Steve, we might have to visit you in Food Smugglers' Gaol. In Canadian airports, the Department of Agriculture deploys beagles in little green jackets to locate luggage packed with bacon and sausages by scoff-law foodies. I hate to think how our fiercer neighbours to the south respond to that problem ... Werewolves. I'll bet that's it. Werewolves with steel teeth.

It is harvest season in southwest Ontario, and the landscape is almost obscenely lush with bounty. The corn is as high as a mastodon's eye, and the peaches ... Oh, the peaches! The muskmelons! Oy! Tomatoes! I have eaten a tomato with every meal since the middle of August. It doesn't get better than this.

But soon enough the frost will hit and soup season will return. A review of the pantry produced several Mason jars with a few ounces of black-eyed peas or half a pound of Great Northern beans. There's a beef rib in the freezer, left over from the tomahawk steak a few weeks ago, and pot barley. Not to speak of the usual litter of carrots and celery. But that can wait till after the first frost.

Until then, peaches!