In my last post, when I asked you about a time when your home was in control of you, you responded with a wealth of different answers. Dana talked about the breakdown and renovation of her new house, and Stephanie, Shanna, and Jacqui talked about the stress of homes invaded by clutter (whether good clutter, like wedding gifts, or bad clutter, as seen in Hoarders…eek). Both of which are very different from my unfortunate, pest-related experience of home invasion, but it was clear to me that there was a thread tying all those experiences together: when we are forced to take care of our homes, rather than our homes taking care of us, some crucial balance is thrown off.

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I suppose it’s strange to be talking about tomatoes in late October, right? But then again, it’s strange to still be seeing tomatoes in late October. And not, mind you, the ones usually airlifted to Virginia in December from exotic lands, but rather the locally-grown kind, laid out in neat rows on farmers’ market tables. It’s just been that kind of summer, bleeding into that kind of fall: where the warmth doesn’t want to stop hanging in the air at night, and every coat-appropriate day is matched with a sunny, borderline humid one.

And that’s okay by me. That means more blissful trips to Shenandoah National Park, drifting among the fiery leaves without the burden of gloves or a scarf. It means more Sunday nights in October dedicated to after-dinner strolls, some of which lead you to the swinging screen doors of hipster-run pie shops in newly-gentrified parts of your city. And, of course, it means fresh tomato sauce for a whole entire month longer than you’d reckoned to be blessed with.

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I have had the good fortune to not be afflicted by too many dire ailments in my life. Yes, there was one bout of walking pneumonia when I was eight that left me hacking up a lung for a while. And during college, I fell ill with the flu and couldn’t summon the energy to lift my head in the direction of the Season 3 DVDs of Grey’s Anatomy I was screening, despite being intensely curious about the fate of Derek and Meredith‘s relationship. So clearly the situation was a bit alarming. I do, however, contend that the illness wouldn’t have dragged out for as long as it did if I hadn’t run the Marine Corps Marathon three weeks later.

Ahem.

But there is one chronic condition I suffer from that has the power to bring me to my knees. It’s called Jalapeño Eye. That’s a technical term, and I’m pretty sure it has its own WebMD entry. It usually arises after a well-meaning attempt at adding heat to an otherwise non-threatening dish like chana punjabi. Without thinking twice, you slice open the tiny, bright pepper you procured at the market, scrape out its heat-packed seeds and ribs with your fingernail, and generally proceed to spread spice molecules all over your hands without a care in the world. You will then scrub your hands vigorously with dish soap and hot water, thinking you’ve gotten them really, virtuously clean.

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There’s a trap I fall into sometimes, and it’s called “life is so perfect for everybody else.” As in, nobody else’s hair frizzes into an ‘fro when August rolls around, or struggles to stay in shape, or gets obsessed with celebrity gossip in lieu of keeping up with their perusal of Nabokov short stories. Nobody at work sits at their desk cursing their job responsibilities, and nobody overdraws on their bank accounts or screws up their first attempt at home haircolor. Right? It’s so easy to romanticize, even when your good sense chides you for playing such a ridiculous mental game.

And then I discovered the food blogosphere, which is like being James Stewart in Rear Window. Except it’s a million little windows into the lives of others, and these people know they’re being watched. There’s an intimidating polish and structure to the whole thing. It’s not a complaint, really—I’ve found honest, sincere friends and incalculable inspiration here, after all—but it’s rare for someone to chat about a spectacular flop in the kitchen, or the mind-numbingly boring sandwich they eat everyday at noon.

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It seems only appropriate to end these tales of Blueberry Week in Maine. It’s full-on August now, and some of my best Augusts were spent there as a teenager, in a little house on Lake Sebago. And it’s no surprise that blueberries—like those other Maine delicacies, lobster and maple syrup—figure prominently into my favorite recollections of those trips. After all, we always stayed with dear family friends (Dave and Sue) in a television-free cabin, sans computers, in a place where cell phone service was spotty at best. It was the simple pleasures that became the fabric of our days.

Instead of our electronic devices, the greatest source of entertainment was each other. Sue loved reading in the plastic lawn chair propped up by the water, on the cabin’s tiny inlet that served as a beach. She also liked to take morning walks, and made us rooibos tea when the sun dipped low—a fixation borne from a trip to South Africa. Dave gathered us around the coffee table for card games, and he and my dad shared a fondness for almanac trivia sessions. (Seriously, I can’t tell you how many times I was quizzed about the five longest suspension bridges in the United States.) They were both amateur astronomers, too, and no trip was complete before we’d gathered once on the dock after dinner, starstruck under the brilliant rural sky, to piece together constellations.

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We all cook for different reasons: to experiment with something new, to perform a political act, or simply to alleviate the growling of our stomachs. Lately, I’ve been cooking for the feeling that I’ve created something: for the tactile pleasure of working with my hands, and for the tangible results. When you follow a recipe from start to finish, you can rest assured that something real and material will be borne of your labors. (And it doesn’t even matter if the resulting food is any good!)

Here’s the thing: I sit in a swivel chair all day, staring at a computer. Behind the computer is a white wall. I enter data into Excel spreadsheets, I scan and file documents, and I sift through legal bills, but I don’t encounter natural light and I don’t ever finish the day having created something. Nowadays, cooking is how I stretch my boundaries, and how I exalt in my own ability to do something worth writing home about. Someday, I’ll make a living out of my creative powers. For now, I have my kitchen.

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The corn-and-tomato inundation has begun, and every week, our CSA share gets heavier and heavier. Last Thursday—pick-up day!—the plastic handles of the bucket-like bag dug themselves deep into the creases of my bent fingers. And in order to make it from the drop-off cooler back to my car, I had to lean to one side, awkwardly swinging myself in a forward motion. So the real fun started at home, after the heavy lifting, as we stood in the kitchen and puzzled over the fate of our new friends.

With no grill to our name, we relied on Mexican flavors to imbue the ingredients with a summery taste. Not that they needed much garnish—food this fresh doesn’t need to be masked by spice or ever meet a flame to be rendered delicious. But hey, we’re partially in this CSA thing to stretch our creative muscles, and so here’s what we cooked up.

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Whether I was slinging bagels at Panera or entertaining kids as their full-time babysitter, I always considered my high-school self to be a solid employee. I was driven—started working the summer of my fourteenth year and never stopped. I was great at being fake cheerful, even if I didn’t really want to rip movie tickets or ring someone up at the cash register. And when you asked me to show up at 2:30, I was in the bathroom at 2:20 dutifully changing into my uniform, every single time.

Well. There is one stain on my employment record, one that I should divulge if I’m to be truly honest here. One summer, I signed up to scoop ice cream at Homer’s, one of my favorite hometown institutions. The place was decked out in bright red and smelled pleasantly of charred burger patties; they were known, though, for their legendary ice cream (the peppermint stick was unreal). On my first day of work, patrons were lined up out the door past 11 p.m., and my weak forearms and wrists struggled to scoop fast enough. On the second day, I could barely lift my sore arms, and had one too many fights with the ornery milkshake blender. On the third day, I quit.

It was really a shame. They had such good peach ice cream, and I really wished I could’ve shown my face there again.

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For the past month and a half, it’s been all about the vegetables. So, unleashed at the farmers’ market last weekend, we lunged greedily at the berries and stone fruits with outstretched arms. Some people may have found all the lunging a little bit intense—awkward and socially out of place, perhaps—but we were okay with that, since our greediness was rewarded handsomely. Apricots, three pounds of sour cherries, a quart of sweet cherries, a ripe cantaloupe? Procured. And taking into consideration the quart of blackberries and the huge bag of peaches we picked in Purcellville immediately thereafter, the people may have been right in deeming us a tad overeager. But guess what? All of that fruit is either cooked up or residing in our bellies, save for two pounds of pitted sour cherries that lie chilling in the freezer, awaiting their sentencing (which will likely include significant pie time). And we still had room for the contents of our CSA share. Never fear, dear readers! Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

This week was all about food-blog inspiration, as we eschewed cookbooks and magazines in favor of some delicious things that Kristin, Andrea, Shannalee and David have all waxed poetic about. So I guess you could call this a shout-out to my homies, although I’m too much in awe of their talents to elevate myself to fellow-homie status. I am failing to hatch a more appropriate and deferential slang term, so maybe I’ll just quit while I’m ahead. Yeah, likely a good idea. And then I’ll make some more of their featured recipes, because they made my on-hand ingredients shine, fruit and vegetable alike.

Ahem. Stream of consciousness aside, here’s where all the veggies went.

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Ted and I have come to an arrangement: I’m the driver, he’s the navigator. Whereas Ted likes to pore over maps like he’s reading a novel, I look at them bemusedly as a sea of pretty dots and squiggles, pieces of art somehow but not really legible. And whereas Ted braces himself behind the wheel, confronting each turn as a stressful calculation, I ease into the driver’s seat and will happily cruise the highways until the gas tank nears empty. We each have our role, and really, it’s better that way.

Over the long weekend, we secured ourselves into the seatbelts of Bridget Honda, each in our rightful place, and headed toward West Virginia. I sighed with contentment as we crested each pretty rural hill, and Ted’s nose was buried in the road atlas as he studied the passing towns and landmarks.

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