Everywhere I look there seems to be bounty. My garden is swelling with cucumbers, melons and tomatoes, basil plants are falling over in their abundance and the kale looks as though it is vying to be most beautiful vegetable in the garden!
There is a local farmstand I like to go to, where they have organic veggies, and their tomatoes are over the top beautiful. They lay them out upside down on a table, and they are just a palette to feast your eyes upon! I go everyday just to visit them! (Well, and to purchase ten pounds or so to add to my own supply for sauce.) This is harvest time and the veggies are littering gardens everywhere. I throw in fresh garlic, peppers and onions into the sauce and inhale deeply. Pure heaven. My goal is not to buy any sauce -- I am filling the freezer! I also have blanched and frozen a lot of green beans and will also do that with corn. Why suffer through the supermarket stuff when you can get it now? I think I am going to need a bigger freezer.
Or am I?
Maddie has gone off to college and there is one less mouth to feed. And Charlie claims that once he has his license he is going to stay at school all the time. So will it be sauce for two?
It has been a whirlwind week with summer coming to an abrupt halt with a cold rain that has settled into the area for days (the next tropical storm named Lee, I guess) and a drive to Beverly, Mass. on Sunday to drop off Maddie, and then off to Tilton the following day to get Charlie all set at his school, and then a trip a little further on into Belmont for his driver's ed. class. And then an unplanned trip to Beverly, Mass. yesterday to visit with Maddie, who has never really liked to be away from home, but who is bravely enduring the trials of being a freshman in a forced triple room with a potential bitch of a roommate (and one nice one, thank heavens!) and settling herself into a completely new life. She is trying very hard and I had told her from the start; if she needed me, I would be there.
So after six hours in the car yesterday, I had to drive 45 minutes in the rain and dark to pick up Charlie, and I thought, wow, this is a lot. This is tiring and I am not used to it. And yet, in a few months he will have his license and I will be free? (Yeah, something tells me not to break out the champagne yet!)
It is such a bone-gnawing tiredness that has settled in, and I am, as usual, trying to fight it. But it is well deserved (it is a lot of driving and big changes like seeing your daughter go to college are big emotional upheavals) and then back to the worry of a child with a new license driving around. I just want to climb into a cocoon and curl up for a few months!
I tried to catch up on sleep after I drove Charlie to school this morning, but then I remembered I had to pick up my CSA bounty -- and that of course led me to track down more food so I could cook. Because that is an excellent thing to do when you are tired, right?!!!! While I admit the smell of sauce simmering on the back burner is delightful, I still have to deal with the rest of the food. Shall I blanch and freeze the beans and corn, or have them for dinner (the latter would certainly be easier! But I am quite sick of both items, and there is still corn chowder in the fridge we could have for dinner.) The garden is also sodden with this rain and I noticed a few out of control cucumbers when I went out earlier to get some basil for the sauce. And I still have yet to master when a cantaloupe or watermelon are done ... so are they out there rotting or not? They still seem awfully heavy, but I just don't know. The last two watermelons were overdone, but the others out there don't seem ready either. There is nothing more disheartening than cutting into an under-ripe or over-ripe melon. And I have googled how to tell countless times. I think it is a learned thing. Which I haven't learned!
My brain is filled with what to do with all this food that has come to fruition at the same time while my body craves rest! But if I leave the kitchen for an hour it becomes infested with fruit flies. (I read in my never-ending reading that putting a tomato into the refrigerator was like killing it! ) Well, geesh, okay. But let me tell you, fruit flies love to hover around ripe fruit. Then I had a most wonderful cantaloupe on the counter and ate some, but it was filling, but then I thought, probably putting a ripe melon into the fridge is killing it too! So when I returned later, it had been taken over by those damn little bugs. There is no time to rest! The food rots as soon as you pick it. And my obsession with eating THIS food all year round is freaking me out.
I think I have conquered the cucumber dilemma -- by freezing cucumber juice! Then I can throw that into smoothies all year round. But those cucumbers mock me with their ability to grow overnight! I am not going to be sad when the last vine dies, because seriously, it is a full time job keeping up with those cukes. I can hear them out there giggling .... let's grow as big as we can and freak Lisa out.
I think sleep deprivation makes people lose their minds. Or perhaps I should put my mind in the fridge to preserve it. Or will it kill it?
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