Last week started our foray into the world of fresh, organic vegetables delivered right to our door (or at least to my office, where I could then cart them home to our door). It's something Richard and I toyed with for a while, and finally decided to do. Not because of the organic part (because in all honesty, I think the whole organic thing is a bunch of hooey anyway), but because we're doing our best to eat more fruit and vegetables and this would cost about the same as buying them at the store, except this way we wouldn't have an excuse because there they'd be.

Anyway, last week's box had all sorts of yummies, including a rather large head of garlic. Since this week's box comes tomorrow, and we still have a few stragglers left from last week's box, I decided that we ought to use up that head of garlic (and a few other things) in a big way. This morning I tossed instructions at Richard via instant messenger to set up the crockpot with soup and chicken and pasta and onions and mushrooms, and oh yeah, some garlic (imagine your basic tuna casserole concept, but with chicken and garlic, in a crockpot). I used my time at work wisely, going directly to askjeeves.com to find out how to roast garlic, and then forwarded those little gems on to Richard as well. Then I took care of the one remaining factor in all our garlicky dinner plans - I stopped by the store to get a loaf of bread on which to spread that roasted garlic.

We live in a small town - so small, in fact, that we possess only one stoplight (You would be amazed at how many people find this a point of pride, by the way).This small town is home to two grocery stores. Normally we go to the one that is further away from our house, but has a much better selection. Every once in a while, however, I go to the closer one, if only to remind myself yet again why it is that we avoid shopping there. I went there tonight because I was in a hurry. I knew that the goo in the crockpot had a certain magic time beyond which the pasta would turn from pasta to pasta-flavored paste, so I figured that closer proximity to home would equal quicker dinner eating for me.

Ha! This place is dingy and tired and old. The cashiers are slow and always seem to act as if they'd rather be anywhere else but standing at their registers ringing up my stuff. Even the people who frequent this store seem tired, dirty, and wearing looks that state that they, too, wish they were somewhere else. I'm not sure why I can never remember that everything in that store takes twice as long as in the other. Perhaps my brain just erases the memory each time so as to spare me, or something, but I only remember when I'm already in line, groceries in hand, and it's too late to go put everything back on the shelves and head off to the other shiny sparkly place where the concept of smiling is a good thing.

The pasta did, indeed, go past the magic moment and become rather mushy, but overall, my little experiment was a success (and next time I'll just add the pasta shortly before we eat it). Of course, Richard and I probably shouldn't go out in public for the rest of the evening because it wouldn't be just vampires we would keep away with our garlicky breath. But that's okay. We can pretend it was all in honor of Buffy, which is on tonight and rapidly becoming one of our favorite shows (And no, I don't just watch it because Spike is a hotty. Shut up!).

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