Spotting the first red tomatoes of the season is more than enough reason to pop open a bottle of champagne and propose a toast to the wonders of nature. The three red cherry tomatoes in the photo above were in my mouth seconds after I took the photo. Lucky me.

There is this company called soylent whose advertising campaign is “What if you never had to worry about food again?” It seems an odd question and for some reason the person behind this company thinks that getting produce and making healthy meals is bothersome and that eating is a waste of time. Their solution is to sell you powder you mix with water and forget about eating regular meals. Their advertising says that a bag of soylent powder provides a day’s worth of nutrition and takes three minutes to mix with water, so that you can use the time you used to spend cooking and eating for doing things you want to do.

The people who come up with schemes like this clearly do not have a garden. They’ve never tasted a ripe tomato picked off the vine, or crunched into vibrant chard leaves picked seconds ago. They’ve never plucked a ripe raspberry off the vine, or nibbled on greens in a field. They certainly haven’t held a still warm egg laid minutes ago by a squawking hen. Experience foods like that, and eating becomes one of the great pleasures in life.