Taste Like Summer

I was going to talk about the weekend trip we took to lovely Zanesville, Ohio, home of the legendary (in some circles) Y Bridge and most of the people (past and present) to whom I'm related. But, as it turns out, there's a lot of ground to cover there. And since we rolled in at 2:00 on Sunday after a seven hour road trip, I don't really have it in me to recount everything in a coherent manner. Instead, food.

About twenty miles from home yesterday we stopped at a local produce stand. It's not much to look at but they sell almost every type of fruit and vegetable imaginable and everything's grown locally. We left with $40 in fresh produce and ened up with the most wonderful dinner ever - caprese salad with fresh basil, mozzarella and tomatoes; sweet corn on the cob sprinkled with butter, salt, pepper and Old Bay; and yellow watermelon.

It was just the kind of meal that made me recall the summers I spent in Zanesville with my grandparents, working in their acre-sized garden, shelling fresh sweet peas, eating onions like apples, and feeling the sinus buzz of fresh radishes shoot up my nose.

For a split second it made me want to move to a modest sized farm in the rolling hills around eastern Ohio, plant and raise everything myself, let the kids run around from dawn to dusk. Then I remembered that the only diversity I'd seen was Sunday morning when I met a lady from Kansas. And speaking of that the only ethnic restaurant I caught sight of was the Great Wall Chinese Buffet. Not a lot of multiculturalism in small town Ohio.

But still, it was a damn good dinner. It tasted like summer. Since we're nearing the end of the season, it was much needed. And hit the spot.