Monday, January 5, 2009

Does wine count as a serving of fruit?

My mother-in-law gave me a tee shirt with this saying on it for Christmas. It seriously cracked me up. Last year J got one from her that said, "My Indian Name is Runs with Beer." Funny lady, she is! He doesn't run anywhere? (Just kidding, love. I know you're reading this.)

And I have to admit, we don't get a lot of fruit around our household. I'll drink the occasional glass of orange juice to make sure I don't end up with scurvy, but that's about it. I also buy lemons when they're cheap 'cause they're fun to cook with and look so nice in a bowl on the table. You know, that "Pottery Barn staged dining room" look that lasts approximately twelve minutes at our house before one of us dumps something on the table, and it rapidly deteriorates into a "staged landslide" with a beautiful bowl of lemons at its epicenter.

Veggies, however, are a whole 'nother ball game. I have a new addiction, and it's called Rorabecks Produce and Nursery. This place is open seven days a week, and sells amazing produce at dirt cheap prices. Seriously. I got tomatoes for 25 cents a pound this weekend. And how can you not buy asparagus when it's two bunches for 99 cents??? Green peppers...eight for two bucks? They're two bucks each in the grocery store!

The quality of the produce is great as well. The only real problem I have is that I keep buying so much that some of it is spoiling before we can use it. So when I went this Saturday, I attempted to buy only what we could reasonable cook in the next week:

• Ten ears of corn for $1
• $1.11 worth of tomatoes (hmm...at $.25/lb, I guess that's quite a few tomatoes)
• Fresh green beans
• Onions (we cook w/these all the time, and they last quite a while)
• Potatoes
• Two cucumbers

We've already eaten the corn, the green beans and some of the potatoes! We vegged out this weekend, and not in a sitting-on-the-couch kind of way. Of course, my meat-a-tarian husband had to throw a little chorizo on the grill alongside the corn (still in the husk...yum!), but that's okay. He had seconds on veggies right along with me! (And I had to at least try the chorizo, right?)

And even though we've got chopped peppers, carrots and celery in the freezer from my last buying binge, I think I underestimated our potential veggie consumption this week. Rorabecks is on J's way home from work – I may have to sweet talk him into supporting my new addiction.

Honey? Are you reading this? Wouldn't grilled portabellos be super yummy in some risotto? Hmmmm?

Wink.

3 comments:

Mary said...

Grilled Portabellas would be super yummy in some risoto. :) What time shall I be over for dinner?

I have the opposite problem in my house. I LOVE fruit but not so much on the veggies. I'm learning to at least try new ones every once in a while though

Shannon said...

I love fruit and veggies but its SO easy to just heat up a frozen pizza instead of cutting up some veggies *sigh*

And seriously? DOES wine count as a fruit? :)

Sarah said...

Holy crapballs Flojat, that is some cheap produce! I need to come visit and stock up.

Sniff