O fleeting days of harvest

I feel I should write an ode to the produce that's finally bursting out of the gardens around here. Lucky for you I don't write poetry, so we can all be spared that exercise. We have tomatoes galore from our hell strip garden, and it's so much fun to be able to serve our own cherry tomatoes on salads instead of having to buy them. Every time I walk by the tomato display at Sunflower I feel superior.

Last year I felt that I missed many opportunities to eat local produce when it was in season, and to preserve it for the winter, so I vowed to do better this year. I have done pretty well at the eating part, but I really haven't learned anything about preserving. My only serious attempt so far has been to buy a box of peaches a few weeks ago to freeze. I spent a couple of hours blanching, peeling, slicing, and bagging all 20 pounds of peaches, and then I put the whole cache in my freezer. The next day, I decided to thaw out a bag to see how they were. Turns out they are great! The next week I thawed another bag, and I am currently finishing off my third bag, which means that I have eaten one-third of my entire winter's store of peaches within three weeks of freezing them. I'm not sure how this food preservation thing is going to work for me, since once all the hard work is done, it seems irresistable to eat the products immediately!

We had our first cold, rainy autumn day last week--it didn't get above 55 degrees all day--and as soon as I woke up I was thinking about making soups, stews, pot roast, stuffing, etc. Finally I'm feeling like fall food, although not without some preemptive nostalgia for summer. I taught a Farmers' Market class last week where we cooked with butternut squash, potatoes, and beets, and the meal tasted like fall on a plate.

I have also discovered Tuscan kale, aka dino or lacinato kale. Summer, one of our cooking instructors, introduced me to it in her Tuscan cooking class, and it is my new favorite vegetable. If you haven't tried it, keep your eyes open--it has dark green leaves with a bumpy texture like alligator (or dinosaur) skin. It's really tasty, and I'm looking forward to cooking some soups with it this winter.