Pack It All In

There is something about this part of the year, when time speeds up...catapulting us toward the harvest gold days of late summer and early autumn as we still cling to the bountiful light of summer. The transformation is creeping in. The mornings are slightly darker as I prepare breakfast, and sometimes coffee, before heading to the farm. I like to pretend the darkness is from the cloud cover of this cool week, but I know that the days are getting shorter. This is not, of course, a new thing...as the days have been shortening since the solstice all the way back in June. There comes a time when you start to notice longer shadows, a different yellow hue to the sunlight and the precious fewer seconds of sunlight each day. I believe this time of year brings about a bit of a frenzy, a hurry to pack it all in before the stretches of daylight turn to stretches of crisp starry skies and the inevitable return of sweater season.

And so it goes. The beets, collected as ingredients for the canning spree two week ago, remained in the fridge unused. Now they simmer on the stove on their way to becoming Cold Pink Borscht in a Glass, substituting small, red torpedo onions for the shallots and yearning for that dollop of Sugar River Dairy whole milk yogurt for the final whisk. The pizza dough saved from earlier in the week is a much needed vehicle for the cheese remnants in the special drawer (Dreamfarm Garlic Fresh Cheese, Rogue Creamery Blue and overly salted feta Diana asked if I wanted to take home) and the fresh tomatoes she offered me out of her garden. The no knead bread dough, which has been no-kneading on my counter all week, will go into the oven when the pizzas exit. Followed by a batch of basil-infused chocolate chip cookies, a trade for produce with the wonderful ladies from Blue Moon Community Farm, our next door neighbors at the Farmers' Market. This is in part because they handed me the two bags of basil, the remnants of which must be used before turning brown, and in part because the weekly batch of ginger ale they enjoy is a bit off this week.

These weeks are a race to successfully (and tastefully) use all the ingredients in the fridge while they are still edible, to do them proper justice in a savory manner. This hasty competition makes me look forward to the days when the steam from the stove and heat from the oven will be a welcome addition to the stoking of the furnace...although that landscape is still (gratefully) months away. But for right now, I can sit on the porch, watch the dog bark in amazement at the claps of thunder overhead and enjoy the sound of the cooling rain. Until it's time to puree the borscht, that is.

So cheers, to the rush and satisfaction of the bountiful time of year, to the constant transition and to the joy of today's food in your fridge.