Autumn Harvest

Even though farmer's markets here have an unusually long season for produce I think of a summer-only (strawberries, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes), I find myself drawn now to the bounty of autumn.

Maybe the shortening days are sending my body a signal - "grab some yams for breakfast - you need the beta-carotene" and "spaghetti squash - there's a great gluten-free way to put something healthy under that lycopene-rich red sauce you love." So I listened. One tomato for a late-season plate of caprese (with the home-made mozzarella and the dwindling fresh basil). One red pepper for my black bean - corn - red pepper salad. A couple ears of corn - to cut the kernels off the cob and freeze for winter use. And the rest? All the comfort veggies of autumn - yams, sweet potatoes, baking potatoes, and a surprising array of squash types.

Soon the pumpkins will be ready, and again this year I'll try roasting the seeds and using the flesh for pie (sounds spooky enough for me).

Back deck Caprese

As Sunset's One Block Diet experimenters point out this summer, eating locally doesn't get much more adventurous or satisfying than home-grown. On their grounds, the equivalent of one city block, they have room for some edible landscaping, a beehive, garden patches with an abundance of produce, and even a coop and yard full of happy laying hens.

My space for a victory garden is limited to some containers and a small shared patch on land. But from these, we are celebrating summer with caprese salads several times a week. The basil is thriving in a pot on the sunrise-side deck, planted there after I found organic basil sold with intact roots at the San Carlos farmers market. And the tomatoes are happily growing upside down, hanging in special planting bags from posts off the side of the house. There they enjoy plenty of light, shelter from afternoon winds, and radiated warmth from the house in the late afternoon.

What's missing from the local list is home-made mozzarella. After learning from Barbara Kingsolver about "the Cheese Queen" and buying a copy of Ricki Carroll's Home Cheesemaking, I'm just dying to try my hand at 30-minute mozzarella. When the supplies arrive by mail (even the artisanal cheesemakers here order from Ricki, it seems), I'll pop out to the store for some Clover milk, made from honest-to-gosh pasture-roaming cows that live up the coast from me. And then we'll party like it's 1899.