Summer Fruit

I love this time of year. Between the cool spring and the hot summer. It is nice enough in the mornings to go out on the swing with Aaron and not yet to the point where it is too hot to go out midday (although it is quickly getting to that point). The days are long and we can go out in the yard together after Thom gets home after work.

But my favorite thing about this time of year is the fruit. The apricots and plums are starting to ripen and the little white nectarine tree Thom planted 2 years ago has even given us some fruit. (Last year it made a lot of little nectarines, but the birds got most of them.) And our peaches are not far behind. Oh, and the tomatoes in the garden are coming in, too. Yum! We have the most wonderful cherry tomatoes and the plants are prolific. Last night we made pasta with fresh tomatoes and basil. Add a little olive oil, crushed garlic, salt and pepper and that is our dinner 1-2 times a week until the tomatoes run out.

This is the first year we've been able to share our summer fruits with Aaron. And he loves it. We typically give him 2-3 apricots, plumns and nectarines - whatever is ripe - cut up into little pieces. He can't eat it fast enough. Sometimes he feeds himself pieces we put on his tray, but more often we feed it to him, as Thom was doing in the pictures below. I swear this kid has a separate compartment in his stomach for fruit and it is a bottomless compartment.



After we had lived here for about a year, I found I could no longer bring myself to buy most fruits that we grow. Even when they are out of season. For one thing, fruit in the store never tastes as good as what we grow so I was constantly disappointed by tasteless apricots, pithy nectarines and avocados full of brown spots. But also, it means buying fruit out of season (since we'd have the fruits when they are in season). And out of season fruit is expensive.

And then I started reading Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and started thinking a lot about where my food comes from. Not in terms of pesticides and that kind of thing, but in terms of energy (i.e. oil and gasoline) required to ship it to me out of season from other parts of the world. And how those fruits need to be bred to survive long trips from plant to grocery store - not ideal genetics for tasting good. Suddenly, eating locally, which involves eating fresh produce in season, made a lot of sense.

The upside is that I appreciate the apricots, peaches and tomatoes so much more than I ever did before because they are only available a short part of the year. Although this year, I am going to try to preserve some plums and apricots so we can enjoy them a little longer. Still, nothing beats the fresh-from-the-tree taste of summer fruits. Just ask Aaron.