Growing up in rural Maine taught me that in the summer time you eat what is ripe to the extreme. Eat until the last berry is plucked from the vine or the last carrot is pulled from the ground. Eat to taste the subtle details of the fruit or vegetable till you can tell the difference between types and varieties. Learn the feeling of when a berry is just the right amount of ripe or to smell when the peaches give off perfume so pungent you are intoxicated by the first bite. Eat until you are an expert.
In my family always ate what was in season. But my understanding of eating and living seasonally really made sense when I spent my summers working on a farm. We lived and breathed what was going on with the plants we were tending. The shift in the soil the weather and the way the plants matures and bore fruit or leaf, had a direct impact on what would end up on your plate.
In Maine farming is a short lived and fast paced race to grow, preserve and eat as much as you can before the leaves begin to toast in the late September sun, turning the leaves many shades of mahogany. Summer is the time to eat as much fresh produce as you can all the time.
One of my favorite memories was being taught how to eat a yellow sweet plum by my farming mentor. The small fruit were perfectly ripe about to burst like a balloon with nectar. These plums were not for neat freaks. Each bite would express a deluge of juice down your chin running down your neck and down your shirt. So we assumed the position, ass bent at the hips with your elbow high above your head as you held the fruit. This insured that only a fraction of the juices would coat your face and body. We did this daily eating them straight from the tree one after another, until I really didn’t want to eat them any more. As the plum season tapered off and we had picked enough to fill jars with their beautiful syrup, we moved on to graze from the next mature fruit.
Here in New Orleans fruit season feels like it happens all at once and then its over. This makes it hard to gorge on just one varietal, so I have taken to buying massive amounts and freezing it at its peak ripeness, eating as much as I can while its fresh.
In the off season when I go to the grocery store and there lies in front of me perfectly perky fruit, all I see is an impostor
. I don’t feel tempted to buy them because I know I will be disappointed I try to remind myself “absence makes the stomach grow fonder.” Fruit season will come again.
So get out there and gorge on the seasons fruit because it won't last!
