Enjoying the fruits of someone else's labor

I've been keeping up with my farm goodies much better this year and am excited by some of the new recipes I've tried.

Last week's box featured cabbage and cucumbers. I remember the first year with my farm, I just ignored my cabbage while it sat in a back corner of the fridge slowly getting crispier and crispier. This year, I made an Asian sort of coleslaw and this awesome buttered cabbage dish.

I've also been keeping ahead of the decay rate of the peaches and apricots by eating 1-2 peaches a day and at least 4 apricots. It's hard work.

There's a nice farmer's market near where I work on Tuesday nights, so if I figure out what I want to do with my farm veggies early in the week, I can go get the extra veggies from the farmer's market. Like last night I tried making quinoa for the first time as part of a spicy cucumber, tomato quinoa salad, so I bought some tomatoes and a jalepeno pepper from the market. There's certainly room for improvement as my quinoa turned out decidedly gluey, but it was a nice adventure in cooking with a hot pepper. Like, don't dig the seeds out with your fingernail or you might get burning oil between your nail and your skin and experience a burning thumb for the next few hours.

This week I got a 2 zucchini and 3 yellow squash, so I'll be trying out a raw pasta recipe (something like this). There were also 5 ears of corn, so I think I'll try again with the quinoa and make a corn, tomato and quinoa salad.

I've also been enjoying cucumber sandwiches -- a little cream cheese on a mini bagel, three slices of cucumber per half a bagel and some seasoning salt. Yum!

Before diving fully into this cooking adventure, I went up to Geneva, NY to do the Musselman triathlon (actually the mini-Mussel, since I did the sprint distance). I had a great time and had some nice results, but have been having a hard time getting motivated to do the workouts since. Oh well. Next race is in about 3 weeks, so I'd better get some focus back.