funny farm

I’m not a huge fan of the summer heat, but I appreciate that it produces fruit and vegetables that actually taste like something. In summers past, I have participated in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), which is more or less a food subscription: a local farm (or group of farms) drops off boxes of produce somewhere in your neighborhood each week in return for however many hundreds of dollars at the start of the season. The pick-up was often unpleasant (heavy box + heat + crunchy locals = personal hell), but it seemed like a great opportunity to enjoy seasonal foods, try new recipes, eat more veg, and support local farmers.

Behold the bounty of the farm.

The first time around, when I lived on the north side, my CSA was awesome. Each week was like hippie Christmas—I never knew what I might find in that grubby box, but invariably I was delighted. This particular CSA was a Wisconsin collective of twenty-some farms, so there was always a nice assortment of stuff, and the quality was excellent.

Last summer, I joined a different CSA that served the Hyde Park area. I split my share with a friend because, despite my best efforts, it was just too difficult to eat all that produce before it went bad. Unfortunately, the quality wasn’t nearly as impressive and the selection straight-up sucked. It seemed like every week we opened a grubby box full of gourds and potatoes with one lonely carrot or beet.

This cookbook came free with my second CSA membership. You might think that a farmer who wears a boa would produce awesome vegetables, but you would be wrong.

This year, I decided I to skip the CSA and spend Thursday mornings at the local Farmers’ Market, which is just a few blocks from my front door. I stopped through for the first time last week and thoroughly enjoyed myself even though it was pretty slim pickings. I love the early season when farms harvest loads of greens, asparagus, strawberries, and little else. Unfortunately, the greens looked as though they had been munched by one of the beasties on E’s creepy list, so I overcompensated by buying three quarts of strawberries, along with asparagus, tomatoes, rhubarb, and okra.

I blame the strawberry incident on Starbucks. They screwed up my order and I ended up with two large lattes instead of one—and one of them had an extra shot of espresso. I knew things had gone too far about halfway through the second coffee, when I found myself reflecting on what color I’d make lettuce if it couldn’t be green.

While the vendor clearly thought I was a crazypants, it all worked out in the end because I had enough to make a fruit tart for C & A (who were terrific sports even though I ran out of time and had to bake the shell at their place) and a strawberry-rhubarb pie for Z. I was particularly excited about the pie because I got to use my favorite recipe for crust, which uses equal parts vodka and water. (Too much water makes the crust tough, while booze keeps it moist and easy to roll out.) This dessert is impressive on so many levels: it’s relatively easy, incredibly tasty, and best of all, when your friends tease you for being an alkie, you can dazzle them with your knowledge of gluten formation.

Lesser minds might judge you for pouring Stoli in your dough, but you can strike back with fancy science talk.

out of context

No place on earth showcases me in all my feeble glory quite like the beach. As most of you know, I am a borderline albino who is averse to the sun, afraid of the sea and, above all, terrified of birds. Pretty much any exposure to light leaves me itchy, tired, and red, as though I’ve been camping for weeks; occasionally, when I’m really lucky, it gives me a case of the Big C. While all of that sucks, I'd much rather have minor surgery than encounter pretty much any animal that lives above or below me.

So it’s amusing on many levels when someone like me vacations at Topsail Island, NC—a place I haven’t visited in twelve years, though my family spent a week there most summers when I was growing up.

I kept my favorite postcard painting for myself. I heard that self-obsession is the mark of a true artiste.

The last time I went to the beach (Florida with R in 2003), I almost had a nervous breakdown when five million tiny frogs attached themselves to the windows of our beach house during a rainstorm. (That shit was Biblical. It made the scene in Magnolia look like an advert for Vacation Bible School.) Also, I refused to go into the ocean. Call it fear if you want, but I have a healthy respect for the dangers of the sea. By the end of our trip, R’s husband F was so amused/disgusted by my feebleness that he dragged me into the water in an inner tube, which ended up being pretty fun.

Not much has changed since then. As expected, I confronted many (un)natural threats during my week at Topsail. Though I spent around thirty minutes each day slathering myself in sunscreen like it was some kind of pre-battle ritual, I still got sunburned in stupid places (one knee, my feet). Then there were prehistoric-looking pelicans and obese jellyfish corpses that looked like alien brains that had washed ashore.

People like me have to approach the beach almost fully clothed. H humored me by wearing a cover-up until we hit the sand.

At the same time, my time there was surprisingly relaxing, due in large part to my awesome sister, who stood by my side examining the alien brains, lounged with me in beach chairs reading David Sedaris essays, and found a youtube instructional video featuring Soulja Boy that taught us how to perform the Superman dance.

We were pretty good, by the bye.

A dreadlocked fishmonger gifted me with this fancy ring when I went to buy scallops. (“Ma’am, I would like for you to have this.”) Don’t mock true love, y’all.

Topsail is probably the most spectacularly unhip vacation spot on the Eastern seaboard. While the rest of the world’s beaches are crawling with teenagers or other dreadful types, Topsail remains defiantly lame and quiet, offering its charms almost exclusively to extremely unattractive people. Pretty much everyone there—tourists and locals, men and women, adults and children—looks leathery and pregnant. It’s fucking awesome.

There, you never know what weird anachronisms a day’s leisure might bring. Perhaps you will buy fudge at a shop where the loudspeakers blast “Elvira” by the Oak Ridge Boys. Maybe you will enjoy a seafood dinner in the restaurant of a sleazy motel called The Breezeway. And if it’s Thursday night and you’re feeling lucky, you might just find yourself at the community center playing Bingo.

Don’t be fooled by the unassuming exterior of the community center: the coots at Topsail take their Bingo very seriously.


And so do I. I pressed my marker on the Bingo sheets with the intensity of a retard wiping trays. It paid off--I won two rounds and took home $100!

When we weren’t doing those things, my sister and I were hunting for sharks’ teeth on the shore, which is pretty creepy when you think about it. One afternoon when H was out looking, some lady mentioned in passing that she was looking forward to taking her own findings to a local shop that would string the teeth together to form “jewelry.” I’m pretty sure that is, like, a half-step away from wearing a necklace made from shrunken heads. It’s weird to me how some crazy things become socially acceptable and others become fodder for anthropology class.

Instead of stringing together my sharks' teeth, I bought this t-shirt at a local bakery as a souvenir.

Sadly, we missed several local hotspots that I was burning to see. We did not visit, for example, the sea turtle hospital, which was only open for two hours each day and (on Tuesday, at least) had a line the likes of which you might see at Disney World. In my fantasy, I thought the volunteers at the hospital would allow me to bottle feed a sea turtle infant, which is pretty weird since I fear and loathe both reptiles and babies. Also, turtles probably eat vile sea pests instead of something respectable you might put in a bottle. What can I say? I’m unrealistic and sentimental. I blame it on Nickel, the charming specimen at the Shedd Aquarium here in Chicago.

I was even more disappointed that we missed the roller skating rink, which my sister objected to because of the box fans in the windows. She just doesn’t appreciate authenticity. Or awesomeness.

We’re talking about going back in late summer and we’re looking for people to share our beachfront house rental, so if you’re an actual friend who reads my blog then by all means holla if you hear me. I could really use someone to pull my inner tube around.

Luckily, even feebs are allowed to rent jet skis.

correspondents

Not so long ago my friend K decided that we should be penpals. I thought it was a terrific idea for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that I love getting mail more than almost anything in the world. Maybe I should look into getting one of those prison boyfriends.

I received my first letter from K the other day, and it was truly awesome. I was particularly pleased that he included prizes (photos, since he’s a photographer). K is about to go to a fancy art school, so that shit will only appreciate! Obviously, I will sell them on ebay, despite his explicit instructions to the contrary.

Another great thing about his letter was that it was written on the back of two sheets of scrap paper taken from the Daily Vehicle Inspection Guide of 2005. I like the idea that he felt like writing me in the middle of the day and grabbed whatever paper was at hand, though I guess it could just mean that he recycles or is cheap, in which case I am a sophisticated lady who deserves fine stationary.

Above all, I was delighted by K’s epistolary style, which is rather unconventional. He wasted no time or space on flimflam like salutations or valedictions; instead, he got straight down to business. By business, I mean random observations and news regarding day-to-day activities, which is what I most miss hearing from my far-away friends.

For instance, about one-third of the way through his letter, I laughed out loud upon reading about K’s concerns regarding contemporary fashion:

“I feel insecure about the way I dress after visiting three graduate schools. First off, my pants allow my legs to breathe too much. If I were considering fitting in, I would need much tighter pants.”

For the record, I am not an advocate of tight trousers for men, though I understand K's concern. But my absolute favorite moment came a few paragraphs later, when he described a woman he met at his workplace:

“I had a customer come in and ask where the showerheads were. She was an attractive lady who made conversation. When she asked how I was doing, I told her I had a headache that made it difficult to concentrate. She quickly asked if she could pray for me.

“I told her in the least cynical way possible, ‘If you think it will work, then sure.’ She then asked if she could hold my hand. I wasn’t aware you had to make a good connection for prayers to work. So there we stood, next to the wireless doorbells, as she asked Jesus to shrink my blood vessels and relieve my headache.

"Minutes later, in the shower heads, she asked me how my head was feeling. There was no change. The headache did go away eventually but it in all honestly I took a Midol from the store’s first aid cabinet. [Editor’s note: I am impressed that K does not feel emasculated by admitting to taking lady pills.] I will miss East Tennessee and all of its optimism.”

My friend, mere moments ago some hobo outside a bar asked to lick me in return for spare change. I miss that TN optimism, too.