The Proper Binge

When the chips are down in other areas of fulfillment, food assumes the mantle of my muse on a more full-time basis. Life in the digital realm, save for my recent romance with Twitter (Seriously, people. Twitter is changing the way we create, consume and share information in a major, major way. Get familiar. I won't go into it here, you can just trust me. I'm an Internet professional.) has been, shall we say, less than engaging.

Of course, it's more than just work angst that sends me to the solace of my kitchen. With the farmer's markets now featuring mountains of squash and potatoes, I'm inspired to capture what remains of the summer bounty- Carpe Tomatoes! (er, Lycopersicon Esculentum, that is), my latest undertaking being of the Food in Jars variety. Recent conquests have included putting up some pickled green tomatoes from my friends' garden overflow, some of my favorite bread and butter pickle chips, and 8 quarts of heirloom tomatoes. Today, I am obsessing over working out a red pepper jelly recipe, as I just grabbed a few pounds of handsome field peppers from Wilson Farms in Lexington, and similarly, am hoping to try my hand at some preserves from the last of the season's peaches.

The crisp edge in the air is also a pretty good excuse to crank up the oven, as I have begun to over the past week or so. Knowing that I'd stashed a Whole Foods whole wheat/multigrain pizza dough in the freezer, I was inspired to give in to my desire for a basket of luscious fresh figs to put together an arugula, fig, prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella pizza. Here's how it looked before I put it in the oven:

Nouveau pizza it may have been, but it was pretty yummy. It's hard to resist that magical combination of flavors. Then, yesterday, with my parents popping in for a brunch on their way from Vermont to Connecticut, I threw together this quick crustless mushroom, leek and potato quiche, the rest of which I will continue to enjoy for lunch this week:

And then, alas, there are apples. We had grand plans to visit Tougas Farm on Saturday, but the rain got in the way. Still, there are a few bushels of apples out there with my name on 'em. Beyond the obvious apple-a-day crunchfest (Hello, Macintosh!), there'll be some tarte tatin making and more putting up: apple sauce and apple butter at a minimum. I'm excited to learn that the first share of my Winter CSA will purportedly include apples, too.

I can't help myself. Food enriches me. Cooking engrosses me. Enjoying the product is invigorating; not for the praise, but for the moment of a shared experience. The brains/hands/heart process is soul-satisfying in a way that monkeying around behind a computer screen will assuredly never be, this blog and these little iPhone pix being as close we can get…for now. Augmented reality*, anyone?

*Yeah, this is really a thing. And not just a thing of the future, it's a thing of…now. You can read about it here if you want, or you can just trust me. I'm an Internet professional.