Beginning to panic

It suddenly feels as though summer is on the down slope.  Cooler mornings mean my coffee is hot, not iced, once again.  Our windows aren't always open at night anymore.  Swimming lessons are over.  Wyatt and I will be starting a co-op preschool in a couple weeks.

All of this signals the ending of summer. It also means I won't have too many more weeks to enjoy all the wonderful fruits and vegetables that are currently so abundant.

In the past week I've started panicking that I will go to the farmers market and there won't be any more sweet corn.  This happened a few weeks ago with apricots and I almost cried. 

I bought my last two pounds of this year's sweet cherries at Wednesday's market.  I managed to hide enough of them from Wyatt to make a cherry clafouti, something I've been trying to make all summer.  The Sweetheart variety that I used, pits-in, tasted almost spicy.  It was lovely.  Plus, it turns out my toddler will actually eat eggs if they are baked into a clafouti.  This is excellent news.

Truth is, if I don't eat enough summer produce such that I begin to tire of it, I feel like summer has passed me by.  Therefore, it has been decided.  We are cramming as many meals filled with summer foods into the next few days and weeks as we can.  It's now or never for broiled tomatoes; summer squash casserole; salads of tomato, fennel, and fresh green beans; tomato-basil bruschetta on good bread rubbed with garlic; grilled tomato and Romano bean salad with feta, fresh poblanos rajas on homemade tortillas; panzanella . . .

This is also the time when so many good varieties of fruit are peaking.  As you might expect, we are determined to gorge ourselves.  This greatly pleases our 20-month old fruit bat of a toddler.  (Case in point: On Friday, I found him sitting at the table with three Santa Rosa plums in front of him -- each one missing a bite -- and he was reaching for another.)  That said, I've not managed to get even one box of peaches from Eastern Washington yet.  Usually we eat our way through two or more -- and it's nearly Labor Day. My heart is beginning to race just writing this.

I did pick up two flats of mixed berries at the farmers market last week  We've been eating them on yogurt and cereal, then on waffles, and yesterday I made a blackberry and peach coffee cake.

Tonight I baked two raspberry-plum cobblers from a recipe in one of those delightful Canal House volumes.  And then a blackberry galette. Even so, I haven't yet made my three crust blackberry cobbler.  Deep breath.

It's actually my green tomatoes growing on the vine that have the most calming effect on me.  Oddly, they remind me that summer isn't done, just slowing down.  That odds are I'll get to eat more sweet corn before Yakima runs out of it and quits shipping it to Seattle, that I might even find a box of peaches at the local market this week, and that peppers and tomatoes (at least local ones) are yet to come. Exhale.