Dear friends, as days go, I could not ask for a better one. It was a day full of gifts. There was lunch with the lovely bunni. (If bunni ever invites you to lunch, please accept with alacrity. You’ll be glad you did.) There was a package waiting for me when I got back from the market this morning, containing this magnificent tea towel made expressly for me by the lovely receptionista:
Believe me when I say that the picture does not begin to do justice to the actual towel. The colors pop, the stitching is both elegant and sturdy, and the egg looks very, very mean, just the way I like it.
Even the farmer’s market was good to me today. This should not come as a surprise, but it was. Lately I’ve been taking the farmer’s market for granted, vaguely dreading the trip downtown, feeling weary at the thought of fighting my way through crowds, sun beating down upon us, glare from the pavement tiring me within 10 minutes of arrival. Today, though, something clicked in my head, specifically a memory of a Saturday from this past January, when it was 3 degrees with a -5 windchill, when I knew that even if I could marshal the strength to go outside, there would be nothing at the market for me to buy. I thought of that day, and how bleak and frustrated I felt, and I arrived at the market feeling happier, more secure and well-placed, than I’d felt in a long while. We now have ingredients for ratatouille: onions, yellow squash, zucchini, tomatoes and three perfect lavender Italian eggplants with skins that squeaked against each other when I pulled them out of the basket. Those eggplants, those tomatoes, particularly the red zebra tomatoes I bought for the first time today, they are such a pleasure to hold in hand; it is almost better to hold them than to eat them. Almost. We have new garlic, the stiff-necked variety known as rocambole, pronounced “rockin’ bowl.” We have Italian plums for plum cake and nectarines for anything we damn well want. We also have yet another flat of cherries; apparently last weekend was not the last weekend for sour cherries after all. This time tomorrow, I will have pruny fingertips and grubby nails from spending the day pitting cherries, and I will be glad for it.
We also have chanterelles, or at least we did until dinner...but that is for another time.
