H2CEV (How to Cook Everything Vegetarian) mentions that Americans for some reason can't make pasta noodles.  I was skeptical, but tried a real $4 bag of Italian Semola Gerelle and what can I say? It's true, Italian pasta is better... but not worth the additional cost.  The sauce I got wasn't that good, go I balsamiced it up a notch; in the future I'll make my own sauce.

Cooking a lot makes the kitchen dirty.  I've been cooking a lot more than posting, but it's mostly a disaster for now... things come out looking as expected, but tasting off (not horrible, but meh).

NI had our annual company meeting.  I took a picture of our CEO getting his annual salary ($1), but the check got washed out... I took the liberty of illustrating the gist of the check.  With the economy only possibly coming out of the crapper, I salute you Dr. T for doing what nobody else in their right mind would.  It was even better when they gave him his bonus check - 9.1% of your salary - and taped nine pennies to the top.

Speaking of work, this was on my camera because our uber-expensive xray machine doesn't have network/usb/cdr access - just a floppy disk - so I usually just take a picture of the screen with my camera.

I ride my mountain bike at lunch on Thursdays with a group of NI riders... everyone bailed today, so I rode around the trails at NI and actually managed to hurt my left ankle doing stupid stuff on a pile of rocks.  Here's the whole mess put together en route for home (note the box on top on the panniers):

I think this is a record as far as shit on the bike: 3 days worth of food containers, a mysterious box, another bike, its wheel, bike shoes, a complete change of clothes, a towel, shower supplies, some cables that were in the trash, and a few other things.

 Said mysterious box at home:

So what's in the box?  If you guessed "selected quality vegetables", then you're...

...absolutely correct.

I decided I wanted the freshest produce possible and now buy direct from Johnson's Backyard Garden, a local farm that grows 100% organic fruits and veggies.  I've only had a tomato thus far, but damn was it good.  Unpacked:

I have no idea what most of this stuff is...

...thanks internet:

I got:

kale 

green beans 

spinach 

chinese cabbage 

bok choy 

tomatoes 

radishes 

peppers 

kohlrabi (?) 

turnips 

sweet potatoes

I'm gonna put some spinach and hummus on some bread, grab some ice for my ankle and call it a night.