Wednesday.

I forgot the cord that connects my camera to my computer, so I cannot provide you with pictures, but I can say this:

Nectarines are my favorite fruit. Now that the cherries are pretty much gone.

Last year, we bought some exquisite nectarines from this guy at a booth at the farmer's market. They happened to be white nectarines and they were pretty much perfect--ripe, of course, which also means fragrant and let us not forget beautiful. So the next week, we stopped by his booth and asked after the white nectarines. Sadly, there were no more.

The Historian (with gentle humor): . . . so, these are your ordinary nectarines, then.

Fruit Guy (a little hot under the collar): There's nothing ordinary about these nectarines!

Calm down, Fruit Guy, we totally agree. Kidding!

Even though our Fruit Guy is a little touchy, he really does have pretty extraordinary fruit, and apparently also has every fruit tree known to man. Last week he had Transparent apples, which might be one of the prettiest apples in the whole wide world. Extra extra tart, just so you know. They are an early apple, one of the earliest. They would make beautiful pies.

But I am not ready for apples yet, so we bought extraordinary nectarines, three of which I brought with me here to Idaho. I just ate one standing over the sink because of the juicy. The flesh was almost velvety. The nectarine as a fruit is just one big WOW. But only if you get them--this goes without saying--when they are absolutely perfectly ripe.

Historical footnote about the nectarine. And me.: When I was a young wife and mother, nectarines were the very first fruit I learned to bottle. My friend and I bought a bunch. She showed me how to put them into boiling water briefly so as to slip their skins off. Evidently, we did this for the exact right amount of time, because even when we slipped the skins off, the flesh retained a blush. Those were some gorgeous nectarines in a bottle.

Today is my last full day in Idaho. Also, and perhaps not coincidentally, my last nectarine.

Bitter: some thoughts.

Today while avoiding work, I took a tour around my kitchen and swooped down on some leftover salad from the night before. Touring the chaos of my house is one of my prime work-avoidance techniques, and it's basically how I get my laundry done, clothes put away, kitchen straightened, etc. But I digress: the salad was made of some spring mix, two heads of white endive, and blood oranges. I dressed it with olive oil and salt and pepper--the orange was juicy.

Because the endive is sturdy, the salad was really none the worse for wear for having stood around for a few hours. If this horrifies you, I'm very sorry. In fact, the whole thing tasted just wonderful, and part of what made it wonderful was the acid of the orange juice, the unctuousness of the oil, the salt, and the bitterness of the endive. It was perfection.

My oldest friend who has impeccable and discriminating taste once told me that she found herself, as she got older, craving intense flavors, and she loved bitter flavors especially. I am finding this myself--some sharp taste in the mix of things makes everything more vivid. Even a possibly sorry, leftover salad. Even, possibly, the occasional bitter thoughts I try not to nurture in myself.

Not bitter: we saw Honeydripper tonight, John Sayles's latest. Wonderful. College daughter and I continued our pre-spring break schedule with a viewing of Step Up 2: The Streets (I dared her to say the entire title to the ticket girl, who was completely unfazed by this--why does it seem so funny to me, this title with a number and a colon and a pretty funny subtitle? Oh well, another opportunity for comedy missed, but what else is new?). It was fabulous, in the way that a good dance movie is fabulous--lots of dancing, not much pretense of doing anything other than the required plot moves, and then more dancing. The final sequences were rather electrifying. I thought of you, assertively unhip, and agree: this movie just made me want to step up and dance. And the final unbitter thing? The Jazz beat the Celtics tonight. Yeah yeah yeah!