September 20, 2012
Summer has decided we need less fruit landing on the pavement in an end-of-season downpour and more blue-stained cuticles and lips. My son and I acquiesced and set out for some blackberry bushes that are a few blocks from our house. It was a surprise: my husband got home a little early, my daughter decided to stay home.
The two of us made our way along the sidewalk in our short-sleeved shirts, bypassed the wooden stairs that lead down to the trail that runs through a park in our neighborhood. The berries, bordering the backside of the park, grow on unruly plants that have been chopped back to hedge-like proportions along the edge of someone’s front lawn. Our plastic containers and shopping bag on the ground, we hovered at its edge, surprised there were still some to be had.
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September 13, 2012
On Saturday I had the pleasure of eating black-eyed peas, an ingredient that hasn’t crossed my path in a long time. They were part of a succotash that was served with two fried, goat cheese-stuffed squash blossoms.
I was eating at Café Flora with my sweetheart to celebrate (albeit several weeks late) our anniversary. We sat in the garden. A tree snowed tiny purple blossoms into our water glasses.
A sweet plum tomato chutney tied the meal together, like morning kisses do a long-term love affair. A little on top was enough to make it vibrant: the sweetened vinegar stung the blend of mustard, black-eyed peas, corn and limas.
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September 6, 2012
It was the evergreens that got me when we moved back to the Northwest. I’d step out of my prenatal fitness class and stop on the sidewalk to look up at the high branches. I felt like I was up there too. Floating, giddy – relief rolling through every joint and digit. I am here, I thought. I’m here.
Now, these trees aren’t such an emotional touchstone. They’ve become like the firs on the suburban lot where I grew up; scenery, anchors. When friends come into town and look up with their lips parted, then I stop and look, too. And every time I remember those early moments, after we’d crossed the country and come home.
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August 16, 2012
I’m reading M.F.K. Fisher’s Serve It Forth. In the chapter titled “Meals for Me,” she lays out her specifications for the perfect meal. No more than six around the table. It should simple and leisurely with people who “possess the rare gift of sitting,” who “should be able, no, eager, to sit for hours – three, four, six – over a meal of soup and wine and cheese, as well as one of twenty fabulous courses.”
What a lazy, unabashedly restful picture. Lolling around the table with close friends and easy conversationalists. It’s evening and no one is fussing over the plating of this or that. People are enjoying the food and each other. People are sharing. I can almost smell the air, can’t you?
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