Fruit With Poppy Seed Dressing

The garden in its fifth year. The garden has become a serious operation — not just tomatoes and herbs anymore, but a full vegetable garden that produces a meaningful portion of our food from May through October. This summer: 50 jars canned. Tomatoes, salsa, pickled peppers, pickled beets, canned peaches (the first time — I bought peaches from a local farm at $0.50/lb for "seconds" and canned twelve jars). The pantry is a museum of summer. Each jar is a day, a temperature, a piece of the sun preserved in glass.

Wyatt is the garden master. At six, he has taken full ownership of the vegetable beds. He weeds without being asked (the only chore any of my children do without being asked — the others require negotiation, bribery, or threats). He waters on a schedule he designed himself (taped to the fridge, next to the family streaks whiteboard, written in pencil in his careful, small handwriting). He harvests with the gentleness of a man handling dynamite. Linda comes over and they garden together — Linda and Wyatt, sixty-four and six, on their knees in the dirt, talking about tomatoes and not much else, because not much else needs saying when you're in the dirt with someone you love.

Harper asked me a question this week that I'm still thinking about. She said, "Mama, if you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?" I said, "Mama's chicken and noodles." She said, "Because it tastes the best?" I said, "Because it tastes like home." She thought about that. Then she said, "My answer is biscuits. Because they taste like you." My daughter. Eight years old. Biscuits taste like me. The flour and the butter and the buttermilk and the $0.11 cost per biscuit — that's what I taste like to my daughter. That's what home tastes like to her. I am the biscuit. The biscuit is me. And the me is enough.

We spent this summer preserving everything we could get our hands on — fifty jars lined up on the pantry shelf like a timeline of warm days — but some of what the garden gives you is better eaten fresh, right now, before the season turns. This fruit salad with poppy seed dressing is the kind of thing I make when the kitchen smells like peaches and the kids are still muddy from the beds, when Wyatt brings in a bowl of whatever’s ready and I want to do as little as possible to it, because it’s already perfect. It’s summer in a bowl, and it tastes exactly like this time of year.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

2 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and halved
2 cups fresh blueberries
2 cups seedless green grapes, halved
2 cups seedless red grapes, halved
2 peaches, peeled and sliced
1 cup fresh raspberries
1/3 cup honey
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons poppy seeds

Instructions

Make the dressing. In a small bowl or jar, whisk together the honey, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, lemon zest, dry mustard, and salt until well combined.
Emulsify. Slowly drizzle in the vegetable oil while whisking constantly until the dressing is smooth and slightly thickened. Stir in the poppy seeds.
Assemble the fruit. Combine the strawberries, blueberries, green and red grapes, peach slices, and raspberries in a large serving bowl. Toss gently to mix.
Dress and serve. Drizzle the poppy seed dressing over the fruit just before serving and toss lightly to coat. Serve immediately or refrigerate the fruit and dressing separately for up to 4 hours, dressing just before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Fruit With Poppy Seed Dressing — What the Garden Gives Back