Gratitude Monday: Tasting summer

Gratitude Monday, and I’m grateful for the wonderful produce of summer, which is filling the farmers markets.

I’m talking multiple varieties of peaches, tomatoes, corn-on-the-cob, blueberries, artichokes (hey—this is California, dude), cherries, asparagus, plums, melons, squashes, strawberries, herbs and even stuff I don’t care that much about, like eggplant and cauliflower.

Have you met Saturn peaches? AKA Donut peaches?

Or did you imagine all the varieties of plums? And that's before you get to pluots. 

I don't know whether to eat these peppers or install them as art.

At the Sunnyvale farmers market you can sample your way through breakfast and lunch--little slivers of whatever's on offer at each stall. Even dates, if you want to clog your insides. 

The plums take me back to summers when I was a kid, before a lightning strike killed the plum tree in our back yard. (Of course it couldn't hit the persimmon tree, oh, no; had to be the plum tree.) I don't think there's anything better than ripe, juicy plums; unless it's peaches; or maybe watermelon. Well, maybe intensely-flavored strawberries that were on the bush yesterday.

I think the farmers markets here in the Valley they call Silicon are the best of anywhere. You're buying direct from the actual producers , because we're close to a lot of truck farms and small ranching and fishing operations. 

And I just love the notion of squash shaped like...well, you know... Snuggling up next to brilliant baby pattypans:

I have to be physically restrained from buying armloads of squash or crates of berries, and when I drive home, my car is engulfed in the scent of cantaloupe or peaches. 

Here's the result of me exercising restraint on a recent trip:

See what I mean?

This all means caprese salads, poached chicken breasts with tomato mayonnaise (homemade, with basil), sautéed summer squash, Greek yoghurt with peach slices,  bowls of mixed melon, salade Niçoise, strawberry shortcake (using cream scones, actually, and with blueberries and raspberries and just a splash of Cointreau), mango-steak-and-grilled asparagus on watercress, pasta primavera…

Oh, yum—summer!