The Guatemalan vendor at the farmers market loves her vegetables. And I think it started in planting. Every Saturday I would ask her what (or how) to cook what's on her splendid table. This time she said the beets were sweet and that I should use their natural leaves (mildly bitter on the stem and would balance out nicely in a soup). Yes, I will do it. At home I have fresh corn and decided on its flavor to marry conveniently with the beets for an amazing soup mirepoix garnished with broiled Brussel sprouts glazed with coconut milk and lemon, and before serving dotted with olive oil. She also had green beans and sugar snap peas, last bags, and I grabbed them. My pasta dish is now a menu of these simple greens, with the spinach fettuccine all quickly boiled, and once tossed together must be contrasted with homemade bagel-croutons, charred, crunchy, salty and peppery for texture al fresco. Meta-deliciousness is a seasoning embodiment of food passed on heart to heart from the home farmer to the home chef-- and that's a source of good. I had bought all the grapefruit and papaya from the tent next door from my friend's, and I was given a cardboard box to carry all my market to my van. On the road I had imagined all that will be happy in my stomach to come.
When I lived in Haiku, I foraged all my fruits. The ecosystem there was do-it-yourself. You must catch them before they fall. The rain mango worked well with the vegan pumpkin waffle that morning; it was toasty, earthy and warm, the mango was the butter syrup. I remember picking wild raspberries entangled on the lilikoi vine and cobweb dews, and listening to music in the hut cabana facing the north shore. I wish I had brought the Mexican street vendor fruit juicer when I moved here from New York City. The starfruit teeming in the tree behind my cottage they're so soaked inside I could wring them like hand-washed clothes. There was a Sunday I caramelized coins of strawberry bananas in that juice and then tossed them in saffron rice, olives and raisin cabbage dressed in green tangerine vinaigrette. Just like that. I miss living in the jungle. I miss climbing for the avocados on the highest tier, being careful but free. The guavas I eat many times under the waterfalls after swimming in the cold forest pool. And in the sanctuary you feel relieved where you are now, after all. One couldn't get better days than those days in my book.
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