Everything but.

I rescued a caterpillar today. Even if I didn't get much else done, that made it worthwhile. I'd been washing some rapini for a frittata, and when I started dicing another bunch of greens, found a little green caterpillar, very well hidden, lying in the water in the sink. It wasn't that surprising a sight - I'd found two spiders in the lilac blossoms I'd bought last week - until I picked it up and it started wriggling on my hand.

So it'd survived life on the farm, the greens' harvest, transportation to the greenmarket, several days in the fridge, and finally being tossed around and almost drowned.

Very admirable, that little creature's tenacity.

I set it aside in a clean, empty bowl with a leaf it'd well earned, and went on with the rest of my cooking. A while after that, as an afternoon errand, I let it go in a park near my house, setting it down gently in a rose blossom.

I don't know if its species eats roses, or how long it'll survive in what passes for wilderness on the Upper West Side. But it was nice to get a reminder of exactly what buying organic fully entails, and that it's better to end a story from a rose than a kitchen sink.