This time last year for my 6oth birthday we were in SW France - in the season of tiny pink peaches, juicy fresh walnuts, wild meaty mushrooms and purple and orange cherry tomatoes.
In the chilly air of the farmers' this morning I bought giant stalks of ruby chard, the last few sweetcorn cobs, muddy carrots, a bunch of slender spring onions, a hard round squash, and crinkly leaves of curly kale.
I sat with two dear friends in an elegant cafe in the shadow of the cathedral..... drinking hot coffee...... sharing our chocolate brownie and lemon polenta cakes...... catching up with our lives..... opening their delicious, generous birthday gifts.
All afternoon the sun warmed the kitchen while I chopped heaps of onions, apples and pears..... and cleared out the spice cupboard....tipping packets of cumin, cinnamon and cayenne powder, coriander and mustard seeds - well past their sell by dates - into my boiling cauldron of chutney.....filling the air with the scent of vinegar and dark brown sugar.
Stocking my cupboards with the bounty of autumn....feeling the night drawing in.....feeling like a snail curling back into my shell.....
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