Allergies are back – eyes are on fire. I’m taking meds but there’s a pile of really unpleasant side effects. I will be back as soon as I can look at the computer screen without wanting to scratch my face clean off – or when we have a hard frost, whichever comes first.

I slow as I walk past it. I circle it, once, twice. I could come back with the big shopping buggy, I tell myself. A bushel (53 pounds) would fit in the big cart.

I could make sauce. Oh, yes, sauce. And dry some, for the winter.

Wandering off to the canned vegetables aisle, I price the cans of tomatoes that I usually use for the soups, stews, pasta sauces and pots of chili I make with regularity throughout the year. It would be so much cheaper. And fresher. And tastier…

Who am I kidding?

It’s not to be. There just isn’t enough space. Okay… I’m not willing to make enough space. Certainly, corners could be found to stash jars of tomato sauce. Under the sofa, at the backs of already stuffed closets. We could scatter them around the apartment like little easter eggs, coming across them with a squeal of delight during a cleaning spree or when lying prone in front of the furniture while retrieving a ball the dogs had lost control of.

But these is no official room for jars of tomato sauce. I’ve used up all the pantry shelf space making jam. My inclination would be to freeze the stuff anyway, but I’ve got 5 chickens coming from my friend Jeff’s dad’s farm and last year they got to 10 pounds each before he slaughtered them. And my freezer, while still a free-standing chest freezer, is wee. And I haven’t even canned pears yet. No room in the freezer for tomato sauce.

And no room for the empty jars in the off-season.

I know some people do it. They find space because it’s important to them. It should be important to me too, I think. But the thought of rearranging our storage closet; of pulling out old boxes of photo albums and Christmas wrapping and plant pots to find a place for tomato sauce… maybe next year. We’ll clean the closet, purge some stuff we don’t need and clear a foot or two of shelf space for lovely, luscious sauce made from bright local Roma tomatoes.

But this year, all I can do is dream. And watch with envy as the wee little Portuguese and Italian ladies, who don’t look as if they weigh the equivalent of a bushel themselves, carry off cartons of tomatoes to make sauce.

• How apropos that in the same week that Jamie Oliver wins an Emmy for his Food Revolution series, in which he was constantly fighting to have flavoured milk removed from school menus, there’s a much publicized fight to get chocolate milk off the menu.
• It’s true – food claims on packages, especially stuff like “fresh”, “pure” and “natural” baffle consumers.
• Considering a $1000 ticket to a sustainable foodie event? Might it not be better to just donate that money directly to charity instead?
• Another book about the impending food crisis that should scare people shitless… but doesn’t.
• If you worked here part time, you could be a part-time ninja. Japan’s obsession with theme restaurants.
• An app for foragers -although most foragers I know are pretty protective of their patches.
• Go ahead, eat with your hands.
• “I appreciate the idea of when you go someplace and it feels like a home away from home, but I don’t think it should be a home office away from home.” Seriously people, if you plug any personal electronic device into the wall at a cafe or restaurant, you’re an asshole.
• Things you do not need – a fried cheese melt.
• 15% less fat? Now you can eat the deep-fried Mars bar with no regrets.

• Why is it that food celebrities are so darn boring on Twitter?
• I hear a Kraftwerk song coming on – 8 foods that are radioactive.
• It’s cheaper to cook at home. Or is it?
• Hail Seitan – the other faux meat.
• Hey, hipster coffee shop baristas – you might be all about anarchy and screw the man in your skinny jeans and plaid shirts, but if you can’t pull an espresso properly, why not just go back to being in a band?
• Things could be worse – your teenage daughter could be addicted to sex, drugs or Twitter instead of steak. But she could also be a self-entitled princess who should shut up and eat what’s put in front of her.
• Food styling goes au naturel – good news for bloggers – all those crappy shots of “what I made for dinner” have obviously influenced mainstream media and advertising, and also now all of those same crappy shots of dinner are on par with professional photos.
• Seriously world – stop eating shark fin.
• Okay, what have we learned here? Not all preservatives are bad, and no, you cannot overdose on preservatives from eating a lot of junk food.
• I am incredibly saddened to have to live in a world where people feel that they cannot make the time to peel a few carrots.

• In case you needed another reason to avoid bottled water – in places like California, bottled water companies have unlimited access to municipal water systems while citizens are on drought alert.
• Don’t complain about excess fruit this summer – just find good ways to use it up. Especially when the fruit is so great.
• The best food writing isn’t necessarily on the supermarket check-out racks. 8 indie food magazines to check out.
• If you’re drinking bottled tea because it’s healthy, think again. Most have very few of the purported nutrients.
• Is it all about the cost? Food stamp recipients in Massachusetts will receive a discount on purchases of fruit and veg in order to determine if price really plays a role in choosing healthier options.
• Another reason to avoid factory-farmed eggs – they’re now advising that eggs be cooked so the yolk is hard, since runny yolks can harbour salmonella.
• Can you relearn taste? Learning to love flavours you used to hate.
• Does beer consumption increase the risk of psoriasis in women? It’s a dubious study, until you get to the bit about gluten and celiac disease.
• Hello new favourite dessert! The Mexican sundae.
• Coffee is getting more expensive, but what we really want to know – will any of that extra money trickle down to the growers?

• The locavores versus math debate has provoked some interesting rebuttal. Regular readers here will know how I feel about using “environmental” concerns as a valid argument (they’re not) so I tend mostly to agree with Budiansky’s original article, and I think some of the responses (intentionally) miss his point. But that people have clued in to the fact that food miles are meaningless is a great start in really being able to support local food.
• Connecting food pantry users with farmers – because knowing where your food comes from isn’t just for the wealthy elite (do you think if I say this often enough, it will come true?).
• Okay, I don’t actually find the coffee from those little pod things to be very good, but if drinking them means I get to hang out with  Clooney and Malkovich in heaven, I could consider converting. Seriously, click the link to the YouTube video. It’s HIGH-larious.
• “Poor or unsafe working conditions and environmental violations”. Yeah, that’s where you want your food to come from. STOP EATING EGGS FROM BATTERY CAGED HENS!!! (And it’s up to over 5.5 million eggs recalled as of yesterday.)
• More research linking pesticide use to ADHD.
• The Mediterranean diet is set to be included on the Unesco heritage list. But does it deserve to be there?
• Yes, please! Some of us want a cob of corn that doesn’t taste like candy!
• Order your groceries online and then cruise by the store when you’re out picking up the kids or doing other errands and grab your packed up grub. A UK supermarket offers “drive-thru” grocery shopping.
• You’ve seen little knit cupcakes and such – what about whole plates of food, like sardines and a British fry-up?
• Sweets and pastries from the Middle East.

• Nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels. Unless it’s jam, ain’t that right, Kate Moss?
• Somewhere Ina Garten is cooking pork chops just for you. Cooking shows are no longer meant to teach you new techniques, they’re meant to lull you into a sense of peaceful well-being.
• Buy fair trade – how confectioners can avoid the rollercoaster rider of mainstream chocolate prices created by hedge fund investors.
• We’ve done cupcakes, whoopie pies and macarons, now let’s turn to the south for the next nostalgic dessert trend – moon pies.
• 8 flavours of ice cream that nobody wants.
• How to start a boutique coffee shop; 1. hire hipsters in skinny jeans, 2. teach them to look disgusted when people ask for “a coffee”…
• If factory farmers put as much time and money into making their farming practices sustainable as they do into forming coalitions refuting facts about sustainable farming methods, everyone would be much better off.
• Last week the Guardian listed their top 50 cookery books. Now they’re having a go at ones that ought to be thrown on the fire.
• What’s it really like to kill your own food? Guaranteed to make you uncomfortable.
• The Maritimes’ most famous mustard pickles.

I’ve written before about learning to cook at the side of my Grandmother. I’ve also written about the revelation that this same Grandmother, who has been responsible for preparing 3 meals a day, for a varying number of hungry mouths, for the past 70 years, actually hates to cook. My cousin and I always assumed that the fun things she let us do while helping her prepare food were meant to be, well, fun. For us. As it turns out they were often ways for her to make the process more interesting for herself, and if she was able to take a shortcut or two in the name of “fun” then all the better.

The “pissybed” is really just a free form pie. In France, it would fall under the header of “galette” if galette meant “shit, my pastry is crap today and isn’t going to roll out properly!” Because this kind of pie is usually what you end up with, albeit unintentionally, if your pie crust is crap. You can make them if your pie crust is fine, as was my Grandmother’s – and mine – but know that unless they get to taste it, people will think this is because your dough is a no-go. My Grandma wouldn’t know a galette from a whosit – there weren’t a lot of fancy French people in rural Nova Scotia. Well, there were once but the English shipped them off to Louisiana to become Cajuns.

In any case, the name “pissybed” is not some French derivative, but rather a name that came about because, according to my Grandma, the pie looks like the bundle of wet sheets you end up with when one of the kids pees the bed in the middle of the night. Helen Kirby clearly missed her calling as a stand-up comedienne.

My Grandma makes these as a whole pie, usually on a flat baking sheet. Because I tend to make pies in a smaller version (just two of us to feed versus my Grandma’s houseful of 6 or 7 people) I’ve made mine in 6″ pie pans, but the point of a free form pie is that you can make it however you like.

I use lard in my crust and half red fife whole wheat flour, and the apples are a mix of Empires, Gingergolds and Sunrises with plenty of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and a pinch of allspice, plus sugar, a bit of flour and plenty of butter. Milk and sugar on the crust for the last 10 minutes of baking makes for a crunchy crust. They’re not intended to be pretty – which is definitely where they stray from a galette, where the crust is usually crimped in a pretty manner – the deal is to just encase those apples in pastry, mush it all together and let it be ugly, but delicious.

So I’m giving myself a couple of days off.

Food for Thought will (hopefully) return on Monday.

• Why China (and the rest of us) need to ditch the disposable chopsticks.
• Ah, the days of dressing for dinner.
• A list of “cancer-fighting foods” that comes with a caveat – these probably won’t prevent or cure your cancer.
• Yes, their drink sizes are silly, but don’t take it out on the wage slaves. Your barista can’t read your mind.
• A testicle festival. Book your flights for Serbia folks, they’ve got balls.
• When Jesus appears on your foodstuffs, check first to make sure it’s not John Lennon.
• An heirloom tomato primer.
• Around the world in 80 diets – one of those cool collections of a typical diet in different cultures.
• Everything’s early – so what will be left to harvest in September and October?
• Pin the tail on the celebrity – yes, the hot new trend is for celebrities to have birthday parties that emulate little kid’s parties, with a big cake, and ice cream and piles of candy. I blame the cupcake craze for this.