august at the market
what's good to eat, in season, a playlist for cooking, a recipe for gazpacho
Welcome to mama eats, a weekly newsletter inspired by a simple + seasonal home life. This week’s post, August at the market, is free to all readers. I try to provide as much free content as possible, however, this newsletter is a labor of love and I am a busy mother of three. If you have the means and find value in what I share, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
August’s slow days, the last of the summer, feel deliciously long and stretched, all thick honey and golden light, made all the sweeter by knowing it is winding down to the end. We are reminded of this in autumn’s teasing coolness felt in the early mornings and late evenings, the fields of sunflowers standing dry with heads reverentially bowed, the colors of the landscape increasingly yielding- muting and bleaching to golds and browns. There is something magic in this interim before the hard turn, this soft watercolor bleed of autumn into summer - “August is the border between summer and autumn: it is the most beautiful month I know.” says Tove Jansson. The trees are still green, but the grasses are golden and the air is heavy with the scent of dried hay and the hum of crickets. There is an impulse, a feeling of digging your nails into the days to slow them down, stretch them out, savor the wealth of them, to bite into this ripe peach of a month1:
when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so2
August is a cook’s dream- there is a glut of produce, the plenty of the harvest season- the last push of summer’s tomatoes, peaches, corn, wild blackberries mixed up with the first treasures of autumn- apples, the first plump winter squashes, sumptuously purple grapes and figs, perhaps even a cauliflower or two. These overlaps make for the most ephemeral and special combinations- apple and blackberry crumbles, corn and winter squash chowder, tomato and grape salads.