Gleanings of the Week Ending November 28, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Plastic by the Numbers in the Atlantic Ocean – Samples taken during the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers show that microplastics are very common. There were 0 samples without any plastic! On a personal level, I’m reading labels on face washes and toothpastes now and not buying any that have microbeads.

6 Common Activities that Harm Wildlife – One of the six is ‘microbeads’ so another spur to action. The other activities are also thought provoking: sunscreen, feeding bread to birds, bleached products, removing weeds, and plastic bags. Most of them I had heard about before…sunscreen only recently.

Are superbugs deadlier near where you live? – They are everywhere…some places worse than others. Often they are indicators of use (and misuse) of antibiotics.

An easy pill to swallow – Research into a mechanism to deliver mucoadhesive patches via pill through the digestive tract to the small intestine. There is potential that this could change delivery of protein based therapies (insulin, growth hormone, antibodies, and vaccines) from a injections to a pill.

A Flight of Birds – 14 unusual birds…portraits from the Photo Ark project (one of the 14 is a California Condor)

800-Year-Old Ancient Extinct Squash Uncovered during Archeological Dig on Menominee Indian Reservation – I’d like to see this one in my grocery store!

Shenandoah National Park Counting on Beetles to Slow Invasive Insect – The wooly adelgid is killing the hemlocks in Shenandoah (and in our area of Maryland too). Shenandoah is importing a beetle from Japan (where the wooly adelgid came from). Evidently the beetle has already been used successfully in other parks, including Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

1,700-Year-Old Roman Mosaic Discovered During City Sewer Construction Project – Found in Israel by workers upgrading the sewer system.  It was the floor of a large room in a villa during the Roman period.

Pictures: Great Smoky Mountains National Park  and Pictures: Rocky Mountain National Park and Explore the Power of Parks – From National Geographic…lots of great pictures, of course.

Obesity: A Complex Disorder – Graphic from The Scientist with a link at the bottom for the full article. The more we learn about obesity, the more complex it seems to become.

CSA Week 18

The share seemed huge this week. Maybe it is just typical of fall or the farmer bulking up this share just in case Hurricane Joaquin cases some flooding of the farm before next Wednesday.

The watermelon radishes are 3 to 4 times bigger than last year. I traded the eggplant for another 3 so I have a total of 6. One has already been shredded and it added both flavor and color in a slaw with ingredients from last week: broccoli and kohlrabi.

There was another bunch of beets. I’ll be making more fruit beety with the beets even with half the previous batch still in the freezer. That still leaves the leaves. I’ll be focusing on eating them while they are fresh either in salad or stir fry.

There are a lot of ‘greens’ right now: arugula, watermelon radish leaves, lettuce, and mizzuna (two bunches since I traded hot peppers). The freshness of the leaves means that they will last a bit longer in the bins I have for the refrigerator….as long as we don’t lose power when the storm comes through early in the week.

There were bell peppers and snack peppers still this week.

I was thrilled to get another sweet dumpling squash – yum!

The heaviest single item of the day was 3 pounds of sweet potatoes. I’m glad the squash and the sweet potatoes don’t need to be refrigerated.

I picked rosemary as my herb choice…it’s already drying.

We got 2 items from the overage table; I got 1 pound of roma tomatoes and some scallions.

My refrigerator feels very full!

CSA Week 10

About all I have left from the week 9 share is chives, onions and leeks…a few purple skinned potatoes. But I think the week 10 share is a bit overwhelming.

The variety and amount of tomatoes skyrocketed this week: 2 big heirloom tomatoes, 1 pint cherry tomatoes, and 2 pounds red tomatoes. There was some fresh oregano which encourages me to make homemade tomato ‘something’ - soup or sauce.

We also got potatoes - this time with red skins. Fortunately potatoes last long enough that they won’t go to waste even if we don’t eat them this week.

The assortment of peppers went up: snack peppers of all colors (I got red/green ones), bell peppers, and jalepenos (which I promptly exchanged for another bell pepper).

We had a choice between cucumbers and summer squash; I picked the squash to I can make squash hummus again.

We had our choice of cantaloupe, red watermelon or yellow watermelon this week. I got a red one - just to be different from last week’s yellow one (which we enjoyed).

One of the items available on the overage table was lettuce….it will go well with the tomatoes and peppers for summer salads.

Once again - the next week is going to have a lot of good eating --- enjoying the bounty of summer foods!

CSA Week 6

I am going to have a lot of veggies to process or eat when I get home next week. My husband picked up the week 5 share last week and the majority is still in one crisper of the refrigerator. It’s a good thing my refrigerator has two large crispers since the second one is now filled with the week 6 share from the Gorman Farms CSA share.

This week we got beets (I’ll make fruit beety as soon as I get home), leeks, onions, carrots, yellow squash, cucumbers, green beans (he put them in a mesh bag, and purple basil. He realized that I had green basil growing in a pot on our deck so when he had to choose between green and purple --- he picked the purple.

There was a cut sunflower as part of the share this week too!

I can hardly wait to pick up next week’s share since the ‘overage table’ has been started since I have been away - and is a new feature of the CSA this year.