Today in ten good things.

1. Waking up to a beautiful morning. Opening our bedroom door so Bruiser could hop up on the bed.
2. Thinking, when I woke up, maybe I'll take a rest day, because I felt sore, but as the day wore on, thinking, nope, I'm gonna do another two-a-day. And doing it.
3. Knowing from the moment I sat down to eat my Frosted Mini-Wheats that we were going to see a movie later in the evening.
4. Getting to talk to my smart colleagues about exciting things.
5. Thinking with Charlotte about making the Publication Center* a micro-press. (OH YES it is happeninnnnnngggg)

< I will pause, so that you may reflect**. >

6. Eating a surprisingly delicious lunch in the Student Center.
7. Visiting with friends before whisking off to the movie.
8. A very good movie, a comedy, that had the grand advantage of being a perfect length.
9. A big big moon.
10. Thinking about going to the farmer's market tomorrow!

BONUS ten things: Ten Things I Hope to See, Eat, and Buy at the Farmer's Market Tomorrow:

1. a huge croissant
2. peaches galore
3. tomatoes galore
4. basil galore
5. maybe some berries?
6. Mozdykuchen!
7. it's too soon for Asian pears, but maybe some asian pears.
8. ALLLLllll the garlic
9. all the things to make fattoush
10. eggs!

*don't judge this website...it is about to get freaking amazing.

** I hope LK knows that every time I use the expression 'I will pause, so that you may reflect,' it is in homage to her.

Scenes from the Reading Terminal Market.

Across from our hotel is the Reading Terminal Market. Said to have been established in 1892, it is also said to be America's oldest continuous farmer's market. I walked around in a sleep-deprived haze, and plotted the many breakfasts and lunches I might happily have there, and also bought a piece of rose geranium pound cake at the Metropolitan Bakery, which on the one hand did not seem remotely redolent of rose geranium, a disappointment that was almost entirely softened by the fact that it was, on the other hand, a darn good pound cake, full stop.

down a concourse in the Reading Terminal Market.

This is candy. Pretty, pretty candy.

At the risk of being obvious,
these are emu eggs. $10.00 each.

one of about a zillion food purveyors in the Market.

At dinner.
Our server: Can I bring you anything? More bread?
(there is still bread in the basket. but we are hungry.)
Me: Sure. It'll be our back-up bread.

Weekend stats.

Peaches: 16, from two vendors.

Nectarines: 3 exorbitantly priced ones, from our fruit guy, who has a very high opinion of his fruit in general, and his nectarines in specific.

Movies: 1, unless you count watching A Few Good Men on AMC for the zillionth time, in which case: 2. Wait! also significant portions of The Misfits on TCM, because it was Montgomery Clift day, which we watched while laying around this afternoon and also reading portions of a Swedish mystery novel.

Pants purchased on sale at the Gap: 4 pair, cute if I do say so myself.

Successful technology challenge sorted: new charger for my Macbook Pro, which was (I bet you can guess this:) failing to charge.

Dollars spent to sort technology challenge: 0. That is "zero." That's because of the brilliant Apple Store Genius, Tomasi, who figured out, I guess, that my charger was still warrantied, or something? Anyway, Tomasi was awesome. Tomasi is a solutions provider.

Syllabi finished, worked on, or started: 0. That is also "zero." I have no further comment to make on this point.

Fantastic culinary adventures: 1. I made harissa, to go with roasted potatoes omg it was aMAzing. It was for my poetry group.

Birthday girls who ate pancakes with us: 2. At Dee's! --a brief panegyric on Dee's: unpretentious; full of cheerful folk but still with a table to be had, without any waiting whatsoever; with the best hash browns I've had in quite some time, and, judging from the several bits I stole from one birthday girl's chocolate chip pancakes, with an excellent chocolate chip pancake.

Rating, on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being "hideous" and 10 being "stellar," of the weekend overall, thus far: pretty much perfect.

I love the smell of fresh basil in the morning.

Yesterday we bought a metric ton of vegetables and fruit--mostly vegetables--at the farmer's market. This matches the metric ton of vegetables and fruit we bought last week. I could not help myself. The historian likes to get sacksful of grapes from this one family, and I like to buy piles of basil and arugula and eggs and bread and peaches and corn. Hence the tonnage. All this food made me feel pensive.

Me: I'm going to cook a whole bunch of things tomorrow, and then we can just eat it all week. Like, corn salad . . . and pesto . . . and quinoa salad . . . and that one sausage casserole for singing son and his family [note: a baby is arriving at their house soon, so the sausage thingie is to put in the freezer for a rainy day, aka a day when there is fussing and diapers and no time to cook.] . . . and gazpacho and ratatouille and vegetable curry!

The historian: [noncommital but encouraging remark. He's heard me in this enthusiastic fantasy before. Still, everyone acknowledges that this would be a good thing, all this cooking and putting the food in a state where we could actually eat it, as opposed to watching it become slowly, slowly less edible by the day in the refrigerator.]

Me: . . . and caprese salad!

Little did any of us know, least of all me, that I would wake up in a state of being moved in fact, as opposed to "in theory," by the Spirit of Cooking. I got up and made myself both toast and a list:

• pesto
• sausage thing for singing son
• corn salad
• quinoa salad
• vegetable curry
• caprese salad
• ratatouille
• gazpacho
• red beans

The list also comprised a pile of other stuff, non-cooking stuff, almost none of which I've done. It turns out that cooking motivates me more intrinsically than grading. Huh, who knew.

I actually ended up cooking only about half of the things on the list. But I think I can make two or three more of them tomorrow. And that means, the people, that at our house we can just about do no cooking all week, which, in a week with a pile of upcoming meetings and less spare time than is actually desirable for an activity I like to call "living my life," a lot of food ready to eat with no more effort than opening the refrigerator door, a spoon in hand, is a good thing.

Here and there.

When I was in Idaho, I spent some time rather virtuously preparing for my return home. I wanted to

• clean out my refrigerator, replace its burnt out light bulb, wash out everything
• wash the fronts of my cupboards
• buy a new mop
• other assorted Cleanliness Brigade activities.

None of which I have done. Instead I have

• nagged my son to do his laundry already
• spent some time on the internets
• pondered how much stuff there is to do and how very few days I have to do it in
• hmm, what have I done?
• seen three movies.

But tomorrow, I am going to make apricot jam. JAM. I bought the apricots today, oh boy, and tomorrow the Jammery begins. There may also be cherry preserves, who can say? Because they were still selling cherries today at the farmer's market.

Also, today I began reading the entries to a literary contest. [Insert gnashing of teeth.] I didn't so much agree to do this as fail to say no, and then whoops! There's a box of literary entries on my porch! With judging sheets attached to each and every poem! And horizontal lines for me to write comments! Come to think of it, it's kind of like GRADING. Gosh. And there are approximately 115 poems. I read nine of them and wrote supportive comments and then I had to take a break. So in and around the jam making tomorrow, I think there may be some judging. Judge not that you be not judged--is that what I hear you telling me? Then don't send 115 poems to me in a box with judging sheets--that's just asking for it.

TAGS: jam, judging, Biblical injunctions

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.

Cold storage.

This year at the October farmer's market, it is genius! Somehow things have held until now, so there are still peaches, plums, tomatoes, basil, melons, beans, along with winter squashes, potatoes, greens, pumpkins. Today, we got apples from a guy who literally picked them last night--Macintoshes, and so unbelievably good. He also had late crop peaches, O Henrys, that he let ripen on the tree, picked within hours of our buying them. Unbelievable! Given yesterday's and today's weather, it seems a little unseemly to be eating fresh tomatoes and green beans, let alone peaches, but there you are: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow there may only be gruel, but today there are peaches and tomatoes.

Here are some things we saw at the market today:





















Squashes & pumpkins




















At Sun River




















At Chad's


















At David's


















At Tremonton Girl's


















Tremonton Girl and husband

Seen at ShopKo.

A cd entitled "The Songs of Celine Dion, Instrumental Version."

(Tomorrow: The "Write a lot real fast, revise later if at all" manifesto. Actually, that might be the manifesto--we'll just have to see.)

Uh, today's poem.