Summer

The farmers' markets here in Southern California are amazing -- you can find dates, figs, guavas, kumquats, passion fruit, persimmons, and pluots, but rarely do you see humble blueberries.

I grew up picking and eating fresh blueberries every summer back in New England. Why, I wondered, are they so hard to find in California?

The problem is dirt. Apparently blueberries like to grow in highly acidic soil and Southern California has alkaline soil. This presents a challenge to growing blueberries in Southern California (which explains why most the of the blueberries I buy at the market are from Washington).

New England's acidic soil is perfect for blueberry bushes. I don't know what was better, marching along rows of blueberry bushes, basket in hand, with blue lips and fingertips or standing in the kitchen watching my mom use my very own fresh picked berries to make sweet blueberry buns with lemon icing, old-fashioned double crust blueberry pie, or a loaf of hot blueberry-corn bread (that went straight from the oven to my mouth).

I’m not a big raw bell pepper fan, but the smoky sweetness of a roasted pepper always appeals to me.

Over the years I’ve roasted peppers many different ways—under the broiler, mostly, and sometimes over a gas flame or charcoal grill. But my favorite way is roasting in a covered gas grill. Not only is this method simple and hands-off, but it also yields a roasted pepper that’s easier to peel, because the skin really blisters and pops off, rather than getting too cooked and sticking to the pepper.

The convected heat in a hot gas grill quickly surrounds the pepper on all sides and blackens it in less than 10 minutes. (A couple of flips with the tongs helps.) I take the peppers out when they’re mostly, but not completely, blackened so that they don’t overcook.

We wait and we wait and we wait and we wait for the tomatoes to ripen. Not just because, like everyone else, we want to eat them. But because we run a farm stand and every visitor to Martha’s Vineyard in August wants tomatoes, right off the vine (and right now!). Finally our Sungolds and Sweet 100s and Black Cherries are ripening by the hundreds so we can sell some and eat some too. (Of course I am eating a lot of droppers and splitters in the morning when we’re harvesting. Soon we’ll have to start feeding the splitters to the “baby” chickens who actually are now almost four months old and just started laying eggs!)

The farm stand customers are even more eager to get a hold of bigger tomatoes. Fortunately, we have lots of Early Girls ripening now, too, but alas they are not nearly as tasty as the beefsteaks and heirlooms that are still green. (The first Cherokee Purples are coloring up.) Still, I’m harvesting as many Early Girls as I can, often two or three times a day since the late morning and early afternoon sun does wonders. But when we run out, there are some disappointed looks on customers’ faces.

In the meantime, since I will roast anything I can get my hands on, I am already making this delicious and easy recipe from The Fresh and Green Table that features roasted cherry tomatoes. Thought I’d pass it on to you in case you are similarly obsessed.

Labor Day – the last weekend of summer on Martha’s Vineyard, the last opportunity to host weekend guests and the very last weekend to dine with good friends before the “great pack up and go”! (Labor Day for locals – on the other hand is the last weekend of putting up with us and our crowded beaches, crowded streets and crowded restaurants. Their anticipation of reclaiming this beautiful Island is palpable!)

I am now in the process of doing all the end of season encore meals we love so, and even the thought of having a “last” lobster leaves me blue, so that planning menus carries with it the bittersweet joy of considering all the other wondrous local specialties that will soon no longer be ours on demand: awesome Katama oysters, muscles, clams, smoked blue fish, cod, striped bass, sweet white corn from Morning Glory Farm, tri-color potatoes from the Saturday morning farmers market, and (sob!) our own farm fresh eggs… sigh. We live on the Vineyard Sound facing Cape Cod and the Elizabeth Islands on property that once was a large farm. Our small community has continued to maintain a modest version of the farm, and now with our fab farmer and his lovely wife, we have been designated an officially organic farm!