We have finally found a CSA that makes sense for us.  I got it in my head to make an apple pie last weekend and did a little googling to find a local orchard that was selling their over-wintered apples.  (Note: staymen apples are tart and firm and make an excellent pie.)  The top of the list of local orchards was Hindinger Farm, closed for the season, but so local I checked out their site.  Lo and behold, they offer a 24 week CSA of fruits and veg for a not outrageous price and offer a Wednesday pick up (crucial as we're away so many weekends during the summer) at the farm, which is maybe a 20 minute drive from our apartment.  After doing a drive-by over the weekend to see where the farm is and get a feel for the place, I sent in the application and check for the CSA.  I'm so excited!

This is a major step towards eating locally and seasonally.  I feel like I'm putting my money where my mouth is.  Plus, after having a few seasons worth of canning under my belt I feel more able to preserve the inevitable excesses as the growing season progresses.  It'll be good discipline to prepare us for when we have our longed for kitchen garden.  I've made a little list of potential preservation projects ...

-Proper dilly beans for sure (rather than the quickles I made last year that were too sharp)
-On going fridge jar of 3 bean salad
-Pickled asparagus
-Giardinera
-chowchow
-Salsa
-canned tomatoes
-tomato sauce
-Jams
-Blanch and freeze the hardy greens in sensible portions for later use.
-Fruit butters
-Dried apple and pear slices
-apple sauce
-pie fillings
-ketchup
-chutney
-kraut
-rumtopf

Also, my mother visited a few weekends ago and I broilled one of the T-bones from Ox-X.  Best steak at home EVER.  (A steak I had at Peter Luger's looms as the pinnacle in my food memory.)  That sucker was so rich the two of us couldn't finish it, and we left the bone with many gobbets still attached for Bytchearse to gnaw when he got home from Mudthaw.

I've become that person.

There's a discussion over on www.bfdblog.com about a proposed ban on Happy Meal toys in one California county:

"A child’s “Happy Meal” may soon be a little less happy in Santa Clara County, where a local official wants to prevent fast-food restaurants from giving away inexpensive toys with kids’ orders. County supervisor Ken Yeager plans to ask his colleagues today to order up a law regulating when fast-food outlets can serve toy cars, action figures and other freebies as part of their children’s’ menus. Yeager says the toys entice young customers to load up on high-calorie fare and may contribute to childhood obesity." 

They're chopping down trees and not seeing the forest.  The real issue here is advertising to children. Come here my pretty, and I'll give you a toy if you eat this processed food that's been designed to be highly craveable, and by the time you're an adult you'll have a habit (near addiction) formed in childhood that will be a bitch to kick. CACKLECACKLECACKLE.   How many times were you swayed as a child to choose a particular cereal because of the toy surprise?  

Advertising to children works: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/business/media/15kids.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1269529202-aBP7ThplZ/v9P0KmsP9+GA

"They are “powerful and incredibly insidious,” said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. “The goal is to incorporate a brand into a child’s identity.”

Collect 3 proofs of purchase from Ovaltine and send them in for a decoder ring and you too can be in Orphan Annie's Detective Squad!  And it's not just about getting a kid to drink your specific product.  It's about teaching a kid to be a consumer, to want a thing because it's part of a set of things "COLLECT THEM ALL". 

I'm rambling and ranting.  But I guess my point is, hell yes, get rid of the plastic toys, but also let's stop letting advertisers tell kids (so that's it's ingrained by adulthood) that you have to have X, Y or Z to be cool and fit in, to equate stuff with self-worth.  Is it apples and oranges?  I don't think so.  So there you have it.  Happy meals caused the financial crisis.