What is it about the beginning of fall that fills the belly with such anticipation? I love the sharper scent to the air and of course, losing the constant over-100 degree days is more than welcome.
We had a rough summer climate-wise. I took my daughter to the farmer’s market yesterday morning and the damage from our heat was in plain view no matter where you turned. I picked up one small golden delicious apple and could wrap my pointer finger and thumb around it to meet.
“Couldn’t get size because of the heat and no rain.”
This came from the farmer watching me. His table was full and the market was shutting down in less than half-an-hour so I knew business was bad for him that morning. Yeah, I bought some of those pitiful little apples–some of his peaches too. Now, those were good. I made a cobbler last night that disappeared in record time.
I go to the farmer’s market for many things. Sweet onions, fresh green beans, squash, cantaloupe and the biggie… vine-ripened tomatoes. It’s a bit late for those now –or else everyone scarfed them up early. The fresh locally grown vegetables are the main thing I do enjoy about summer. I like the feeling of the farmer’s market—like buying food from local people who work hard to grow it. Love smelling the fresh baked breads and feeling the frigid bite of Italian Ice on my tongue.
My sister was coming for dinner last night, so I made my favorite Greek green bean dish with sweet onions, garlic, fresh tomatoes, sugar and salt. Sounds strange, but it’s yummy. Since she doesn’t mind being my guinea pig for new dishes, I also made a new squash casserole which had some of my homemade white wine, eggs and cheese. It wasn’t bad, but I’ll be modifying it a bit–adding onions since everything is better with onions. We also grilled chicken. With the cobbler, it made a nice meal. I swear my sister doesn’t normally eat because when she’s here she makes all these moaning noises after every bite. It’s nice to cook for people who appreciate it.
With fall creeping in, I always feel the urge to cook more. I’ve got homemade honey wheat bread baking in there now and I guess my daughter is picking up on the mood because she’s making Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies. Damn. I have no willpower with those.
I usually do a Weekend Art and Music on Sundays and this week I decided my daughter is the artist. I’ve shared her photography images on my blog in the past. She’s now in a photography course in school and we bought her this great 35 mm camera. She loves black and white film and we took her first two rolls in yesterday for development after her volleyball game. She’ll be learning to develop her own film this year and we’re looking into maybe putting in a dark room…
OMG. I actually teared up when we opened the package of pictures. In fact, the man developing the film came over to ask my daughter how old she is because he was expecting someone a lot older after seeing the images. She babysits for several families in the neighborhood and she asked permission to take pictures of one couple’s two young boys. They are four and six. We called the mother down here yesterday so she could see them. Gave her doubles. There were a lot of great shots. She loved them.
Since these two don’t show faces, I’ll share. I wonder if we should enter that first one in a contest. My reaction to it was so strong, I couldn’t speak. Now, I know that’s partly due to my daughter being the artist of the shot, but it was also just from the sheer emotion of the image. See for yourself and share how it made you feel.
(I had to mess with the picture sizes to get them to work in here correctly. The photos are also loaded at my other blog site www.thewritsnark.blogspot.com The shading changed here, so the original shots look better on Blogger. These were done with a 35 mm camera, so they were also scanned in. I do wish I could get the actual beauty of the shots here. )
