This morning began with my new favorite way to start a Saturday: hot yoga! Actually, the morning technically started with a light breakfast and getting my blood drawn for work-mandated blood tests, but we can pretend that part didn’t happen. All that matters is that I was entering the yoga studio at 10am with Vani, Olga, and Kate. Yay for enjoying yoga!
After yoga, Kate and I booked it down to Brooklyn to pick up our very first batch of CSA goodies!
Since Kate and I live only two subway stops apart, we decided to go in on a CSA share together for the season, and I’m so glad we did. The weather has been abnormally wet (understatement) lately, so pickings today were slim … but still exciting. Strawberries, arugula, asparagus, radishes, dill, chives, strawberries, rhubarb (we got half a stalk each, haha), and eggs:
Oh right, and loaaaaaaaaads of pea shoots! I started snacking on them immediately at the pick-up site:
Half of my pea shoots didn’t even make it all the way back to my apartment with me. Yeah, I was that girl chowing down on handfuls of leaves and flowers on the subway.
More bounty:
Obviously, lunch needed to involve some of the goods: the rest of my massaged kale salad with non-CSA arugula, cherries, and cucumbers; CSA pea shoots, radishes, and chives; the last bits of yesterday’s mangu and Diana‘s Indian food leftovers from last night; and drizzles of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and hemp seeds.
The salad hit the spot. All three times I’ve done hot yoga, I’ve left craving greens. It’s a lovely feeling!
My roommate Tara moved out this morning while I was gone (only six blocks away, but it’s still sad!!) and took all her pretty artwork with her. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to re-inject some homeyness into the apartment … and found a gold mine of artwork that an old roommate left behind over three years ago!
So excited that my stairway looks happy again! The star of the wall is this very appropriate birthday present part 2 from the crazy-generous Olga:
Isn’t it perfect?
My other project of the day involved this earth-shattering find from Emily:
YES, it’s the BALLS!!!! I was so excited to set to work on making my very own bubble tea. I poured half the package of jumbo tapioca into a bowl:
I soaked the tapioca in water for about an hour as I would regular tapioca … but these balls reacted, errr, differently:
These balls must have been instant because they completely lost their ball shape and turned into sludge.
Far be it for me to waste sludge, though. I still poured it into a pot of boiling water and stirred and stirred until everything was cooked through. I saw that the tapioca was still developing the ball-texture — just in a more clumpy format.
I used a slotted spatula to remove all of the ball-clumps.
And then chopped them into little ball-bits:
Which found their way into the bottom of my yerba mate:
Just like the real kind! Except the balls were bits and I had no thick straw to suck them up. Next time, I will not soak the balls first.
With the rest of the tapioca goop that did not form into bits, I set to work on a pudding.
To the goop, I added some smushed CSA strawberries, an overripe banana, a bunch of fruit salad, spices, and vanilla. After immersion-blending, it was a bit too liquidy, so I tossed in 1/3 cup chia seeds to get some absorption action going on:
The pudding successfully thickened over the next couple hours in the fridge, and I enjoyed 1/2 cup of it with some fat free ricotta and a sprinkle of nutmeg:
It was fruity and refreshing and delicious. I love playing in the kitchen! (newsflash)
Have you eaten flowers before? And what is the goopiest food you eat?
Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition 
hmm i’m not sure what to say about those balls but I can’t say anything till I try it! lol. Love all the produce though!
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YAY for hot yoga! Such a good class! I shall join you regularly once I’m back from Nawlinz.
And I am SO GLAD you like the poster! I also thought it was perfect for you, it looks great 🙂
The word “balls” appears so much in this post hahah
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hahaha. i just made my way over to your blog (which is super cute btw)…and now im cracking up picturing you eating flowers and shrubbery on the subway. to be honest, if id seen you, i mayyyy just be giving you strange looks, too (and then blogged about it after).
i really think i should get on the band wagon with this hot yoga b’ness!
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Love the CSA goods! I got some strawberries and asparagus today at the Farmer’s Market. I love fresh produce 😀
Haha those balls sure are interesting. And I have to say, during that last section, the 13 year-old boy in my mind kept screaming “THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID!!” haha.
I’ve eaten squash blossoms before–they were yummy. And the goopiest food I’d eat? Hmm I think I’d have to determine that on a case-to-case basis 😉
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How lovely to see you making more and different concoctions with tapioca balls! You’re an inspiration!
The various prints and pics on your stairwell are neat, and so unique too!
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Haha! Love the thought of eating flowery things on the subway – utter genius. They do look rather lovely though. Looks like they taste very fresh! 🙂
+ Those strawberries look utterly gorgeous. Theres something about fresh strawberries that just make you go.. ‘oooh’ inside. X3
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I wish my city had a CSA! There isn’t even one in my province!! Hmm… maybe I should start one?
I tried bubble tea once and didn’t like it. But it was just carbonated water with syrup and balls on the bottom. There was no actual “tea.” Clearly I need to try the real thing.
Do icing cake flowers count? 😛
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oh…. CSA picking is soooooooo good! I really want those strawberries…. my mouth is watery now!!!
and sorry that those balls are split… but I guess they taste the same way! but I think they don’t require soak.
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Those pea shoot are lovely! I’m not really into goopy food…makes me gag! 😉
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I’ve eaten squash blossoms. Do those count?
Hmmm….goopiest food… OH I ate this split pea soup once (well… i had like 2 bites) that was complete and total sludge! UGH… I shudder just thinking about it. Normally food textures don’t bother me, but this was just wrong!
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Wow I’m glad you tried them first – now I’ll know to add them straight to my tea!!
Yoga was AWESOME. and I now miss my CSA – wish I’d had a blog while I belonged to one so I would’ve been inspired to take pictures of all the bounty (especially the week I had a duffel bag stuffed full of tomatoes!!)
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My boyfriends Mom used to put flowers into zepplies. I don’t think they had any flavor but they were pretty and orange!
I love your new stairway decorations 🙂 It looks great!
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I just spent the last hour trying to find a hot yoga class nearby- the closest is Birmingham (about a 5 hour car drive!) I always imagined CSA as just a delivery to your house- that’s so cool that you get to pick things yourself!
I love your apartment BTW- I was still ‘lurking’ when you showed the photos and it looks great. I wish I was back in NY! Aaaah, roll on October 😀
I’ve eaten flowers once that came on top of a salad in a restaurant- pretty, but the edible flowers in the store are crazily expensive and I wouldn’t know which garden ones were safe! Gloopiest food- all my food is gloopy! My current obsession is cooking oats in water then mixing it with a tub of yogurt and leaving it to soak/absorb/thicken overnight. Great stuff 😀
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Thanks, Ellie! Just to clarify, we don’t actually get to pick the CSA produce straight from the ground at the farm … though we should be able to do a fieldtrip to the farm at some point this season! Volunteers drive all the stuff in (I think our CSA’s farm is on Long Island) to the city, and we have to go pick it up from the designated spot which happens to be a very sweet little community garden in Brooklyn 🙂
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which csa do you use? I just normally buy my produce by the court street farners markets on tuesdays and thursdays…
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OMG, Chris just made me laugh so hard, I cried and it was in reference to your blog! I said, “I need to go read about Sarah’s CSA pickup” in an excited tone. So Chris said, “What is that, like, a man?” LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL! It was probably funnier to me, but still, I guess b/c I was all excited about reading about your “pickup”, he thought I was talking about a guy! HAHAHAHA! Little does he know we get much more excited reading/talking about food!
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