My sister sits in the yard with her tomatoes just to spend time with them. Now the harvest. And I, the non-gardener, am lucky enough to roast a few pounds of these.

Simple beans

Dried red beans with water and a pinch of asafoetida in the crockpot around the clock develop this most amazing thick red gravy, which gets even better when you add sauteed onions and garlic and salt toward the end. (Asafoetida or hing from an Indian grocery adds this savory edge and is supposed to make the beans more digestible.) Without any labor, you get to smell this earthy, rich fragrance through the house hour after hour. The result makes canned red beans seem as flavorless as a long-distance winter tomato.

This kind of slow food I can manage.

Broiled figs

Luscious. These sounded slightly fussy and icky to me before I tried them. And in truth, when I made Deborah Madison's recipe for broiled figs with mascarpone cheese a year ago, I found them too rich and oily. But the other day, tired of that slight irritation about the mouth I get from eating a basketful of raw figs, I cut a bunch of dark-skinned, farmer's market figs in half and put them under the broiler. In a spinach salad with goat cheese and my parents' fuji apples and balsamic vinaigrette, they were sumptuous. So soft, sweet, smooth. One of those foods I feel unworthy of.