Elizabeth Newlin – Arizona Real Estate Agent

Last week’s co-op produce was almost completely consumed (we have some romaine, a tomato or two and 3 carrots left, I think), so this week, when I was ordering, I decided to throw in a couple of extras. They were offering an Italian Ingredient Pack that I had seen the week before and it looked pretty good, and a Guacamole Pack. I am a sucker for all things Italian and even more so for The Most Perfect Food: Guac. So I ordered both. In addition to the regular basket. It was $30 and this is what we got:

Yes, that’s:

6 ears of corn
6 potatoes
1 bunch of bananas
15 small apples
4 tomatoes
1 butternut squash
5 pears
8 peaches
1 bunch of black grapes
1 HUGE eggplant
1 head of romaine
5 jalapenos
1 bunch of green onions
10 avocados
1 box of mushrooms
1 bag of Italian herbs (rosemary, basil, etc)
2 zucchinis
1 huge red onion
1 lemon
5 limes
4 yellow onions
2 heads of garlic
1 bunch of cilantro
1 bunch of Italian parsley

um…. holy cow what are we going to do with all this food? I need to rework my weekly menu. Anyone want to come over for dinner?

I dreamt about grocery shopping last night. In my dream I was getting everything for free, and the grocery store, instead of being chaotic and confusing, enticing me to purchase expensive items I don’t need, was perfectly clear. I knew exactly what I needed to purchase and how to get it for free. I could see the pricing traps for what they were and had no interest in them.

I’m pretty sure I dreamt I was Jennifer Clarke.

We had Jennifer over to our house last night (all the way from West Siieede!) to do a tutorial about Coupon Sense, a website I joined about a month ago to help cut down our grocery/food costs.

The Coupon Sense website is basically a database of all of the sales and coupons out there at the major grocery stores at any given time. I’ve been really impressed with the results that I’ve had with using the site just at face value, but after Jennifer came by and explained what she gets out of coupons, I was utterly inspired.

Jennifer is about my age and has four children. Her kids are younger than mine and closer together, but otherwise, I feel like her family is pretty comparable to mine. She said that she spends between $250 and $400 a month on groceries. Um, WOW. I’ve been really impressed with myself over my $175-$200 A WEEK bills lately.

I could go on and on about the interesting stuff she told us about grocery shopping, coupons, food and supermarket chains, but what it comes down to is that I was completely sold. We grilled that poor girl for about two hours and she had an answer for everything. And she drove all the way out to meet with us even though she had to be up at 4AM to film her weekly coupon segment for channel 5. Jeez Louise.

There were a bunch of people I had emailed about her tutorial who weren’t able to make it last night. She has told me she would be happy to come out to the East Valley again, maybe in October if we can get a good group together. I think this is a fabulous idea. I would like to have a few months to attempt this system in earnest and then talk to her again (about what I’m still doing wrong).

I’d never made an actual risotto before I attempted this recipe a month or so ago. In fact, I’d never even eaten much less prepared butternut squash before. But, I mean really, how could it be bad? Butter? Yum! Nuts? Yum!! Squash? Yum!!! And please, all of the risottos I’ve had were about the richest and fabulous things I’ve ever eaten.

Despite all of this evidence pointing to it being a potentially successful meal, I have to admit I was a little nervous to actually attempt it. People always say risottos are delicate and difficult to create correctly. And really, according to the name, it always seemed to me that single malt scotch should be delicious, like malted milk shakes and butterscotch candy, but I’ve tasted a $200 glass of scotch and it does NOT taste like that. More like rubbing alcohol. So really, who even knows if this butternut squash would live up to the promise of its name?

Regardless of my worries I trudged on. I peeled and chopped the squash as was directed and roasted it on a cookie sheet.

And to my delight, it absolutely lived up to its name! In fact, Jonas (my 2 year old) ate it like candy right off the cookie sheet straight from the oven. He loved it.

I then moved on to the actual risotto part of the recipe. In general, I try to stick with the rule that the first time I use a recipe, I follow it exactly, with no substitutions. This time, however, I decided to take a risk and switch out the pancetta for Italian sausage, which I browned before I began the risotto and set it aside to add when I put in the butternut squash. I also omitted the saffron, just because I didn’t have any and hadn’t worked with it before.

Cooking the rice and cheese was actually much easier and more soothing than I expected. It was time consuming, but relaxing; just a stir and a pour here and there for about 45 minutes.

After the rice was sufficiently cooked I mixed in the sausage and the butternut squash and voila! I absolutely loved it and ate the leftovers for days. The ungrateful, bland-paletted children, however, were another story. Can’t please everyone, I suppose. Someday they will love their mother’s gourmet cuisine, right?

Of late I’ve become a huge proponent of date night. Until recently, I leaned toward the parenting contingent that believes the kids are the main priority and getting a sitter so Mom and Dad can go out on a Saturday night is shirking your responsibilities and a waste of money in addition.

I’ve done some relationship thinking, reading and reevaluating lately and the conclusions I’ve come to are these:

1. Marriage is work, like a garden. Regardless of the viability of the seed you’ve planted and the proposed beauty of the flower, if you don’t water it and give it sun, it will die.

2. Children benefit from having a cohesive parenting system. If it is possible to have the family intact and parenting from the same place, this is the ideal situation.

3. Therefore it’s important to make my marriage a priority. It’s not selfish to spend time alone with my husband, it’s imperative. Like on the airplane, when the cabin loses pressure, the adult needs to secure his breathing mask first, and then the child flying with him. If he can’t breathe and loses consciousness, neither will get oxygen. So in order to give my children the true family support system they need, I must take time alone with my husband to connect and enjoy each other.

So my husband and I have had several (maybe even many!) date nights this summer. We’ve done random and exciting things and reconnected with who we are as a couple minus the kiddos. And let me tell you, I love a good date night.

Here are some of the itineraries we’ve followed. I’m always looking for a fun date please leave suggestions in the comments!

1. Take your husband to work – Dinner at The Barrio Cafe in downtown Phoenix and then I took Jason to see a condo that is listed in a high rise in Phoenix. We took in the nighttime view from the rooftop patio.

2. Almost free art in Scottsdale – Sketching at Free Thursdays at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art for an hour and then we headed to the Sauce Restaurant on the waterfront near Fashion Square and took advantage of their summer special ($20 – pizza, salad, 2 glasses of wine).

3. ASU movie + sushi – Jason being the design/art/tech geek he is took me to see Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight at ASU in the Life Sciences building (it’s a bio-pic about the designer who, among many other things, created the I Heart NY logo) and then dinner at our favorite sushi joint, Blue Wasabi.

4. Bowling with buddies – Date night doesn’t always have to be just the two of us, in our opinion. The latest venture was as Bruswick XL in Gilbert for bowling and bar food. The food was actually edible and I hate bowling, but we made it fun with an extra game where everyone had to use the super light kiddie ball. It made for surprising results (including the time when one guy threw it so hard the ball bounced into and out of the gutter to take the spare). Jason said it felt like high school again.

A facebook friend posted a link this week to a produce co-op site that she was thinking of trying out. Because I’ve been working hard lately at cooking for the family (versus eating takeout) and cutting grocery costs, I found the concept interesting.

Apparently the basic idea behind this particular co-op (and I understand that there are other interpretations of this general concept) is that produce is purchased in bulk by what’s currently in season and if you choose to purchase, you have to follow the rule my five year old has so much trouble with at kindergarten: That’s what you get and you don’t throw a fit.

It was $18 to purchase one ‘basket’ of produce and it had to be ordered and paid for online between Tuesday at noon and Wednesday at 10pm. My kids eat a ton of bananas, apples, grapes, melon and the like, and that is the sort of stuff I could vaguely make out in the picture of the basket on the website. I figured for $18 it couldn’t be a total disaster even if it was mostly radishes and rainbow chard.

This morning at 7:05 (the website said we had to be there at 7:15 AM, but I just tend to generally run a little early) we pulled into the parking lot of the Gene Autry Sports center, about 4 miles from our house to pick up our food. The operation consisted of about 10 ladies and 6 rows with blue and white baskets filled with produce. We got in line and showed our printed off receipt to a woman with a clipboard, who pointed us over to one of the rows.

We were then instructed to empty two baskets of food (one filled with fruit, one with veggies) into the box we brought from home (a medium-sized storage container). Here’s what we went home with:

6 peaches
6 apples (fuji)
5 tomatoes
2 butternut squashes
1.5 bunches of bananas
1 large bag of green grapes
1 cantaloupe
1 lb of strawberries
1 cauliflower
1 large bunch of romaine lettuce
1 small bag of carrots
3 small bok choy

I was a little weirded out by the bok choy, just because I’ve never used it, but once I voiced this on twitter, I was immediately pointed to three recipes that contain bok choy that all look excellent. Other than that, I was thrilled with the amount and quality of food we received for $18. We went right home and cut up the melon and some of the peaches and strawberries for breakfast and washed and froze the grapes for snacks. I’m going to make roasted butternut squash with flank steak and bok choy for dinner this week.

Besides the money we saved on the produce, I also like that it is seasonal, and that it forces me to try things I might not otherwise. Cooking for a family of five on a regular basis can get a little monotonous and this is a fun way to mix it up a little.

I will do it again. Maybe this isn’t something that would work for a single person or a very small family, but I think it’s just the right amount for my boys.