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As I’m writing this, it’s still Monday. I’m trying to get all my ducks in a row before leaving town tomorrow. And, it turns out that writing five posts in one day is exhausting! So, I’m making this another all photos-Friday. Up today: a fennel-and-sage crusted pork tenderloin. It’s delicious. And quite beautiful, too, I think.

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A couple years ago, we discovered one of our favorite Chicago restaurants through a happy accident. It was a Friday night and both Kevin and I had a hankering for guacamole and tequila (not necessarily in that order), so we made our way to our favorite neighborhood Mexican restaurant. As we rounded the corner onto the restaurant’s block, though, we heard the unmistakable sounds of mariachi. We both looked at each other and groaned. It was the Friday after Cinco de Mayo and our normally half-full (on a good night) Mexican place was in the throes of a raucous fiesta. We kept walking.

I vaguely recalled reading about a newish little Italian place and I thought it was only a few more blocks away. (If I am known for my directional skills it is not in a good way and, really, it’s a miracle that Kevin walked even a block further in any direction that I advocated.) As I’d read, the restaurant—called Terragusto—was making homemade pasta and garnering some early glowing but quiet praise. When we found the restaurant, bookending a street of classic Chicago brick two-flats and a striped-awning-ed dry cleaner, we noted, with excitement, the old-timey pasta rollers and cartons of fresh eggs visible from the front window. We were seated at one of the dining room’s dozen or so tables and told that the restaurant was BYO. (Do you non-Chicagoan readers know about this? That there are at least a handful of restaurants in any given neighborhood that forego a liquor license and instead invite diners to tote in a bottle (or, ahem, bottles) of their choice? It’s a major selling point for our fair city, I think.)

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One night last week, while Kevin was off at a pre-season NFL game, my sister and I fashioned a two-person family dinner. It was more of a girls night in, but we called it family dinner out of habit. We threw together a salad—Ali had requested something salad-y and fiesta-ish—of grilled corn and vidalias, multi-colored tiny tomatoes, avocado and ribbons of romaine, all bound up in a cool, creamy chipotle-lime dressing. We sat on the deck and ate, watched the sun set, let the wind whip our hair, curled our feet up under us on our chairs and, as sisters are known to do, talked well into the evening.

It was a really nice night and one when I felt really present. It was the kind of the night that made me think: I will miss nights like this. Nights when it’s light for a couple hours, even after work; when the produce is so fresh and bursting with summer that you barely need to cook to experience a delicious dinner; when I’m lucky enough to have my sister live only a mile away; when we get to be together, just the two of us. Be it the inevitable arrival of autumn, busy schedules, or moves, I know these kinds of nights are precious and I did my best to savor it.

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One of the chief luxuries of my current life of leisure is the ability to pack up and travel. No vacation days, no Blackberry-induced guilt. Just me and the open road. And, in the case of this week, my friend Maggie, who, as I’ve told you, is my woman-of-leisure (if only for a few weeks) cohort. We are heading to her hometown, Nashville, later today and will be making a detour into the Mississippi Delta too. I promise to take photos and eat well. You can thank me later.

But, daily readers: never you worry. I am leaving this blog in good hands: Kevin’s. I’ve got a handful of posts lined up for my absence and he’ll be moderating comments and dealing with any disasters or what-have-you’s that pop up. Given this impressive set of responsibilities I have bestowed upon my husband, I want to ensure that he’ll be well-fed during my southern sojourn. As such, I’ve got the refrigerator stocked with all sorts of delicious-ness.

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I made this cake pretty hurriedly yesterday afternoon. We had an appointment in the morning and then an early dinner with Kevin’s family, so I had a small baking window in the afternoon and I was all business. After tersely measuring, sifting, beating and pouring, I tucked the batter-filled cake pans into the oven and set about the task of cleaning up after myself (the worst part of baking, by far). Somewhere between clearing the counter of a cloud of cocoa and flour and returning the ingredients to their resting spots in the cupboard, smells began to waft from the oven.

It was the kind of aroma that stopped me dead in my tracks, and not just because I’m a sucker for all things warm and chocolate. No, this particular scent snapped me out of all-business mode and transported me back in time, to a year ago almost to the date. As I’ve already written on this site, I made cupcakes for our wedding, which was last August 11, one year ago today. I made this mini-cake version of the cupcakes yesterday, to celebrate our anniversary, and the chocolately oven emanations had me recalling the last time I’d made the cakes, in the same corner of our kitchen, on the eve of our wedding.

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I’m afraid I gave the impression on Tuesday that my grandpa and I had a monopoly on last week’s berry picking. Not so. In fact, the whole family piled into the car on Saturday morning and set off into the woods, through a maze of gravel roads until we arrived at what my grandpa’s neighbor told him was a prime blueberry patch. Armed with pails, we fanned out on a knoll that was crawling with blueberry bushes (not to mention horse flies; um: ouch). Being our typically competitive family, there was a lot of teasing about who could amass the biggest haul. And, being my typically victorious sister, she was the clear winner (though, as Kevin was quick to point out, her pail was filled with quite a bit of debris; twigs and leaves do not a delicious pie make), gathering almost twice as much as anyone else.

Growing up, we’d always visit the same blueberry spot: Palisade Head, a rocky outcropping jutting out into Lake Superior, embraced by sweeping views. It’s gravely soil is dotted with blueberry bushes, which hugged the earth and bore navy blue fruit in the weeks spanning late July and early August. The patch is not exactly a well-kept secret, however, and the it tends to be crowded and picked over. So we were all excited to try a more secluded, if less dramatic, location.

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Will you resent me too much if I itemize all the reasons why I love my post-Bar Exam life (the name I’ve coined for this seven-week period I’m in, bookended by the Bar Exam last week and my start date at my law firm in September)? First, there’s the weightlessness: the vice grip of stress has slowly released and, now, is completely gone. Then, there’s the fact that I can read—like, for pleasure. That’s something I have hardly done since I started law school. Plus, our house is spotless, my life is organized and the dark half-moons below my eyes have disappeared. And, of course, there is cooking. I’ve been planning more elaborate menus full of new ingredients, techniques and recipes. I’ve compiled a list of dishes to try that stretches well into the dozens.

One of the biggest treats is being able to do my shopping on an as-needed basis, rather than doing one big shop per week. Not only does this afford me the ability to have the freshest ingredients, but I also find that I waste much less food. And, probably best of all, I can wake up, decide what I want to make, research the nearest farmers’ market open that day and head there. That’s exactly what I did on Tuesday, when I visited one of the farmers’ markets in the Loop, this one conveniently located near my gym. I had a panzanella in mind and when I saw a basket of tiny tomatoes in a kaleidoscope of colors and sizes, I snapped it up. I also grabbed a bundle of basil and a handful of chives to flavor the panzanella, and selected a bouquet of flowers for good measure.

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After getting back to Chicago following our weekend in Minnesota, Salad Monday was definitely in order. We had feasted morning, night and noon while we were away and some austerity was necessary. But I really wanted falafel. So, I took falafel and dressed it up in a salad costume and called it Salad Monday. A deconstructed falafel sandwich, if you will. Everybody wins.

We had been looking forward to a good, old fashioned night at home. July seems like it never even happened and as soon as my post-Bar Exam life began, we rushed off to Minnesota. So a simple salad, a Cubs game and a scoop of sorbet sounded mighty fine. Boring, sometimes, is just what the doctor ordered.

Alas, boring was not what Mother Nature had in mind for us on Monday night. After Kevin got home from work, we walked to the market, enjoying a sunny, sultry evening. After that, I started preparing dinner with visions of dinner on the deck (preceded by an extended photo shoot in the lovely natural light, of course). And then … the clouds rolled in. [Cue the ominous music.]

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My grandfather is many things. He’s patient, a spectacular whistler, quick with a smile-wink-laugh, and eminently wise. He’s a Swede, an outdoorsman, a sports fan and, like everyone else in my family, a good cook. He’s also a gardener who coaxes a variety of seeds and seedlings into a dazzling array of vegetables and fruits and flowers every year. He starts in February, in his cedar-sided greenhouse. As he lives only about an hour south of Canada, this generally means he has to shovel a path through the snow from his back door to the greenhouse. But his shelves of gardening manuals and seed catalogs let on that he’s been working on the garden—even if only mentally—for longer than that.

The weeks of effort pay off on a weekend like the last one. For two days, while we were there, temperatures on Minnesota’s North Shore creeped into the 80s and the sun shone down on his rows of beets, his hills of potatoes, his blooming heads of romaine, his patch of zucchini, his tufts of carrot greens, his shoots of chives and his tomato cages, which currently house still-green orbs. But it was the raspberry bushes that demanded attention last weekend, limbs heavy with red fruit, ready for the plucking.

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It’s not unusual to arrive at my parents’ house in Minnesota for a visit and find the kitchen a buzzing hub of activity and people. In fact, the first time Kevin came to Minnesota with me, the first time he’d ever met my family, mere weeks after we’d started dating, we walked in the front door only to find a party in full swing. Apparently, my parents’ friends had wanted to meet my new boyfriend. This situation can be a little overwhelming (just ask Kevin), but it works out pretty well if, during your travels, you’ve worked up an appetite. There is always something delicious to eat.

Last Thursday, when Kevin and I got to Minnesota, we weren’t there five minutes before my mom was rummaging through the refrigerator and ladling something into a bowl. She’d made corn chowder the night before and wanted us to have a taste. I dutifully took the spoonful she passed to me, still gathering my bearings after a long trip in the car. But with one bite, I knew I was home and that I was in for a delicious weekend. And that I would have to make the soup as soon as we got back to Chicago.

Now, I’m aware that soup—a chowder, no less—might seem like an odd choice for August. But, since I am not a fan of cold soups (not for lack of trying; I’ve hopefully made one batch of gazpacho after another, only to be disappointed time and time again), the only exception I make to summer’s moratorium on soups is for a broth studded with sweet corn. To me, it is August’s only acceptable soup.

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