veggies, week 3

We're still in the midst of green leafy bounty...

• 2 heads of Boston lettuce
  
• an absolutely gorgeous head of dark dark red lettuce
  
• a bunch of 'spicy greens'
  
• a bunch of unidentified greens that look rather like Asian greens, tat soi or pac choi
  
• a big bunch of green curly leaf kale
  
• a big bunch of (9) somewhat larger white hakurei turnips with greens
  
• 9 garlic scapes

While going to get these, there were the extremes of human experience: I passed a truck that had "Fulfillment Express" on the side, and heard a story on the radio about people looking online to find suicide buddies. The phrase "suicide chat rooms" is pretty horrible.