Pink of Perfection

Granted, it flies in the face of my chatter yesterday about autumnal melancholia, but the thing is, it’s very hot here right now. Every morning I go into the living room and aim a fan straight at myself. Ice coffee is made. Brows sweat. And when a friend is coming over for lunch, the last thing I want to do is heat up the apartment. It’s time for a cold, assembled lunch.

I pretty much stole this menu from Lisa when she had me over on one of the most sickeningly steamy nights of the summer. Nothing could have seemed more appealing than the platter of deviled eggs and pile of cold radishes that waited for me on the coffee table. Except, perhaps, a beer float.

Anyway, it was all so perfect that I replicated the meal for a friend with a few riffs of my own: guacamole, deviled eggs, heirloom tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with chives, a plate of nectarines. It’s the perfect picking food when you’re hungry but it’s so dang hot that mostly you want to sit across from your pretty friend on the floor, the fan whirring directly at both of you, plotting big plans from the comfort of the living room.

Again and again, I fall for the idea of summer vegetables baked together. And each time, when the softened hues emerge from the oven, I know instantly it was a bad idea. It’s like falling for the bow-legged cowboy each time you walk into the bar. You are twenty-one and so stupid, and he will break your heart.

That’s kind of how I feel about tians and ratatouille. The vegetables turn sumptuous and slouched, but I just keep thinking I’d rather have something sturdy and stand-up, like an unbaked tomato on a sandwich or maybe a raw ribboned zucchini salad. Neither of which would have required turning on the oven, my singular goal of these three summer months.

Also, I feel a bit flummoxed about what to serve with this. Polenta always fails me, pasta seems a little boring. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t know how to make a meal out of fragrant baked vegeables. Maybe herb-spiked quinoa or bulgur would be nice. But just thinking about that meal makes me feel vaguely unsatisfied, like when the cowboy says goodnight for the final time without a kiss. I’m just hungry for a little more.

Those of you who see the tian light, tell me: what am I missing?

Continue reading “French Friday: Summer Vegetable Tian” »

Last August Hours Before the Year 2000

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Spun silk of mercy,
long-limbed afternoon,
sun urging purple blossoms from baked stems.
What better blessing than to move without hurry
under trees?
Lugging a bucket to the rose that became a twining
house by now, roof and walls of vine—
you could live inside this rose.
Pouring a slow stream around the
ancient pineapple crowned with spiky fruit,
I thought we would feel old
by the year 2000.
Walt Disney thought cars would fly.

What a drama to keep thinking the last summer
the last birthday
before the calendar turns to zeroes.
My neighbor says anything we plant
in September takes hold.
She’s lining pots of little grasses by her walk.

I want to know the root goes deep
on all that came before,
you could lay a soaker hose across
your whole life and know
there was something
under layers of packed summer earth
and dry blown grass
to moisten.

This August is so strange. Some days I can almost feel a shift in the air toward cooler days. We’ve slept with the air-conditioner off these past several nights, and someone told me they saw turning leaves (”Dry summer,” explained my brother). But then we’ll get that familiar wall of humidity or a fierce summer thunderstorm. The air-conditioner and sunglasses go back on.

I was at the farmer’s market last Friday. It had been a lovely day. The air was just right, I had spent the morning writing, and I met my co-workers for lunch in a restaurant that transported me to the New England seashore. (I ate a lobster cobb salad which, let’s be real, didn’t hurt.) I went to the market and asked myself what the quintessential elements of summer food were. Corn, tomatoes, basil. I scooped up all three, and figured the rest of it out on the subway ride home.

Very often, the simplest solution is the best. We scratch our head for days trying to figure out the right course of action: what should we make for dinner, how should we rearrange the furniture, how can we cheer up a friend? When the answer comes, we wonder what took so long.

And when the solution doesn’t come so easily, I am trying to remember that, like a road trip, the process of getting “there” is part of the journey. Practice and play are just as important, and actually, pretty damn fun.

Continue reading “Simple Summer Supper: Penne with Corn, Tomatoes, and Pesto” »

There’s a spot in the Poconos that I think I would rate as one of my top five places on earth. Ferns cover the forest floor. The ceiling fans whir powerfully on hot days. There is a library stocked with Julia Child cookbooks and mysteries, a cool lake beckons for afternoon dips, and a million and one stars come out at night. On walks in the woods there, I always seem to have my favorite kind of conversations filled with big dreams and possibilities, birch trees and mushrooms bearing witness to grand plans.

But what do you do when you’re responsible for dinner on the first night of a weekend away, and plan to carry a picnic across state lines? Why, you bring a sandwich that gets better with sitting! And what do you do if you’re feeding vegans and omnivores alike? Well, you get creative!

The classic pan bagnat, in some ways like a niçoise salad tucked inside bread, has canned tuna or hard-cooked eggs. With vegans present, I made two versions: one with tuna, and one with mashed chickpeas. The entire sandwich is brushed or drizzled with a garlicky vinaigrette, and then tightly wrapped, placed in your picnic basked and smooshed down with something heavy like a couple bottles of wine. With deviled eggs, baby carrots, a mess of cherries and root beer floats for dessert, you might call this a perfect summer meal.

Continue reading “French Friday: Pan Bagnat, Tuna and Vegan” »

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. ––Agnes Repplier

I’m not usually one to share the bizarro holidays that pop up on the calendar, but this is one I couldn’t resist. Today is Lazy Day, the kind of holiday I can really get behind. That we are in the dog days of summer, the kind that almost feel like a rut, makes it even more apropos. Who wants to do more on August 10 than sip a glass of iced tea, anyway?

When I was in college, a speaker came and gave a talk in the little chapel about the importance of leisure. I didn’t know then what real day-in, day-out work looked like, so I’m surprised what he said so affected me I had to scribble it down in my notebook: we reveal ourselves in our leisure as much as our work. The idea that downtime could somehow play a role in identity––that leisure could somehow be important––was an intoxicating idea to me. And now that I have daily work that consists of slightly more than “Read this novel; think about it; write paper; meet someone for coffee,” it’s an idea I can appreciate even more.

Especially after coming off such a fun weekend. My daily life is so much in my head: sitting, writing, writing, sitting. But this weekend on a bare Iowa horizon, I was in my heart and my body. Dancing, sweating, swimming. Smiling like a goon, and laughing till I ached. It made me think about physical fun, about being present in form, fully inhabited. Not talking it out, not analyzing, but relaxing into the summer heat, twirling skirts on the dance floor, leaning in for a kiss.

Which, of course, has nothing to do with being lazy. But it does have to do with fun. The pure, unadulterated bliss of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. And that feels related to a holiday about kicking back and doing nothing at all: il bel far niente.

And yet, I’m a little embarrassed of the word lazy. I certainly don’t want to be seen as such, despite how well I can nap and spend the better part of an hour in the bathtub. I’ve been known to wile whole Saturdays away in bed. But lazy seems so judgy; perhaps it’s just my Puritan roots shining through. I’ll be doing my best today to shirk off any ancestral guilt and find an hour to just sit and stare out a window. Consider this your invitation to join me.

image via LIFE

After such a lovely weekend, Monday morning could have felt like a major bummer. But the truth is, I’m still feeling glowingly lucky to have the funnest, greatest friends, to have danced with them in a driveway in Iowa and celebrated love, to have gone midnight swimming, and to have slept in a giant California King-sized bed. “It’s really great to know people for a long time,” I said to Katie while we were dancing to Michael Jackson. “It’s the best,” she said.

And then I spent this morning looking at Meg’s blog, which always makes me feel really happy. And I drank my coffee. And thought about adventure, and which one we should take next. You know that feeling, when you just want to set out for somewhere new, hop in a car, or start from scratch somewhere new? How do you scratch that itch?

And I thought about these scones that I made last week, which were truly quick and studded with lusciously ripe raspberries.

All in all, not a bad way to start the week.

Continue reading “Fast Raspberry Scones” »

Last night, there was just the slightest hint of coolness in the air, like a whisper at my bedroom window. I’m not usually one to wish for coziness in summer, or even to wish for fall while the warm days are still stacked up; I know they’re out there, in September, with their softer, slanting light. They’ll come.

But even still, because of the air last night, and because of this cold I’ve been fighting (day 5 and counting), I’ve been craving a particular kind of comfort. The Boden catalog came, and I dogeared page after page of striped wool cardigans and plaid miniskirts. Yesterday I ate a bowl of cereal and watched Kate & Allie, and after pulling on my long white nightgown, I climbed in bed with Anne.

It was also, you might imagine, a night on which something like pasta with creamy zucchini sauce fit the bill perfectly for dinner. The question of what to do with the glut of August zucchini is one of my favorite cooking quandaries. I think to think that I’m providing my mom with lots and lots of ideas. This recipe, from the River Cottage Cookbook, is a very good one indeed. Sumptuously simple, this is most certainly a keeper.

Continue reading “Pasta with Creamy Zucchini Sauce” »