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Taste of the season

I went to the farmer's market. I bought no tomatoes, though there were lovely tantalizing tomatoes everywhere for, like, a dollar a pound (so if you don't have a free source, get yourself to the farmer's market). I bought onion-rosemary focaccia, a pound of the cutest little oriental eggplants you ever did see and two sweet Italian peppers, one red and one green.

The eggplants were almost too cute to cook. They were very dark purple with black tops like little emo haircuts, and looked like they'd popped out of a Japanese print or off this Japanese map. If I hadn't been hungry this afternoon I might have indulged in a little food photography, but I settled for admiring them as I cut them up. The peppers were long, thin, and dramatically curvy. I found a live caterpillar in one. I think maybe that one was a little too organic. I called Oz to ask him if he minded sharing his dinner with a caterpillar. "I don't think he ate much." He said, "A little caterpillar poo never hurt anyone." Well, I washed the pepper out pretty good and trimmed off the bits that looked chewed.

I peeled and seeded and diced a half buttload of tomatoes (a quantity of approximately the same volume as one of my buttcheeks) without cutting off a fingertip. Peeled tomatoes are dangerously slippery. I usually use canned tomatoes, but I have to say, using fresh is worth the effort. If you have time. Can you tell I'm still not employed?

All that plus an onion, a ton of garlic, a bay leaf, some basil, and a cup of marsala became eggplant scallopini marsala. It was cooking away and smelling fabulous when Oz called to tell me he was stuck in traffic. So I turned off the heat and took a break from cooking to nibble on the focaccia and drink marsala. As a general rule, one should never cook with booze that one wouldn't drink. It's good to confirm the quality once in a while.

Once Oz got home I boiled up some pasta to go with the scallopini. Grated parmesan on top. I've made this dish before, but I think this is the best it's ever tasted.

We still have tomatoes. We still have leftover salsa. I walked into my neighbor's yard today and saw that even more had turned red. It's a vegetable plot to take over the world.