Food tourism, &c

Wednesday night J. and I drove up to her parents' place in NH. The first thing we had to do, as her parents were away, was to pick snowpeas. It is clear that J.'s father is keeping busy in his retirement, as the garden has never looked better. On the other hand, there's enough stuff planted to run a small farmstand. And yet (a) J.'s parents do not, in fact, run a farmstand and (b) they travel a lot, and aren't always on hand to eat the produce themselves. And so to avoid waste J. and I picked two plastic shopping bags full of snowpeas, many already too large and tough, and like all legendary produce fiercely guarded, in this case by mosquitoes and blackflies. We spent the rest of the night processing many of the peas for freezing even as we ourselves wilted in the heat. For dinner we ate snowpeas.

Thursday morning we picked the rest of the snowpeas left behind when insect guardians and failing light forced us inside, for a third bulging bag. (I said, "bulging bag.") And then we loaded up camping gear from the garage and drove across NH to Maine.

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