At the market last week, I just about stopped dead in my tracks. There each one was, assembled in such close proximity that I almost couldn’t bear it. Check out the loveliness of the following: Fuyu persimmons, Satsuma mandarins, and Belgian endive.

If I were Martha Stewart, hostess extraordinaire, queen of all good things, CEO of a multi-billion dollar empire, and owner of several palatial estates along the East Coast, I know what I would have done. I would have bought a basket full of these stunning edibles, arranged them beautifully on one of my 12 foot long, maple dining tables, careful to hide all of their bruises and imperfections, and had a stunning centerpiece to enjoy for the few days that the produce remained rosy.

But let’s get real. Martha may be great, but she can also be a tad, well… unrealistic. I live in New York City, in a tiny one bedroom apartment, with a three foot square Ikea dining table, and as lofty as my aspirations may be for autumnal, perishable centerpieces, my stomach always gets the best of me. I guess I am just too human to be a marvelous homemaker.

I bought a handful of Satsumas, a few crisp, ripe persimmons, and an endive that went solemnly into the fridge. Sure I enjoyed the fruit for a day, sitting in my fruit bowl, I glanced at their day-glo beauty as I carried on with my days activities. But soon the fruit beckoned to me, and it told me it wanted to play with that lonely endive in the fridge.

And play they did, quite beautifully, together on the chartreuse salad plate. I love a salad with fruit, not a fruit salad mind you (though they are stupendous as well), but a salad that has the mystical interplay between sweet and savory, and that is what this salad had. Crisp leaves of endive were plucked, but left intact; puckery, first-of-the-season mandarins; and smooth, slippery, peeled persimmons; were assembled on a plate. Sprinkled with crumbles of salty blue cheese, then drizzled with a simple vinaigrette to heighten the salty-sweet advantage, and my salad was ready.

For the moments that the salad sat resting while I tore off a hunk of bread to go with my meal, it was truly lovely. I could even imagine Martha saying it was, “Bee-yoo-tiful!” But then I ate it, my stomach gurgled pleasantly, and I have to say, my lunch was pretty beautiful too.