Good Food

Well . . . it's been a busy few days since last we spoke. Despite having lots of time off of work, I didn't run again until today. The main reason for that was that my mom and grandmother were visiting NY for a while, which was really nice. It was really nice to do all of the things that I don't often do unless I'm touring someone around the city. This also often leads to doing some things that I've never done. They were only here for a few days, but in that short time, we went to a bunch of cool new (to me, that is) stores in the village like Fish's Eddy and ABC Carpet and Home. We saw a show at the Public Theater (my first time) and at at a bunch of cool restaurants like Indochine, Calle Ocho, and Barney Greengrass. We also when to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (also my first time) and to the Museum of Natural History and took a nice stroll up Madison Avenue. As was clear from my last post, I'm on a pretty big "I love NY" kick right now and this visit solidified that for me in a number of ways.

Today, my love for New York continued to grow. This morning, Sara and I took the bus up to the local greenmarket! We had been to the farmer's market at Union Square a number of times, but were very excited to live so close to another branch of the greenmarket. Every Saturday in Isham Park (up at 207th St) there is a nice farmer's market . . . NYC has great farmer's markets all over the city and it makes being a "locavore" very easy to do. We were able to buy local cheese, yogurt, granola, eggs, apples, cookies, bread, turkey sausage and more . . . and we could do all that on public transit. I really feel as though we are lessening our carbon footprint each day with our move back into Manhattan. I'm also really fortunate to be in a place that makes it so easy. It also doesn't hurt that Sara is so into it as well!

One of the farms at the farmer's market, Hawthorne Valley Farm, also runs a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that Sara and I have joined. This means that starting in June and running through November all of our produce (fruits and vegetables) will be coming from a local source. It is so unbelievably exciting that we will not only be supporting a local farm directly, but also that we'll be eating the freshest, most in season produce available! All of our fruits and vegetables will cost a total of $650 for the whole year (June to November) which means that we will be spending under $110/month for vegetables and fruit. When you consider that we often spend between $150 and $300 a month for all of our groceries total (this doesn't even take into consideration the cost of eating out), and that a major portion of our groceries are produce, this means a big savings. Joining a CSA has other, more unexpected benefits as well. For one, we will be able to find new, exciting recipes for the range of produce that we will have each week. We will be forced to really cook a lot more and we'll stretch ourselves culinarily! In addition, we will be forced to each from restaurants less in an attempt to utilize all of our produce before it is wasted. We will, of course, be storing some of it for use in the winter, but we'll also be eating TONS of green stuff.

Oh, yeah . . . I also ran today. Today it was hard to motivate a run, but I managed to get a little over 3.5 miles in (30 minutes at an 8:33 min/mile pace) which isn't too bad. I ran north on the path this time, which was nice and I got all the way up to Dyckman street before the path ended and I had to come back south . . . but it was a nice run either way. I'm hoping that once the weather turns warmer and once I'm in better shape, I'll be able to be a little more motivated to get up and go earlier in the day. I didn't run until about 5:30 today. BUT, it is nice that the days are so much longer now than they were . . . it's nice to run during the daylight hours.

Tomorrow is day 150 of the year of the marathon . . . that means only 216 days until the marathon!