Breathtaking

This poem is so beautiful, so heartwarming, it literally took my breath away and gave me goosebumps.  

So in these days of summer (summer camp on the brain), and years of motherhood (Dear Daughter, I'm forever humbled), and a lifetime of being a daughter (thank you, Mom), it seemed especially apt to post, share, and save. Flag for Mother's Day 2013.

Poet Billy Collins is a gem.

Birthday

Marine Biology - Sunset (amazing light)

Marine Biology

 

Mexican Night

Corn Tortillas with Queso Blanco

Black Bean Salad

(black beans, corn, avocado, tomatoes, cilantro with a squeeze of lime)

Beer

College Night

Buffalo Wins (homemade)

Ranch Dip (homemade)

Carrots & Celery

Black Bean Dip (homemade) & Salsa (not)

Chips

Beer

Vespa Ride, Nighttime NYC

Arcade

Brazilian Feast (OMG)

Great people, great music, celebrations. 

Caipirinhas

Arroz com feijao

Lombo com farofa

Churrasco

Salada de Palmito

Perfect summer evening

Our neighbor gave me a eggplant from her lush summer garden, and I prepared this gorgeous recipe from the NY Times. Served with oven-warmed pita, and thick, tangy Greek yogurt, it made a delish veg meal - perfectly accompanied by a nice glass of Spanish red for mom and seltzer with lingonberry syrup for Dear Daughter.

Later, we took our bikes to the new gelato place near Eastern Market, where I had a mix of Sicilian almond and chocolat noir, while she chose chocolate chip and strawberry.

Just about every part of this post has something I love about my life. Neighbors, garden vegetables, good food, Turkish-style braised eggplant, anything from Turkey, yogurt, anything from Greece, the New York Times, eating well, red wine, anything from Spain, lingonberry syrup, anything from Sweden, Dear Daughter, bikes, Capitol Hill, cities, ice cream, gelato, anything from Italy, almonds, chocolate, local, community, summer light,  and summer evenings.  Bliss.

Composing a great meal of good food

One of my favorite summer diversions has become composing delicious, usually cool, more-veg-than-not,  meals made with local summer bounty.  All the better if it is inspired by and can evoke a place, time, and mood.  Someplace we'd rather be...anywhere, but here.

Here are some recent menus for Summer 2011:

Ciao Italia:  Tonight's dinner included roasted red peppers; farm tomatoes & garden basil; fresh buffalo mozzarella; sliced pepperoni; white bean salad with garden sage; spinach wilted in olive oil, garlic and a squeeze of lemon; crusty bread; and a bottle of wine.  Later, we enjoyed homemade cherry-vanilla ice pops.  Yummy, cool, and so easy!

Simplemente Mexico:  Last week, I used up a host of leftovers and re-created them into something totally new and easy.  I sprinkled a mild, white mexican cheese on corn tortillas and broiled them to just enough to crisp the tortilla and melt the cheese; a light pico de gallo sauce on the side; and served with a black bean, fresh corn kernel, avocado, cilantro salad with a squeeze of lime.  Cold beer made it lively.

Grilling in Greece:  One recent warm night, I grilled some lamb rubbed with garlic and rosemary, and served it with homemade cucumber tsatsiki, crumbled feta, olives, and flat bread.  The charred lamb was such a lovely accompaniment to the simple sides.

One Night in Nice:  Dear Daughter will tell just about anyone her favorite food is a Nicoise salad - much to my chagrin - it sounds so precocious!  What she really means is she loves La Nouvelle Observatrice's composed Nicoise with lightly steamed green beans, fresh garden tomatoes, boiled eggs, some briny olives, boiled new potatoes tossed with olive oil and chives, and tuna (if it's in a tin, I use the Italian brand packed in oil, and mix in some fresh parsley).  I usually whip up a lemon-dijon vinaigrette, and drizzle it over the colorful platters.

Crunchy-punchy Caesar:  This one is an American classic - originating, they say, from the Brown Derby in Hollywood, also ubiquitous at steakhouse menus - actually pretty ubiquitous on any American menu!  I do love the effect of the crisp cool hearts of romaine on a summer day.  The weekend's stale bread makes the homemade crusty croutons.  The aged parmesan reggiano is nutty, and procured during a weekend outing at Eastern Market.  I make my vinaigrette with extra punch - lots of lemon, lots of garlic, lots of dijon (extra forte).  Grilling even just one or two chicken breasts gives us enough protein for a few people - more people than breasts can - for once - work out here.

More Inspiration than Perspiration:  Salmon burgers have become a regular go-to meal around here.  Being pressed for time, a little lazy, and taking more credit for the inspiration to eat fresh and healthy, than the actually making of it, I buy pre-made salmon patties at the fish store or Whole Foods Market, grill them up, and serve on whole wheat burger buns, with a spoonful of 1000 Island dressing, some romaine (See Caesar - regularly in my fridge in the summer months), and a slice or two of tomato (see other recipes - perfect in July and August)

Late July Harvest Show-off:  Pasta primavera was featured recently on this blog.  A quick sautee of  summer squash, sweet onion, corn, tomato and basil - no need to be saucy about it.  I serve it over a small portion of pasta - the pasta-veg/sauce ratio is no more than 1-to-1.  Aged parmesan is grated over our bright yellow-red-green dishes right at the table.  Yum.

Don't forget the power of good, cold craft beer, chilled white (or even pink) wine, bubbly seltzer (add a dash of cranberry juice or a flavored syrup for fanciness), lemonade (with or without pureed raspberries), and homemade ice cream (just 20 minutes, plus freezetime in the ice cream maker) to get credit for being a domestic goddess.  Nigella, my luscious, eat your heart out!

Weekend

Summertime, and the living is easy.

I'm not sure if it's because of the season.  Or because things at work are at a slower pace.   Or because even though my new boss is super-charging our workload and raising the bar big-time, I feel motivated at work and able to define my life and my schedule (which in June meant, I took every Friday off, and today meant that I worked from home in the morning, ducked out for G's performance, and then headed to the office at 1:30, but proceed to work 'til 7pm...on a Friday,...in the summer).  But at any rate, I'm feeling pretty chillax.  And I'm looking forward to a weekend that is mixed with lazing about, doing chores, and being lightly social - or "social-lite."

Tonight was "Book" Club - hardly about books, and hardly a club - but a bunch of irreverent urban moms who like to host good friends, cook great food, eat it well, accompanied by choice beer and wine, and proceed to talk and laugh until midnight or so.  Our bike commutes converge as the blocks get closer in, so one biker, turned to two at my place, where we caught up with two others a few blocks away, and half a block from our host's house found the other three biker contingent coming from the north end of our neighborhood.  I'll spare you the (delicious) menu (there are so many damn food blogs out there these days) and the topics of conversation (to protect the innocent, and because you had to be there), and skip to the end, when my ride home with two others took us the long way to better revel in the cool (in  DC July!) air, the clear black sky, the round bright silver moon,  and the car-free city streets.

Tomorrow's chores include a grocery shop, picking up my computer back-up drive, a trip to the library for returns and pick-up of the books I've reserved online.  It also involves some cooking - a Mexican bean salad and some homemade ice cream (can't decide how I'll top last week's ginger peach, but I'm leaning toward strawberry almond or cinnamon blueberry).  I'll swim in the newly-discovered 50m (Olympic-sized) DC pool that feels simply tremendous in the glorious sun and blue sky and experienced by my working, churning body.  There's a plan with G - perhaps some recreational swimming, and a night in with gameboards (she's learned Sorry!) or cards (Skip-bo, by the makers of Uno).

Sunday will find us at church, followed by brunch with friends...and then we must encamp somewhere for the Women's World Cup (USA!), before heading home at the very last minute for visiting with G's godmoms and kids.

It may very well turn into the Perfect Weekend.

Blech...

I feel like crap.  Sometimes this happens to me.  It can happen at anytime, but it often happens as August, and more so late August, hits.  I think the lack of structure and routines get to me, too.  Dear Daughter is out of school, and we're trying to fill her days.  And work does not let up.  For all my talk of lemonade, ice cream, carefree days at the beach, baseball games, grilling, and gin & tonics - it does not overcome the heat, humidity, the unannounced storms (and floods), the bugs (and the bug bites), the sweat, the sun damage to my protesting fair skin, and the general malaise I get as summer drags on and on and on.  And on.  So by this time of year, I'm just over it.  Done.  Thank you very much.

Maybe I'd like summer more if I spent a long stretch in a cabin, on a lake, sitting on the porch, reading, writing, cooking, going for a swim - two, three, four times a day...to the floating dock about 100 meters offshore.   And skinny dipping at night, floating on my back looking at the sea of stars above, picking out a constellation or two.  

I had a summer like that.   Two summers, in fact - on Lake Spitfire in the Adirondacks.  Skinny dippin', constellation pickin',  floatin' dock and all.  I was a teenager - sixteen and seventeen years old, joining a family I used to babysit for.    My teenage boyfriend and I wrote long love missives to each other lamenting the weeks apart, and making heated plans for a torrid reunion in the fall..  The memories are vivid - over twenty years later.  There was no access by car - only boat, and I had access to the Boston Whaler to get from our cabins to the main dock through the channel over to Upper St. Regis.  I suppose there were bugs there - but I don't remember them.  I do know as summer went on, it was cool enough to light a fire in the fireplace at night.  And on my late summer swims, I nearly froze my ass off - but skinny-dipped anyway - shivering - because I knew that summer nights were drawing to a close.   I love swimming, and I love skinny dipping even more (and just wish there were more real opportunities to do so).

I think these were the best summers of my life.  Or at least when I want to conjure up an image of peace, tranquillity, contentment  - my perfect place - I think of there and then, or even There and Now.

Spanish-Inspired Summer Snacks

Inspired by Nigella Express, part of a longer, light dinner menu.

Parrano cheese with Fig Jam on Walnut Bread

Chick Pea and Spinach Salad

infused with cumin and sherry

Almonds

Cherries

Cava

chilled and sparkling

I [HEART] Mark Bittman

Another one of my geek crushes is Mark Bittman - The Minimalist - food columnist for the Times.  He's smart, word-y, wry, witty.  I like his food philosophy - fresh, easy, local, simple.  He calls himself a "less-meatatarian."   I think MB is kinda handsome (way more handsome that my other NYTimes geek crush David Pogue, who I don't actually find that attractive,  but I'd still do his brain).

Here, MB does one of his simple, formulaic cooking primers, "101 Fast Recipes for Grilling," in which he takes some basics, prepares them simply, enhances with some complementary favor, and grills.  The glossy food porn is here.   And if you prefer to watch your food smut (and witness MB himself) here's the video where he grills a grilled cheese sandwich.

Summer meal

Tonight's dinner was pretty simple, but absolutely scrumptiously so. I loved the colors and flavors. The hearty dark beans and rice were warmly spiced with a little cumin. The guacamole popped on plate and on palate with its bright green color and zing of lemon.   I added pureed frozen strawberries to the lemonade, giving it a refreshing chill, a bright pink hue, and sweet-tart taste.  And watermelon is always so cool, sweet, and juicy on a hot summer evening.