It's almost fall, and soon my idea of what comforts me food wise will change. In the summer It's been corn on the cob for as long as I can remember, as a kid you left the butter on a plate in the fridge with that all too familiar half moon indent, waiting for the next time boiled corn would slide over the top.

But fall: fall is soup. Broccoli and cheddar, butternut squash, and french onion. If I can somehow incorporate cheese into my soup i'm even happier. Come to think of it , if there is not at least some component of cheese during a meal it doesn't really seem complete to me. I've exclaimed out loud while eating a cheese board and french onion soup simultaneously "this is the reason I could never be vegan." And usually the person who overheard my rant agrees. When I say cheese I am discussing things that come from a wheel, made by hand, at the very least made with care, nothing wrapped in individual plastic, or god forbid, out of a can.
Sometimes when i think of cheese, I imagine farmers in the hills of the alps, milking the cows and making the cheese that will supply them through the winters as the are trapped on the mountains with nothing but their flock. I think about the people that make cheese by hand, that lift each mold like it was a wounded bird, washing it by hand, turning it over and placing it back on a rack, waiting for it to grow into what it will eventually become.

I got distracted. I meant to say that as the summer is ending I am thinking about what else it is that I want to have. Some people mark the turn of seasons by school, by vacation, by sports teams, by clothing. I think of the food. I know every year there is that wonderfully short period where ramps are everywhere. We just ended most of the corn season, and soon I will make squash soup, and cut acorn squash in half, scoring it down the middle, filling it with butter and brown sugar and eating it way before it cools. 
My seasons turn with the food, I look forward to the next round of crops or shellfish, or lambs, and am reminded oftentimes about where this came from. We used to farm. And when I saw we, I don't just mean Eric and I, or Americans, I mean WE as people, we at one point relied on sun and water and soil and time and when those first sprouts came up, we were so hopeful, of what it would become.
I love this city, I love cities in general, but oftentimes I catch myself in spring noticing the dandelions pushing their way up in the cracks in the pavement and I am reminded people used to look forward to that every year. When the years had it's own calendar, marked not by months, by by sustenance.