For Me? Thank You, How Thoughtful!

The urge to cook turnip-and-bacon soup overwhelmed me so I sought some smaller-sized turnips rather than the usual planet-sized turnips that despite dicing and slow-cooking persist in the soup or the mash like chunks of cork, and found some (like parsnips, they're a rarity or a mere molecule in the produce aisle) and was pleased to notice that the bag said the turnips had been grown just for me.

That warmed my heart. For me? How did they know these were exactly what I wanted and needed at this exact moment? It's a miracle! I liked this so much I looked up the For You brand and found out the For You brand began with a Dutch immigrant who grew outstanding radishes, still the brand's signature vegetable. The company has farms in Michigan and Arizona growing all sorts of produce. And on their website (www.miedemaproduce.com) I found their recipe for Chunky Turnip Soup with Bacon and Parmesan. How did they know that was exactly what I wanted -- for me?

Everything's Good This Time of Year

Please stop in at your local farmer's market or fruit and vegetable stand because this time of year you cannot go wrong. If it grows in your locale, it's at its peak. So what if it's 100 degrees. I sorted through the Missouri tomatoes for the squat-looking Big Beefs and Brandywines, bought the sweetest local corn (had it for lunch along with my own baked steak fries; now that's divine) and local nectarines, a local eggplant with such lovely purple cheeks I want to kiss it, some zucchini and green beans, and I admired the plums, famously sweet Vidalia onions ("You only cry when they are gone"), brand-new baby potatoes both red and Yukon, and the avalanche of melons.

Andy's is in House Springs, also called House Sprangs, and operates 11 hours a day in summer, like many such businesses. I asked the beautiful lady who waited on me (pictured) if she was the owner. She said she was the Owner's Wof.

This is my idea of heaven.

August Cornfield

The ears ripen in late summer
And come on with a conquering laughter,
Come on with a high and conquering laughter.

The long-tailed blackbirds are hoarse.
One of the smaller blackbirds chitters on a stalk
And a spot of red is on its shoulder
And I never heard its name in my life.

Some of the ears are bursting.
A white juice works inside.
Cornsilk creeps in the end and dangles in the wind.
Always—I never knew it any other way—
The wind and the corn talk things over together.
And the rain and the corn and the sun and the corn
Talk things over together.
       (excerpt from "Laughing Corn," poem by Carl Sandburg.)

Keep Those Home Fries Burning

Salivate over the potato-and-egg salad that could be made outa these, or red-potato home fries that will make your friends get up and kiss you without even takin off the napkin from around their necks.

Delighted to see fresh produce, including zucchini, now available from a place not far from here that's a cross between a garden and a farm field, and bought these little gems -- averaging about ping-pong ball size -- for their blushing beauty and of course to think of a hundred decadent ways to cook them.

Demetrius grew these in his garden. Potatoes are mysterious and I had no idea when they'd be ready to dig, but he knew, and I helped him harvest his little red edible gems that began their growth in clusters, kind of like grapes underground. While spading them up you can't help but scar some of them, but I was so bewitched that I turned every inch of earth around there to get 'em all, backache or no backache. This year at the "honor" vegetable stand (where you leave your money on a table next to the road) these were 2 lbs for $2.

Demetrius the Gardener: 1948-2009

A brilliant and strictly principled organic gardener, Demetrius was talented with all plants and devoted to vegetables. He dug a pit 25 feet by 25 out of hard clay and filled it with soil and it became his garden. He grew exquisite tomatoes, beans, zucchini, Charentais cantaloupes, pattypan squash, lettuces, and red potatoes; also onions, garlic, turnips and -- pictured, he's harvesting -- kale. Fresh kale grew deep into the the winter in the hotbeds he built. When he saw his first tomato seedlings every April, you would have thought he was a new father admiring his babies.

Demetrius used to lecture and chide the bunnies who were calmly and in plain sight chomping on his vegetables. The bunnies didn't listen, although he had important stuff to say. So he planted white clover between the vegetable rows, and it worked; the bunnies ate the clover and left the rest alone. But we never did figure out how to keep the turtles from eating the cantaloupes. He loved the seasons and solstices and bees and cycles of life and often remarked on the natural world: "The design is perfect."

He always tried to get a position as a gardener but his true love was farming. The tomatoes on the plate I'm holding in my own photo are the fruits of his labor. Goodbye, friend since 1997; a difficult and sometimes tortured man, Demetrius. He took that name because it means "priest of Demeter" and a gardener is a priest of the earth.

The First Tomato and the Flag Man

With awe I watched the hard little green pearls of May turn into the fat green beads of early June. Then one of them grew fat and soft, took on a lemony tinge, and then a red. And here it is. Gem of all gems. Summer's first tomato.

This is better than an award, better than a military decoration. It's beautiful, shiny, and fit. God, who is an artist, packaged this little, special gift of food. Not only is it wonderfully colored and crafted -- it will taste good and nourish the body. Great work, God! (Applause.) And, God, I'm sorry I've been tied up in the rush and details of life and not seeing the depths and wonders of your creations.

When I'm sitting in traffic waiting for a flagman to direct the rush hour around road construction, I like to remind myself that the flagman, who stands in hot sunlight on hot asphalt and deals all day with irritable and inconsiderate drivers -- is one of God's wonderful creations, is doing God's work of caring for us regardless of who we are, and that someone loves him very much.