The Pickle

I love the farmer's market.  If you live in LA it is just the thing to do, the place to see and be seen and to buy your restaurant quality ingredients for those fabulous gourmet meals you prepare nightly, and the smart dinner parties you host on the weekends.  But there is the idea you have in your head, and then there is the reality.  If your refrigerator is anything like mine, it’s so crammed full that if you added so much as an olive, neigh, a caper, the whole thing would come crashing down on you in a greasy avalanche of leftovers.

So how did the lady at the farmer’s market convince me to buy so much stuff today when I knew I didn’t have room?  Because I know that Leilani, even at her tender “I-only-eat-Mac-‘n-Cheese” age, must eat a rainbow.  This has been hammered home in the parenting paperwork I received since before Leilani was born.  It is now exploding out of my files and threatening to take over the bedroom like the Blob in that B-grade sci fi movie.

So I’m looking at my haul from the farmer’s market.  Radishes are in there--I don't even like radishes.  And beets.  I’ve never prepared beets before in my life and have no idea where to start.  And come to think of it I don't like them either!  With all this I have to get really creative with how I pack my refrigerator.  I start to put jars on their sides, to stack them in interesting ways.  I am proud of the architectural integrity of my newly stacked cathedral of condiment bottles…until the inevitable happens.  Disaster strikes!  An upside down jar of sweet gherkins starts leaking all over the shelves and the vegetable drawers below.

So, after emptying the refrigerator, taking out its guts so to speak, hosing down the veggie drawers, scrubbing and sanitizing until my knuckles are raw (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little), all those wonderful veggies remained uncooked and I STILL end up opening up that can of Chef Boyardee for my daughter.  I gaze over at the beets, and fantasize about the fabulous borscht I’ll prepare...someday.  After Leilani graduates from college.