Japanese sweet potatoes -- a great farmers market find

One of the reasons I like shopping at the farmers market is that I don't need a list. I just see what's in season and what I end up getting drawn to. Then when I get home I look for a recipe that matches my in-season bounty. Today I was drawn to Japanese sweet potatoes. I love sweet potatoes but I'd never heard of this purple variety. The seller said they were dryer than regular sweet potatoes, which I noticed when I chopped them but they cooked up nice and soft. Then another stand was selling different vegetables for $2.50 a pound so I filled up a bag of small carrots, parsnip, onions and these cute little ozette potatoes (more varieties I've never heard of!).

When I got home I found this roasted root veggies recipe on another blog. I mixed olive oil, maple syrup and soy sauce in a baking dish. I didn't have ginger so I used garlic instead. After all the chopping, I cooked the veggies for 25 minutes and then added some Trader Joe's chicken sausage I had in the fridge, cooked it for 10 more minutes and that was it. It was really simple and wow, it turned out good if I do say so myself. The veggies are soft and the sweet potatoes are really sweet and full of flavor. I'll have to buy them again while they're in season. As long as I go back to the farmers market, because I won't find this kind of variety at the grocery store. 

Who needs phone books these days?

I didn't make it my New Year's resolution to start blogging again, but here I am on Jan. 2 in my first post since August. Not because it's a new year and new start, but I've had the past 11 days off and I have time to blog.

I got new phone books on Saturday. Great, I thought, just as I'm purging old stuff to make room for my new clothes, I've got more crap I don't need. I wasn't totally sure that I could put my old ones in the recycling bin. Then today I got an "Eco Guide" from the city about its recycling programs. And there was my answer. Under the heading "Are you recycling all that you can?" was a photo of a telephone book (and a dirty pizza box with the description "clean pizza boxes." I hope people read the fine print because that could lead to some confusion). 

And then there was the really helpful info -- a website for opting out of getting phone books. I went to the link and was able to opt out of the little Yellow Book, but the brick from Verizon wasn't listed as a choice. But at least it's a start. And I'm currently looking through the Verizon book to find a number to call to opt out (hey, there are local maps in here? I remember when I used to like looking through the phone book for information about where I lived. Sigh, another casualty of the Internet).