The summer's bounty of fruit and vegetables is in. The farmer's market overflows with beautiful fresh, locally grown goodness. I realized yesterday as my bags and baskets overflowed and my daughter's arms and shoulders were loaded down, that, aside from dairy products like milk and yogurt, I shop almost exclusively at my local farmer's market.

The farmer's know me by name and always smile when I stop and shop at their tables. Yesterday was wonderful. Again. The weather was nice, not humid and the tables were overflowing. I bought green and yellow string beans, three varieties of eggplant (and there were more I could have), tomatoes and tomatoes and tomatoes (they are meaty and sweet this year...just delicious...my lunch salad is simply a little lettuce, a lovely tomato, and some fresh mozzarella cheese), corn on the cob, zucchini (green and yellow, not to be confused with yellow squash), lettuce, cucumbers (the little kirbys are my favorite...youngest daughter and I will be making more pickles this week. The first batch are delicious already.), green onions, sweet potatoes, yellow watermelon, red watermelon, peaches (still cling), the first apples (Pristine by name...tart sweet...love them!), red peppers, green peppers, green Cubanelle peppers (love them in eggs!), raspberries, and squash blossoms (stuffed with cheese and fried!), and cantaloupe...large and soft ball sized and the beef and pork and chicken and bacon and sausages and lamb (someone this week told me how mild it is...I'm going to try it. I always hated lamb as a kid...we'll see!). I haven't eaten this well since I was a kid. The quality of the food is the best.

I do understand that most people do not shop for food the way I do. Most people don't enjoy food the way I do...seeing it, touching it, imagining recipes, preparing. But I don't understand the people who get up early and make their way to and through the market just to NOT buy anything. How can you argue with cucumbers that are six for a dollar, zucchini four for a dollar, one dollar eggplants and one dollar cantaloupes?

On Saturday, like many other Saturdays, I saw more than one person take the free sample apples and peaches from those generous farmers and not buy any. They even sell single pieces. I was buying three little cantaloupes. Husband loves them for breakfast. They are local and sweet and they are no bigger than a soft ball. I was picking out three. My daughters had already gone to the car to unload and the three little loupes were my last purchase. A husband and wife in their late thirties were walking the market. She with coffee and flowers in hand. He stops near me, watching. She says (in not so lilting tones) what are you stopping for? He...to buy a cantaloupe. (The melons he was looking at were the size of bowling balls for $3). For $3 she says (coffee and flowers already close to $20). He looks at me...deflated. I say...these are a dollar and my husband loves them. Whyyyyyyyy? She asked all drawn out and irritated. I say because they are very sweet and the right size for his breakfast. Her husband looks up, smiling at her. She does not look convinced. After all a whole dollar on her husband's breakfast. Then I add that my father eats his cantaloupe filled with ice cream. For breakfast? she shrieks. I say...he's 84. Her husband says he can eat anything he wants. His shoulders droop and he looks over my basket. I chose my cantaloupe and left. I don't know if he got his cantaloupe, I hope so, but it didn't look good for him. But neither was she buying corn or tomatoes or summer squash or sugar baby watermelons. Nothing. Flowers and coffee.

Often I hear (because they are not quiet) men and children ask for certain fruits and/or vegetables that they see so beautifully and appetizingly displayed only to have the woman of the group say no. I don't get it. Why are they at the market then?

I was buying those light green, sweet Cubanelle peppers...they're in season now. They are mild and delicious (especially in scrambled eggs!). A woman standing next to me asked me what I was going to do with them. I told her. The farmer's wife who was waiting on me told her what she does with them. We told her how delicious and easy to cook with they were. So she bought eight of them for two dollars instead of just four for one dollar and she and her husband went away happy and talking and discussing how they would eat those lovely peppers with Italian sausage and with eggs.

The tables of fruits and vegetables are attractive. But they are not all fixed for you. You have to peel and chop and season and cook them. I think many women don't know how to do that anymore. I think many women think that cooking is something that, if they did it just to feed the family, would be a job beneath them. I've seen so many young women freeze when their significant other asks them how to cook this or that. Or when they hear that his mother used to cook this.

I wish I could tell them all how much love and pleasure you get back from just a little bit of effort chopping zucchini and frying it up with some onions and tomatoes. How much fun it is to cut the watermelon and sit on the porch spitting the seeds with your kids.

I have had to learn a whole new way of cooking that does not include potatoes and rice and pasta and white bread. It's an adventure. Sometimes things work out and sometimes they don't. It's all in the trying. It's all part of the adventure.

I think in an effort to make our daughters stronger we took away the elements that make women who they are...the stronger sex. I wouldn't give up cooking dinner for my husband and family just as I wouldn't give up having given birth to my children. Women are different than men and I'm glad. I hope that I've taught my daughters that it isn't hard to be a good person.

"People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, …but they will always remember how you made them feel". (I don't remember who said that...but it's true)