More Autumn Musings

Yesterday was spent at the farmers market in the rain and wind and cold, my favorite time to go. They're starting to sell end-of-harvest bags of lumpy, ugly tomatoes and things for cheap. After a late-afternoon nap I spent this evening making a big batch of tomato sauce to freeze - the tomatoes were giant, deep red, salty sweet, and so luscious it took over three hours to cook them down properly. Inspired, I made a list of other things to buy and make and freeze. Bags of blueberries. Heirloom lima beans for roasting and throwing in soups. Homemade cabbage pierogi. And I ate for dinner exactly what you should be entitled to eat for dinner as an adult: caramelized peach and raspberry tart with vanilla ice cream, made almost exclusively from local ingredients.

I'm starting to have more moments where I can't remember what I'm supposed to be anxious, nervous, or nettled about. The disappointment of having missed out on the local, cage free chickens was drowned out by the experience of eating fresh apple-cider donuts in the chilly, grey air, the relief of finding a used book at the Strand that I'd been planning on buying new somewhere else. The irritation at getting off at the wrong subway stop while loaded down with groceries was supplanted by the memorable Indian meal I wrote about in the comments here. And by reading Henry James late at night, by lamplight, while the wind howled outside.