Envy

 The farmer's market comes twice a week to my lovely town – late Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. I almost never go to the Wednesday market. It's held in a bank parking lot. The combination of 100 degree heat index, tired kids, sweaty mom, and asphalt is not a good one. We fare better Saturday mornings, but sometimes it's just hard to get going on the weekend, and by the time we're out the door, the market is pretty much done except for a few over-ripe tomatoes and wilted basil no one else wanted.

The town we visited in Germany this past summer has a market every weekday from 9 am to 1 pm, complete with butcher, baker, and cheese wagon.  The cheese lady is friendly and very enthusiastic about cheese, and gives so many samples you almost don't need to buy any. (She also has the best sales pitch: "My English is bad, but my cheese is very better!") And the cheese is ridiculously inexpensive compared to what it would cost here in the States. So is the bread. As for the meat, I don't know, as I'm with the Hindu and don't cook it, but I'm guessing the same – cheap and good. The Himbeere (raspberries) were definitely good.

If only we could have that here in my town, I think to myself practically every day. It would be so easy for us to eat well, and we wouldn't even need a car. Here is a picture of the parking lot at the German town's high school:

People, we have our work cut out for us.

Motivated by the people of Germany, I rode my bike to the farmer's market last week, bought a watermelon, and carried it home in the front basket. The watermelon made it home in one piece and was delicious. So if you live in my town and saw a very sweaty, disheveled woman biking slowly with a watermelon in front of her, that was me. Unfortunately, I can't manage to look like these women, but one can always aspire.

Let Them Make Cake

The theory goes that Jane Austen wrote in the sitting room. The novels would collect on scraps of paper hastily stuffed in her desk drawer whenever domestic duty called her away. She never married or had children – I think it's safe to say that if she had, even those brief stolen moments in which she wrote wouldn't have existed, and the world would be without Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. I certainly can't imagine a man writing “Pride and Prejudice,” let's put it that way.

I recently re-read Virginia Woolf's “A Room of One's Own” (and if you couldn't tell, I'm just in that sort of mood). These scraps of paper are important, damn it, even if they are only on a screen. Not that I'm comparing myself to Jane Austen, or Virginia Woolf (also childless), for that matter. I'm just saying, as a woman, I can relate. A friend commented to me recently how convenient it is that my hobby is also necessary for the family. I was thinking about this, and I totally agree – it is convenient. If people didn't need to eat, maybe I would be into stamp collecting or dog breeding or Harley Davidson motorcycles or something else completely unrelated. But people do need to eat, and there are always birthday cakes that need to be made. Make them I will. And then I'll write about it, because birthday cakes are important enough to be written about. Yes, they are.

I will say that I am particulary proud of this one. The five-year-old (who is now the six-year-old) requested strawberry shortcake for her birthday. Throw a bunch of strawberries on a cake with some whipped cream, and people will be impressed. This is the best looking cake I've ever made, and it tasted as good as it looked. (I nabbed the recipe from Adam the Amateur Gourmet, who found it via the good old Barefoot Contessa. Adam is right, don't skip out on the orange and lemon zest.)