Utter miscellany

So first we have a photo of an artichoke that is nearly the size of my head.

Probably my last Outside vegetable purchase for a while. I couldn't resist, and they were two dollars a piece! My late almost-stepfather told me that where I grew up near the edge of San Francisco used to be acres and acres of artichoke fields. That was before, of course, the fields were cleared to make way for residential homes.

Miss Millie B. Doofus, Supreme Ruler of the People's Independent Republic of Bunnistan, at her repast:


Rosie Creek Farm is nearly all seeded in:




My veggie pick up for this week:

Salad greens, braising greens, arugula, radishes, bok choy, and, inexplicably, jiu cai.

I still had jiu cai and bok choy from last week to use up, so I tapped into my mother's cooking repertoire and fried the former with egg and the latter with garlic. Noodles with soy sauce and sesame oil rounded out the meal.

That looks like a lot of food, but it's not. You know how folks say that when they eat Chinese food, they are hungry again soon afterwords? It's because you need to eat more. We Chinese eat truly gargantuan piles of food.

Look what I found in Tok (pop. 1393):

My favorite olive oil ever!

Found at The Tok General Store, which specializes in health foods. Which is really surreal considering that Fairbanks doesn't even have a health food store of such caliber. The interior of the store looks like it's lifted straight from Rainbow Grocery.

I paid $20 and was astonished to find what I believed to be a minimal markup, but today a quick online search shows that the going price in the Outside world is $13. So the markup is actually a whopping 54%. On the other hand, in California, I would have paid sales tax, which would reduce the Tok markup to 42%. That's still a lot. The California price of $14.11 is a hell of a bargain for a 16.9 ounces of hoity-toity olive oil that is organically grown, to boot. No wonder it was my favorite back in the day!

That's the first time I'd ever bought a pantry staple while on a road trip, and I surely didn't expect to do it in Tok!