My grandmother has chickens and they live a fabulous Disney-esq life full of table scraps, grain, and white bread complete with a fancy chicken coop and a big grassy area to run around in. In general these chickens probably have a quality of life similar to your pet cat.

If you spend the night at my grandmother’s house you are woken up by the crowing of a large rooster. Sometimes the brave little chickens get out of their pen and run around the neighborhood. Now that’s what I call “free range.” Gram keeps in her neighbors good graces by making them incredible batches of peanut butter fudge and by also bestowing upon them dozens of amazing eggs that her pampered chickens lay.

When I go home to Maine I always request eggs to take back with me. They are fabulous beyond belief. Case in point: they are almost twice the size of normal extra-large organic eggs that you buy in the grocery store. The yolks are a bright orange color as opposed to the much paler yellow that you see above. In fact the yolks are so orange that everyone in my family has learned not to use them in white foods as we’ve all ended up with bright orange lasagna and funky colored cakes due to Gram’s delicious (but neon) eggs. In general I treat these eggs like culinary diamonds. They are reserved for weekend omelets and fluffy scrambles on lazy Sunday mornings. We’ll seriously get into a fight if you try to use one of these to make anything as mundane as a boxed corn muffin mix. I’m not kidding!

My Boston Organics order was waiting for me when I got home from work.  I was looking forward to it all day.  When I opened the bright green box I found the following items inside: Bananas, Green Bartlett Pears, Honey Tangerines, a Kent Mango, Pink Lady Apples, Plums, Valencia Oranges, Fingerling Potatoes, Romaine Lettuce, Snow Peas, Sweet Onions, and Zucchini.  So far I’ve used one zucchini to make a pasta dish for dinner.  What should I do with the rest of my bounty?  Suggestions are welcome.  I’m really looking forward to eating that Mango tomorrow evening. I can’t wait to see what I’ll get next week!

Local eatery b.good is having a contest to name their new salad. It contains baby spinach, arugula, blue cheese, dried cherries, dried apples, almonds, and balsamic vinaigrette. One of the options is the “Cherie Johnson.” Obviously I voted for that. Punky Power! And because I want nothing more than to be able to order a “Cherie Johnson” salad of my very own, you should go vote for it too! If you don’t, Cherie might be stuck in that abandoned refrigerator in the backyard forever and we wouldn’t want that to happen now would we?!

I just found out about the most amazing thing (thanks Anna and Kristen)! Did you know that there’s an organic produce delivery service in Boston?! Well there is! It’s called Boston Organics and I’ve just signed up to receive their weekly half fruit and half veggie $27 box of assorted awesomeness as well as some fabulous sounding freshly baked bread.

My order will be dropped off on Wednesday so I’ll have more to report then. To find out if this great service is available in your part of the city you should review their delivery schedule. There are lots of delicious add-ons that you can arrange to have in your box too including cheeses, coffee, and chocolate for a small additional fee. They also allow you to create a list of produce that you definitely don’t want to have in your box. So I promptly exiled the honey dew melons to the “do not deliver” list.

Do any of you have a program like this in your area? If so, how has your experience been?