While at home in Upper Deerfield over the weekend, I was offered homegrown string beans, Japanese eggplant, potatoes, peppers, and South Jersey orchard apples, all for free from a generous amateur farmer (who happens to also be my mother) and my best friend, who visited Mood's Market and bought mums, gourds, 24 lbs. of apples, and overall stock in fall on Saturday with her mother, her genetic donor of a love for autumn and a lack of purchasing control. As I collected my fresh-off-the-stem apples and vegetables, I found myself relishing in the dust settled into the creases of my hands, coating the inside of my brown bag. Even your yuppiest Trader Joe's or Whole Foods lacks that dirty assurance that your food definitely, positively did not come from a factory, and there's something chest-beatingly satisfying about knowing your hands are among the first to handle your little packages of flavor and nutrients. When arranging these pieces in my produce basket, I rubbed the potatoes, each uniquely tapered, about the size of a large lemon, one by one sideways into the curved palm of my hand over the kitchen sink to loosen and let fall the dirt and fringed root tendrils; little Gulliver craned his neck from the floor, fascinated by the patting and dirt misting sounds coming from above.

As I drove to what already feels like home, even after leaving home, stopping just short of the bridge to urbanity, I thought of apple crisp with brown sugar and rolled oats, soy hamburger with sauteed onions over rice and grilled Japanese eggplant with miso paste, mashed sweet potatoes with cinnamon butter, string beans breaded in panko with egg and pan-fried in olive oil with a soy sauce drizzle, non-Lean Cuisine meals to enjoy and share proudly, lovingly. Brushing my home turf off of produce pulled minutes ago rejuvenated the excitement for real food that I so often bury by accident with my post-workday penchant for Foreman-friendly frozen bits like plastic-packed veggie burgers and "Maryland-style crabcakes" packaged in Maine months ago. Call me biased - born, raised, and residing in the Garden State - but I'm hard-pressed to treasure something more genuinely than weighing the possibilities of homegrown produce in my dirt-laden, rootingly enriched hands.