Vegetative state

Saturday is a great day because it means I get to pick up my bag of vegetables from Porter Farms. I look forward to that. Last week I joined the, ahem, Community Assisted Agriculture movement. I think that is what it is called. I must be the only Republican in the world engaged in this push.

I have to pick up my bag a couple of blocks away, on Woodbridge Avenue. Naturally though it's close, I drive. As a Republican I must assert my carbon footprint somehow.

Last week's bag is pretty much gone so I can congratulate myself on that. I ate it all up! They gave me two frying peppers, and I fried them. Two small heads of lettuce, about a half a grocery bag of green beans, five beets, about eight zucchini, two yellow squash, gone, gone, gone. I am on the South Beach Diet in perpetuity so I burned through it all. I did leave half of my last salad in a Tupperware thing under my desk at work by mistake yesterday, so there's a possible waste -- boooo! But I was going to go downtown later today to go to confession so I can stop by the office then and get it and see what shape it is in.

Listen to me. I am so stupid when it comes to money.

I agonize over wasting half a head of lettuce. And just now -- I have the floury hands to prove it -- I just kneaded up the dough for two loaves of bread just so I could use up this oatmeal Howard cooked yesterday and didn't eat. So on the one hand I am this model of thrift. On the other, I go ahead and rack up hundreds of dollars' worth of overdue book fines at the library. How silly is that?

But let's not talk about my stupidity. I will do enough talking about that in the confessional this afternoon. Let's talk instead about food. I have a new favorite thing. It is that chicken-wing sausage they make at Cammelia's.

It's made out of chicken, and they put this cheese in it, and this chicken-wing spice. Howard said, "It tastes just like chicken wings!" But with a million fewer calories. Of course not when it's consumed in the massive amount that we consumed it in the other day.

For the life of me I can not remember if it's Cammelia's or Camellia's. But I have to write one thing more about that place. It has been at the Broadway Market what, two years now? I remember when it got there. And overnight, it looked as if it had been there forever. Faded family photos on the walls, battered-looking specials signs, crucifix, the works.

Also, Eric, the owner: Surely he is the world's hunkiest butcher! When I met Baby Joe Mesi, I remember thinking, he is the best of his kind, a beautiful Italian man. You could say the same thing looking at a picture of Leonard Pennario, tall and dark in his white tie and tails. Perfect specimens, both of them. Just perfect. God does not make them better.

Gazing at Eric over a pile of pork chops, I think, he is the best of his kind, a handsome, buff, hard-working Polish man. Check him out, ladies!

And Howard wonders why I don't mind all those trips to the Broadway Market.