Summer Brings Great Tastes
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Food on Monday, June 15, 2009 6:30 PM
With summer’s arrival, I have produce on the brain.
June in Michigan is way too early for fresh local produce, but the imported stuff in the grocery store bins is reminding me how much I love it when the abundance of summer fruits and vegetables finally comes around.
We’re growing our own vegetable garden for the second year in a row. It’s nothing too ambitious - tomatoes, basil, green beans, peppers, squash - but I would feel it was worth all the work even if the only thing we could grow was tomatoes. To me, there is nothing like a grape tomato right off the vine. I daydream about them sometimes: a warm burst of ripe redness in my mouth. Almost like eating sunshine.
On the other hand, there are cherries. I’ve already declared my love for peaches, but my love for cherries rivals it. Orchards abound in our part of Michigan and you can pick plump, dark-red sweet cherries directly from the trees yourself. They taste indescribably good. I can eat my way through a large bowl of them in an afternoon, so addictive are sweet cherries to me.
On yet another hand… corn. Best bought, in my experience, from farmers selling it from the back of their trucks or from stands in random fields. (I’m developing a new carpe diem philosophy: see a corn stand, pull over immediately.) Corn that has traveled too far or sat too long is dense and chewy when cooked, but when I bite into a fresh, perfectly-cooked ear of corn and feel the crisp kernels fall away between my teeth, I wonder why I bother to eat anything else.
But then I get the skin of a plump tomato or cherry between my teeth, or take a bite of a ripe peach and feel the juice run down my hand, and I remember why.
Tomatoes, cherries, peaches, and corn top my list of summer-produce favorites. But I can’t decide on one ultimate among them.
Do you have a single favorite fruit or vegetable? Or do you love them all?
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