Hot hot hot

Finally, in mid August, summer has come to Ottawa. Figures the hot, humid weather coincides with my deciding to ride my bike to work.

I love riding my bike. My commute is a particularly nice one - I cycle through the Experimental Farm, then along the canal, leaving only a few blocks in what passes for traffic here. Hard to imagine why I didn't do this sooner. It's my 4th year in my current work location, why did I take the bus or drive until now? Insanity, clearly.

There are downsides to my commute, all personal.

1. I sweat when exercising. Even very modest exercise - like, say, coasting downhill on a bike - makes me sweaty.
2. I turn beet red and stay that way for at least 20 minutes after exercising, even if I end up in a deep freeze.
3. Hunger. I now bring 2 lunches to work.

Item 1 is readily resolved with a visit to the bathroom and a change of clothing. Item 2 resolves itself, eventually. Item 3 is really an upside, I like eating. Clearly, looking at the girth of the average North American, I am not alone in this.

Lunch #1 this week is a chickpea and spinach salad. Lunch #2 is an immodestly sized wrap. The recipe said you could substitute green beans for avocado, so I did. Oddly good. Not that I don't love avocado, it's just that they seem to pick them so early that I half think the avocado tree wasn't even planted yet. If you're in Canada and need a durable substitute for a hockey puck, the typical avocado found in our supermarkets would provide lengthy service.

I realize shipping an avocado from Mexico to Ottawa requires that they be picked before peak ripeness, or you'll end up with a truck full of black, rotting mush. But at least one out of the 100's of avocados for sale should be less than rock hard, right? I'd guess they are picked so early they just never ripen.

Another food that is no longer edible is the peach. Why do today's peaches start out like hard rubber balls, and immediately rot, without ever passing through an edible phase? My kids used to eat fruit once a year, in peach season. Their motivation was simple - if you eat a half a quart of peaches, you can pretty much fart at will. In a small boy, this is an irresistable temptation. I miss the peaches. Not the farts.

I should probably grow my own. Unfortunately, to build and heat a greenhouse for avocados will mean selling the Lexus, the house, and possibly a kid or two. Peaches are pretty borderline here too. So I'll hope that the earwigs have left a few of my still green tomatoes in a near-edible state, and look forward to a fruit picked while ripe. The blackberries were too long ago, and the squirrels ended up eating about half the crop. Soon they will start littering our driveway and yard with acorns. They leave enough on the road it looks like peanut butter after a few cars have gone over them.

I am not eating acorns. But maybe I should? Anyone have any recipes for fresh acorns?