WordSisters

Category: Good food

  • Autumn Has Its Compensations

    I am fascinated by the pull of the seasons, how deeply rooted my reactions are. After several cold, rainy days, it’s autumn. Suddenly, I want meatloaf and baked potatoes and think about roasted vegetables. I research soups to warm up with instead of the salads I ate all summer. After sampling two mealy peaches, I’m done with my favorite fruit and turn to apples without a backward glance—Ginger Gold and Sweetangoes from the farmers market.

    In April, 52 degrees would have made me giddy with delight, but in late September, I’m shivering and resisting, while pulling on long sleeves and calculating how many layers the day calls for.

    The steep walk up 50th St. warmed me up and I was grateful that my hands weren’t cold anymore. Only ten days ago, it was 90 degree and humid. I was sticky with sweat during a daily walk and walked after dark because it was cooler.

    It’s barely light at 7:00 a.m. and dark by 7:30 p.m. I know we’ll have more warm sunny days this fall. But summer—the long, hot, sunny days on end that I love—that summer is over.

    Autumn has its compensations (Apples! Turning leaves! Bonfires!) but underneath it all, is an instinctive awareness that winter’s coming with its cold dark days.

  • 16 ½ Things I Love About Summer

    1. Early morning walks around the neighborhood (a.k.a. my own tour of gardens).

    2. Strawberries, peaches, and cucumbers with dill in sour cream. Burgers/brats/shish kabobs on the grill. Homegrown tomatoes and sweet corn in August.

    2 1/2.  Picking fresh herbs from my patio pots: basil for caprese salad, fresh mint for mojitos, and cilantro for quesadillas.

    3. Waking up to birdsong at 5:30. Being awake and refreshed when hardly anybody else is up. Adding that extra hour to my day.

    Mears Park, St. Paul

    4. Cutting through Mears Park, along the man-made stream on the way to the St. Paul Farmer’s Market on weekends.

    5. Walking to get an ice cream cone from the Grand Old Creamery.

    6. Feeling bathroom tile that’s pleasantly cool to my bare feet—not frigid—so I don’t have to hop from one throw rug to the next.

    7. Sunning with a book and swimming at Schulze Lake in Lebanon Hills Park.

    8. Grabbing Wednesday night supper from the food trucks at the Nokomis Farmer’s Market.

    9. Fireflies in late June.

    10. L o o o n n g days that stay light past 9:30 p.m.

    11. Heat lightning.

    12. Road trips—leaving early with a sack full of snacks and a cooler packed with cold drinks. Passing rippling fields of impossibly green corn and soybeans. Pink, purple, yellow, and white wildflowers tumbling across ditches.

    13. Drinking wine and reading after dark on the front porch.

    Powderhorn Art Fair, Minneapolis

    14. Art fairs bursting with jewelry to adorn me and artwork to adorn our home.

    15. Outdoor dining at area restaurants—in hidden shady gardens, improvised patios framed by flower pots, or even at tables three feet away from traffic.

    16. Drinking beer (don’t tell the park rangers) around the campfire we don’t really need and seeing a breathtaking number of stars come out overhead.

  • Ode to Sweet Corn

    Truck farmers slowly drove pickups through the neighborhood where I grew up, sing-songing, “Tomatoes, peaches, peppers, melons, sweet corn.” Neighborhood moms stepped to the curb in white sleeveless blouses and faded Bermuda shorts, handing over a few dollars from their change purses.

    Screen Shot 2015-09-16 at 7.59.52 PMBefore dinner, we kids ripped and shucked off the corn’s cool stiff leaves, crumbled dry brown corn silk from the top of the ears, and pulled clingy translucent green silk from the cobs. Then we snapped ears from the stalks and leaves. Sometimes milky juice popped from nearby kernels. In the already-hot kitchen, water rolled and boiled in a deep pot, adding steam, more heat, and the cabbage-y stink of boiling corn to the room.

    At the table, we guided melting pats of butter with a knife across the bumpy kernels. Salted the ears. Bit into crispy yellow and white sweetness. Kernels crammed in my teeth but I didn’t stop. I just kept going around and around till the cob was bare.

    Growing up in Toledo, Ohio, in the midst of Jeep, spark plug and glass factories, sweet corn was simple and wholesome, something we Midwesterners took pride in. There was so much sweet corn that we could eat it every day for six weeks if we wanted. Then it was done. The truck farmers disappeared. We never froze it or canned sweet corn. For my family, sweet corn was a summer-only feast.