The Farm Market: Weekend Stress Relief

"Oh, lovely!" I exclaimed, digging in my purse for my camera as I encountered golden beets in a basket at today's little farm market on the bay.

Two women buying produce laughed. "She's not talking about us," they giggled to the vender.

"Me neither," said the vender, who was indeed quite lovely with a pleasant, slightly weathered face, strawberry blond hair tucked under a pink baseball cap and her change tucked into the pockets of a flowered apron.

The farm market has grown these past five summers, and I have come to know the vendors. This is not the market I visited when I began writing here in 2006, but a newer one across town. There is no CSA this year, sadly, and not all the produce is organic, but the market is back to a grassy spot near the marina, and the light is much better for photographing produce and flowers.

I envy these microbusiness owners for their independence, and I love how nicely they display their wares. They are primarily women with a keen sense of merchandising.

The half hour or so I spend at the market each weekend is as essential to my sanity as a bedside novel, an occasional massage, and regular hair trims.

Here are more images from today's market. Aren't the colors fabulous? The photos below look like painted postcards to me.

The Ever Changing Flavor of High Summer

Each summer of our lives imparts its own flavor, especially as it recedes into memory.

There is a time in mid-July when summer is at its apogee, before cicadas and crickets make their end-of-season racket. Usually there is a day or two that set the tone for the entire three month period that begins, no matter what the lunar cycle dictates, on or about June 5 and ends on the very last day of August.

"It's all downhill after the Fourth of July," people in Wisconsin are fond of saying, and they may be spot on. But perhaps because I was a July baby, I think mid summer comes a bit farther into the month.

At any rate, the flavors that live on in my memory are usually captured around the middle of July: the balmy summer Nan, Candy, Sue and I rode our bikes to the beach daily, peddling through the old East Side and the little squatters' village to Seagull Point; the next summer when we rode those same bikes to the marina across town to watch boys and their sailboats. That was the summer I met the man I was to later marry.

There was also the summer I painted my bedroom, the summer I got my canopy bed, the summer I landed my first reporting job, the summer I moved to Madison. Iced tea, blueberries, bologna and cheese sandwiches and falafel are the respective flavors of those summers.

One summer in my early 20s I was between jobs, caught between yearning for a city that teamed with life and a village that brought me peace. That year I discovered a dusty little bookstore tucked between a TV repair shop and the back door of a beauty salon on a side street downtown. I recall buying a copy of "Diet for a Small Planet" and several packets of herb seeds. I planted the seeds in my parents yard: Dill, fennel and marjoram. It was the names that drew me, and in time the flavors.

Nothing draws me as fresh basil does. The basil in the photo above was purchased at a local farm market the summer I started this blog. That summer of discovery tasted so good!

High summer is slipping away, and soon we will hear the song of crickets and sense that subtle change in the sun's angle that spells August.

"July," I  wrote in high school "is a sultry harlot doing her dance on the summer lawns, with ribbons unfurling and tambourines clacking against the heat of summer. I welcome her passing for the cooler tempers of August."


Not so much these days as the Julys grower fewer and fly by with such alacrity.

Grilled Mediterranean Salmon and a Salad of Leftovers

When my brother and I were kids, we lived less than four blocks from school and thus were able to walk home for lunch.

In fall, we kicked our way through leaf piles that gathered in low places on sidewalks and drank in the smoky, apple-y aroma of the season. In winter we clambered atop snow banks and pretended to scale the Alps. In spring we were filled with the restless energy of kids who know vacation is drawing nearer.

We had an hour at noon, and the walk to school and back was 10 minutes either way. Our lunches at home - eaten to the drone of the local radio newscaster - consisted of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, hot dogs and beans, macaroni and cheese,  an occasional casserole, and on Fridays, salmon from a can.

It was one of my least favorite lunches, always served with mashed potatoes, or peas or creamed corn. I thought it dull and tasteless, and probably, deep in my mind, I truly believed salmon came from a can.

It took decades for me to appreciate salmon, which with its distinct tangy taste is nonetheless extremely versatile though not the blank canvas that is chicken. It was only after I began eating lunches and dinners at good restaurants that I fully understood this fabulous fish. Being good for you was an added attraction.

It also took me years to fully grasp the male fascination in firing up a grill as soon as the weather hits 45 degrees. I've never been a huge beef eater so, well, it seemed like a big fuss about nothing.

Then, almost 22 years ago, I married a grill guy and suddenly building a fire and cooking something over it became a pleasant ritual. He was so enthusiastic about experimenting with marinades and seasonings that I got caught up in it. We've gone through a hibachi and a couple of Webers. I can't see investing in one of those fancy-schmancy gas grills, because I like all the trappings of a big old black Weber and its rituals.

Recently, I've been experimenting with grilling vegetables and fruit. A few years ago, I grilled peaches that were luscious but not photo worthy. This summer, I'm going to play around with vegetables wrapped in foil packets.

But I digress. Last night I made Grilled Mediterranean Salmon, using a recipe from the Mayo Clinic Website. (I should note that I always buy wild-caught.)

Fabulous! I used it in a salad along with olives, almonds and Asiago cheese for today's lunch.

What's your favorite way to eat salmon? What's the tastiest meal you've ever made on a grill?

Summer Change

Finally it is summer after a long winter and a rainy spring.

I bought fresh garlic at the farm market today and will do something Mediterranean this long weekend. I bought fresh basil, too, and fresh mozzarella.

Insalata Caprese. Salad in the style of Capri.

As a teenager, I dreamed of spending my honeymoon in Capri. It was a jigsaw puzzle named "Marina Grande Capri" that fired my imagination as a child: Colorful buildings with arched balconies, low boats, azure sky and water. My father worked jigsaw puzzles during stressful times, and this was my favorite.

I bought a fresh bottle of olive oil and the best tomatoes I could find. There is no salad that tastes of summer as this one does. My metabolism no longer permits me to consume vast quantities of potato salad on long summer weekends.

This is only one of many changes in my life and yours since I began this blog six years ago in June. Its anniversary quietly came and went while life was occupying me.

Coasting along is no longer good enough. Change is coming. I just haven't figured it all out yet.