Stocking up

This is my kitchen windowsill. That massive purplish thing in the background is an eggplant, purchased this morning at the Farmers Market. While at the Farmers Market, I loaded up on the most incredible bell peppers I'd ever seen-- green and red. I bought half a dozen of each, and once I got home it took probably ten minutes for me to dispatch the whole lot into uniform strips, bagged and ready to be stored for winter. I love stocking up this time of year. Everything is in season, the prices are great (the peppers were 50 cents each!), and it's all local. It's not hard for me to decide between buying California-grown peppers from Wegmans in February and making my own. Wielding a well-balanced chef's knife makes me feel so capable and industrious, and oh, the satisfaction of provisioning my nest for winter. The squirrels hide their nuts, I chop my peppers.

Lurking behind the baggies, in the basket, is my cucumber pile. Those are from the garden. Our 4 x 4 foot plot of Marketmore 76 vines has been producing about eight cucumbers a week for almost a month. That is a lot of cukes! And I love them, but they're just not the most inspiring of vegetables. You can't cook 'em. You can slice 'em. Or dice 'em. Mix them with oil and vinegar. Or mayonaise. Or sour cream. And that's about where it ends. And I should add that I already have four freezer bags of pickles put up! But, what's a girl without a plan? Next week, I'm making some sort of Chickpea-Potato-Eggplant curry. I'm gonna make it hot, which Patrick will like. I, on the other hand, am a whimp when it comes to spice. So as an accompaniment I will make a big vat of Cucumber-Yogurt salad, sort of like raita, only with more cukes. This will enable me to eat the curry. A good plan, I think.