The day I got a huge box of soup

By the time I got home today, the wind was howling and the skies were pitch-black.  Okay, I exaggerate a bit.  It was kind of crummy and kind of dark.  But that's how November plays sometimes.  It was beautiful and sunny during the day, anyway. 

The point is that I was feeling a little bit chilled because I haven't ponied up for a big long down coat yet, and I'm clinging to my friendly, light fall jacket.  As I was opening the door, I noticed a big brown box sitting on the porch, unmarked except for my last name.  Ha!  It sounds like I'm setting up a suspense-filled story.  The truth is, it was just my soup delivery from Local Roots Fine Foods!  Hooray!

I nabbed a Groupon for this, but it's a pretty cool arrangement even sans Groupon.  Per the website, it seems to be a married couple who started the business with the goal of "making the finest frozen products from the freshest local ingredients," buying from local farmers and supporting sustainable agriculture.  For $26 (half off the regular price), I got a big box full of six tubs of frozen soup (each with 2-3 servings).  I think this will come in very handy on cold nights (like tonight, for example) when I don't necessarily have an elaborate dinner plan in mind but sure would appreciate a bowl of hot soup.

I made room for them in the freezer eventually, but I stacked them pyramid-style for your viewing pleasure.

Other items of note - call it Mini-Marvelous Thursday, if you prefer:

1) Boot camp was great, again.  On our first day of class, one of my friends said it made exercise feel like track and field day from elementary school, and she's totally right.  It's never boring!  We dash and shuffle and gallop from station to station.  Today some of our work involved throwing medicine balls down to the ground as hard as we could (which is surprisingly satisfying) and doing squats to lift a big old tire, among many other exercises. 

2) I encountered a neat local organization tonight.  It's called the Community Design Center of Minnesota, and its mission is "to build vibrant and healthy communities through food, conservation and youth development." One of the CDC's programs is a Nutrition Corps, in which kids age 14-18 can intern.  There were four interns at tonight's Bolder Options nutrition meeting, and they did a great job walking the Bolder Options kids through making healthy quesadillas: chopping up broccoli and peppers and cilantro, assembling a salad, preparing the toppings on a whole wheat tortilla and so on. 

Yesterday was Give to the Max Day in Minnesota, designed to draw awareness and funding toward Minnesota non-profits, and it made me pause, notice and be grateful for how many people are doing Really Good Work around here.  It was great to learn more about the CDC tonight and see the interns teach the Bolder Options kids about nutrition and healthy habits.

3) Finally, today at Target I overheard a woman asking an employee to help her locate the "Barbie Ginormous Castle."  Isn't that more helpful than using the product's actual name, Reader?  (I guess I will eat my words and give Mattel credit if that company actually named something the Barbie Ginormous Castle.)

Happy Thursday to you!