The third day of August and the living is blissful. *Beyond* blissful! Think selfcare sprinkled with solitude. Think lakeside lifestyle. Think green beans and carrots…
Susan, Carley and I savored a slow breakfast that included orange-yellow scrambled eggs from free range chickens at Full and by Farm. Then we discovered that Lake Champlain was glass-flat, so we headed out for skiing and surfing. (23 years ago, in August 2001, I began falling head over heels in love with Susan while slalom skiing together. She’s still got it!) Today is the 50th annual Essex Day celebration, but the bliss didn’t expire on Main Street. In-home massage by Jessica Wimett (@jesswimett) and a handsome haul from Rosslyn’s vegetable garden inspired a perfect stay-home date with my girlfriend, best friend, beautiful bride, and clever co-adventuring companion, Susan.
There’s something especially decadent and inexplicably delicious about dinner pulled directly from the earth. Color, smell, flavor. The flavor of fresh! Tomatoes, artichokes, several varieties of lettuce, and, yes, green beans and carrots. Haricot verts are my favorite. Long. Slender. Delicate. Crisp and flavorful in a way that husky market varieties seldom are. And a texture so succulent, so un-woody, so refreshing.
The color of carrots — pulled from the dark loamy dirt by their feathery greens, soil shaken off, sprayed with a hose — suggests paint (equal parts paprika, apricot, and saffron) squirted out of a tube onto a palette. Vibrant, flamboyant, tantalizing. Not the slightly anemic orange of market carrots. And a crunch so crisp it is music. Moist flavor bursts with each crunch. No fibrous leftovers challenge chewing. Just color, crunch, flavor, swallow.
Saturday with my bride. Watersports, green beans, and carrots. A good, good day.
What do you think?