For some reason this work week seemed to drag out forever. I am very happy that Saturday has finally stepped through the door, and I intend to do it justice. No editing, no class planning, no thinking about book launches: just Saturday stuff . . . garden puttering, firewood stacking, grocery shopping, playoff-baseball listening, book reading, and a big absorbing cooking project to close out the day.

Last night I made macaroni and cheese, gussied up with wild mushrooms and home-grown red peppers and basil, on the side a sliced heirloom tomato dressed with olive oil and mint, a few spears of roasted eggplant, and an apple flan topped with maple yogurt for dessert. It wasn't a fancy meal, just a weekday one, but it looked so pretty--early autumn coziness on a plate. I do love the beauty of food.

A couple of weeks ago I acquired a red kabocha squash, and today I hope to slowly transform it into gnocchi with fried sage sauce--a slow process but gratifying, especially with the murmur of baseball to support me. I'll probably make a big Greek salad to go with it and warm up a couple of slices of apple flan for dessert. And I've got tiny garden beets to cook and peel, leftover roast lamb to slice and freeze for future meals, more herbs to harvest for drying, and maybe the time has come to pick the remaining peppers.

I know I talk too much about food in these posts, but cooking and contriving are easily the biggest daily events in the non-wordy regions of my life. The growing, the foraging, the acquiring, the making, the presenting, the cleaning, the storing: compared to everything else on that list, eating is a brevity, a flicker. I am fortunate to have a partner who notices and cares, but he would love me just as much if I were a regular slapdash meal maker. I am the only person who expects this level of commitment from myself. I wonder why.

But yesterday evening, as I was wandering from room to room, the sight of the Serrano peppers hanging along the window frames, reddening as they dry . . . the bundles of flowers and herbs and grasses lining the lintel . . . the firewood heaped in its box by the stove: all of this moved me deeply. I don't know why. It is inconsequential, so small. There are plenty of self-righteous homesteaders, people whose "I did it myself" is holier-than-thou braggadocio. I don't feel that way. I'm not trying to prove anything, or push you to imitate me, or live up to parental expectations, or demonstrate my obsessive thriftiness. I just make things. And then I look at what I made. Somehow food and poems have become part of the same project.