Tesserae

"Often it's hard to tell the T from a weird public art project."
-Ruthling

The hard Sudoku puzzles are becoming easier... evil ones soon.
And I notice that they're now in the Globe daily supplement, along with the crossword and comics and such. And NPR's Weekend Edition includes a book of them for whoever does the week's puzzle on the air, along with other gifts.

Two sights I don't want to forget.

• Along the sidewalk from the farmer's market to the Copley T station yesterday, there were dozens of rectangular pictures chalked on the ground, in vibrant colors that sang from underfoot. Some were geometric, some representational, some mentioned specific businesses; all were pretty. I wish I'd had my camera to capture a few of "Sidewalk Sam's" works.
  (Aha! This was part of Chalk One Up; if you want to see some of these, today will be in the Financial District, and tomorrow in Government Center.)
  
• Sitting in the car in the Trader Joe's parking lot Sunday, hoping for a break in the downpour to dash through the lakes that had suddenly appeared, the sun almost came through the clouds, though without the rain abating. I held up my arm, and could see a fascinating pattern of sunlight and the raindrops landing and sliding down the windshield.

Yesterday's stupid injuries: burning fingers when the hand slipped and the oven-mitt-thing didn't (luckily icing it kept blisters from happening, but the fingertips still feel odd), and discovering that toenails grow at wildly different rates by having one cut skin off the adjoining toe as I walked. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Thanks to Mabfan, the source of some street names in New York.

Farm share, week 10

Lots of stuff this week, though less weighty than last week (thank goodness!).

• a yellow watermelon (I was surprised so many people I offered a piece to over the last week had never seen/heard of yellow watermelon before.)
  
• a pound of onions (choice of white, yellow, or purple; I chose the first two.)
  
• two handfuls of basil (some already flowering)
  
• two zucchinis or summer squashes (I took the former, little narrow ones.)
  
• two pickling cucumbers
  
• a pound of carrots
  
• a bunch of kale (different varieties; I took dinosaur kale, my favorite.)
  
• a pound of peppers (some bell, some long, all sweet; I took a couple of purple bells and a long red pepper.)
  
• a pint and a half of plum tomatoes, or a half pint of sungold cherry tomatoes (I got sungolds yesterday at the farmer's market, so plum tomatoes for me.)
  
• three pounds of other tomatoes (!) (There were tons of heirlooms to choose from, including pink ladies, green zebras, a darker purply tomato, long pointy tomatoes trying to masquerade as peppers, green sausage tomatoes (pointy plum tomato size, but striped green and yellow-orange, a bit like really ripe green zebras), and just plain tomatoes, too.)

I overheard Luke (the guy who oversees the distribution) saying that they'll have this distribution point next year (yay!), and might expand to have one at the Harvest in JP as well. If anyone reading would be interested in that, let them know.

I shouldn't be surprised still when people ask how much the produce is. Apparently 30-40 people ask each week, many of them without much English (which does explain why they might not have read the ever-increasing signs (in size and number) about how this is pre-paid by share members, yadda yadda yadda).

This week's also a ( Boston Organics delivery. )

I think the kale will end up being cooked with sausage or ground turkey (I tried thinking of putting it with stew beef or chicken or even (*gasp*) without meat, but somehow, that's all that really appeals, so that's what it'll be. Lots of tomato salad, of course, with all these flavors and colors to make a beautiful salad (set off with bits of cucumber and pepper, plus some feta if I'm making a meal of it). I'll cut up the watermelon tonight; I'll snack on it if it's already chunked (and chilled). I think the rest of the veggies will end up being roasted or sauteed in different combinations, and some of the fruit might end up as pie (not the blueberries! They're going to be eaten just as they are, very soon; the smell is delectable.)