September is back. And I find, still, that I miss school. I miss the stuff of it. It’s been too many years since I’ve bought school supplies. No crisp clean notebooks, no colored pencils, no folders, no protractors, no scientific calculators. No Trapper Keepers. There is hardly any Velcro in my life. I miss the …
Summer
The market has been full of beautiful peppers. The usual bell peppers in red, orange, yellow and green, jalapeños, Hungarian wax, Trinidadian perfume, poblanos, and fiery habañeros. They are bright and inviting, but to be honest, I hardly know what to do with most of them. Oh, I use bell peppers in all sorts of …
It’s been a hot summer in Chicago. This July and August we’ve watched the mercury climb into the nineties more days than I care to count. Too many. I’m not a hot weather kind of girl, give me seventies and a light breeze along the lake, and I’ll take eighties with a cool drink, but …
Don’t they look lovely? A little bit exotic? I know I’ve seen them before, sitting in baskets at the farmers market, pale and papery, like tiny tomatillos or ornamental lanterns. I knew they were commonly called ground cherries, and they always seemed intriguing, but somehow, until this morning I had never eaten one. I was …
On Saturdays in the summer, my routine almost invariably includes a trip to the Evanston Farmers Market. From time to time, I think about swapping my northerly trek for a southerly one and finally checking out the Green City Market or just making a quick trip to the little Edgewater Market that’s within walking distance, …
At their peak ripeness, summer fruits need little adornment. It’s tough to improve the flavor of a meltingly delicate, sweet tart raspberry or a succulent peach on the verge of bruising. But when you find yourself up to your elbows in fragrant baskets of the summer bounty that you simply couldn’t leave at the farmers …