I actually got a bunch of errands done before lunch. First, I had to take a package to the post office. And, therein hangs a tale.

I had heard rumors about paying the postage on-line and printing out a mailing label, so I decided to try that. I went to the USPS web site, registered for an account, input the particulars for the package, and prepared to print my label. So far, so good. The instructions specify that you should print a sample label before printing your actual mailing label. The sample didn't print. The instructions specified that you need to have Acrobat Reader installed, so I downloaded Acrobat Reader (and, once I installed it, discovered that I already had it). But, Reader didn't pop up when it was supposed to. I had some vague recollection that Reader plays more nicely with Safari than with Firefox, so I tried again in Safari. (The account information was saved, but I had to enter the credit card info yet again.) Still, no dice. And, when I looked in the list of Safari plugins, there was no sign of Acrobat Reader. So I started googling for info about how to make it appear on the list. After about an hour of reading useless stuff, I finally hit paydirt. I'm running OS 10.6.2 on a relatively new Macbook Pro. OS 10.6.2 and other Apple-provided software, like Safari, runs by default in 64-bit mode (normally, quite desirable). However, the Adobe PDF plug-in for Safari is 32-bit only, and the trick to having it available is to force Safari to run in 32-bit mode. So, I did that (in the Get Info panel), and, to my surprise, I was able to print my label. And next time I have to send a package, it will be a piece of cake to print the label (and save a few cents on postage, and get free delivery confirmation).

So the first errand was to drop the package off at the post office. Then, I decided to head for Milford, about 15 miles away. Normally, the Milford shopping run involves the LLBean Outlet and Trader Joes. (It used to include Costco, but I decided not to renew the membership this year. While there are products I really like, I just don't buy enough there for it to be worth the membership fee.) But today there was an addition. Whole Foods has come to south-central Connecticut. I've heard all the stories about high-quality organic food, not to mention all the complaints about prices. And, yeah, the quality did seem to be good, and I liked the way they highlighted local products throughout the store (even though their notion of "local" was a bit more expansive than mine would be). But, the prices... At some level, I suppose I really thought the complaints about the prices were based on a comparison with Walmart. I know that organic, grass-fed meat and wild-raised fish cost more than their factory-farmed counterparts. But, really, I can't justify blowing my entire weekly grocery budget on enough meat for 3 or 4 dinners. At least the wild salmon fillets were on special, and I could get a small one. And their base chicken (not the super-crunchy organic) pieces were OK. But I don't see putting Whole Foods on my regular shopping rounds. Except for one thing...they have a bin in the front of the store for recycling #5 plastics, which I can't put out for curb-side recycling. That's worth something to me.

In the LLBean outlet, I found a new pair of heavy winter mittens that will serve me well when I have to shovel snow on really cold days. And in TJs, I stocked up on frozen food for my parents.

Then on the way home, I stopped in at the farmstand for cabbage and a few other things. To my delight, they have kale, so I took some local sausage out of the freezer, and tomorrow will make sausage and kale soup. I picked up the sausage at a local farmers market—I'm not sure which one—and, while it was a little more expensive than supermarket sausage meat, even the local brand, it was still about half the price I would have paid at Whole Foods.

And, now, I should be doing laundry, but instead I'm puttering around online.

It's a cold and rainy day. It could be worse—cold and snowy; with the amount of rain we've had already, if it were snow, we'd be well over a foot at this point. So, it was a perfect day for soup. And it just so happens that I have some chicken soup in the fridge, the remnants of a whole chicken I roasted last week.

At this stage, the extent of a recipe I have for chicken soup is:

Throw the chicken bones in a pot with some cut up onion and celery, and cover with water. Add a little salt, some bay leaves, and whatever other seasoning I feel like. Simmer until the carcass is falling apart. Remove the bones, salvaging what meat I can. Add some cut-up carrot and a little barley, and simmer until the barley is tender.

The advantage of such a recipe is its flexibility. And, I can eat little bits of stuff like carrots and barley that in larger quantities would raise my blood sugar unacceptably.

The downside is that it's never the same twice. So, when it's sublime, as it was, reheated, this afternoon, I can't know for sure what made it sublime. I just have to treasure the moment. And the three servings left in the fridge.

Like a lot of folks, I'm trying to be more mindful of ethical considerations in my eating and purchasing. I suspect that we all agree on the things we value but not in how we rank them. As a result, we make different decisions. For instance, I value eating local as much as possible, eating organic as much as is possible, recycling and composting, minimizing packaging in what I buy, and not eating things that are unhealthy for me. Since I have diabetes, this last consideration is non-trivial; I can't, for instance, over-indulge in seasonal, local fruit. Other choices are less clear. My choices for eggs, for instance, involve (1) organic free-range eggs, produced by a national brand and shipped in non-recyclable, non-compostable plastic trays; (2) local battery-raised eggs in cardboard trays; (3) omega-3 enhanced (cholesterol lowering eggs), again in a national brand, shipped in styrofoam trays. I have yet to locate a local egg farm where I might be able to get local eggs produced by free-range chickens.

When I worked in Middletown, I would often stop on my way home at a large farm store. In addition to a full range of specialty groceries, they sell their own produce, in season, and have pick-your-own fields for some of it. But it's enough out of the way that I don't go there any more. Last summer, when I visited my parents, I often stopped at a farm stand in their area. But it's not open yet, or it wasn't last Saturday at any rate.

In yesterday's New Haven newspaper, there was an ad for a family-run farm stand right in town. So, today's expedition was locating it. I thought I knew where it was from the street name. Though I was heading roughly in the right direction, the street I thought it was on had a different name. Fortunately, I keep a New Haven County Hagstrom (laminated, no less) in the car, so I eventually found my way to the farm stand. And a lovely farm stand it is. They had a reasonable mix of their own produce and some "imported", albeit high quality, produce. I came home with a pint of strawberries (a few at a time won't raise my blood sugar too much), some "imported" bing cherries (likewise), a bunch of radishes (my garden radishes seem to have bolted enough at this point that I probably should just pull them up), and a field-ripened tomato from Maryland. I have their web site bookmarked, and have signed up for their email list, which means I'll be notified when new produce is in. Unfortunately, they don't sell eggs.

Yesterday I described a culinary disaster, a pulled pork dish that came out horribly salty. Putting together advice from lauredhel and from the web sites lesliepear pointed me to, I formulated a plan. (From jupiter9's comments, I learned how to prepare ham, should I ever want to do so.) There seem to be two general approaches: neutralize the salt (get it to be absorbed by potatoes or carrots) or add complementary flavors. The challenge of course is to do this without destroying the character of the dish (any more than excessive salt has already). Seasoning in general is easy. When I got home and started reheating the pork, I threw in even more cumin and oregano, as well as a bunch of garlic powder. Absorbing salt with potatoes wasn't going to fly, for a number of reasons. But, complementary flavors sure. Vinegar wasn't going to be amiss. But sweetness, in southwestern pulled pork? Not so much. A little thought and, aha, onions. Sauteed onions are moderately sweet. And the taste would be good with the pork. So, while the pork and additional spices were reheating, I sauteed two and half onions (why two and a half? I had half an onion in the fridge, and three seemed like too many) in a bit of canola oil until they were well softened but only beginning to caramelize. I mixed these in with the pork, and dumped in a glug of white vinegar.

It's not the best thing I've ever cooked, but, unlike last night's version, this won't be a chore to finish up.

If jupiter9 can write about pork, I guess I can too.

A few weeks ago, I made a carnita-like pork stew, simmering pork chunks in a seasoned broth until they fell apart. It was good. It was very good. And in making it, I used up the last of my adobo seasoning from Penzeys. As I said, the pork was good, and, since I didn't have enough of a shopping list for Penzeys to justify the shipping charges, I picked up some supermarket adobo, Goya brand, to be specific (other brands in my supermarket have MSG, which is on my irrational "won't eat this" list). While I was careful to pick the Goya variety that included some cumin, I didn't recall, or, perhaps, hadn't even been aware, that the Penzeys adobo has no salt. As in absolutely none. And, as it turns out, salt is the first ingredient on the Goya container.

That's the backstory. Late last week, I bought a small boneless pork roast, with the intention of making more carnitas. Today was the kind of day to leave something simmering on the stove for a good long time. So I cut the pork into cubes, threw it in a cast-iron pot with some vegetable broth. When I realized that the adobo had a lot of salt, I used about half as much of it as I would have otherwise, and supplemented it with ground cumin, dried oregano, and fresh ground pepper. When it was almost ready, I added some mild chili powder as well.

To make a long story short, the texture was what I wanted. The pork chunks disintegrated nicely. But I might just as well have not bothered with the extra cumin or any other of the spices. The only identifiable seasoning is the salt. This Goya stuff must be 90% salt! (That's not actually inconsistent with the labeling.) I'm going to have to toss it, and put together a Penzeys order.

But that's not the worst of this. I have to salvage the remaining 5 or 6 servings of pork. That means I have to doctor it somehow. I have some low carb tortillas, cheese, and sour cream, so I suppose I can do that for one or two meals. But the point of cooking up a whole mess of something on a weekend is to make it easier to prepare dinner during the week. But this stuff is so salty that I can't just reheat it, so I need a plan B.