My friend Venessa tweeted about eggplant the other day. She lives in a previous city-love, Buffalo, and owns a house with her fiancé Nic. They’re renovating their house, and she has planted a garden. It’s a bit of a vicarious pleasure to read her updates of domestic joys and frustrations.

She pulled an eggplant from the soil, exclaiming over the quality of her eggplant parmesan. I swiftly wanted to be there, sitting across from her, eating and drinking wine. I don’t think I’ve ever had eggplant parm. Eating vegetables from Venessa’s city plot is a large reason why I want to revisit Buffalo.

I have a garden too. Not really. It’s the result of my parents’ hard work over the years. Though in my defense, I’ve pulled weeds in the past. I’m excellent weeder. No weed escapes my thorough eye. Though excruciating, weeding is meditative hard work. If hard work can be meditative….heh.

As excellent as produce CAN be at quality grocery store…as amazingly excellent as it CAN be at a farmer’s market…nothing beats a sun-warmed tomato pulled off your very own vine. Direct sustainable pleasure. We should all be farmers in some shape or form to know this.

On Wednesday, me and my boss-lady went blueberry picking after work. I love picking blueberries because you can eavesdrop on conversation in the next row over and not get caught.

A lady with a foreign accent said, “You come into this world and then you die.” ….or something to that effect. Somber words for a beautiful day among the bushes.

When I brought the blueberries home and transferred them to ziploc bags, I still felt their warmth. Into the freezer they went.

There are other things which lurk in the freezer. Like last year’s crappy peaches. It’s been an ongoing joke in my family. We have a peach tree out front. You really can’t eat them on their own, but once they do ripen, they’re frozen and used for other things. Only we’re not entirely sure what. There are only so many cobblers and jams to be made before the sweet tooth retires.  But not forever…

I’ve taken to puréeing them.

And adding the glop to pancake mix. I brewed peach tea last week and added that too, which resulted in subtly aromatic pancake.

On Monday I attempted a sauce with brown sugar and Wild Turkey American Honey Liqueur. It turned out a little sweet. I wasn’t satisfied. More glop for the fridge. My parents are tiring of all my glops.

Yesterday was my day off, so I made a meal with new and old. I made a BLT with garden tomatoes and roasted garlic mayo.

And the new glop was added to a crisp. I added a little ginger to the filling and pulverized almonds to be added to the topping. Almonds give it that extra something - CRUNCH!

Now to clean out the fridge. Dad wants watermelon.