As you know, summer is my least favorite season. Hate me the heat. But the fresh vegetables do make it tolerable, and sometimes more than tolerable. Julie went to her garden today to work all afternoon while I slept off this morning’s allergy attack. I woke up, cleaned the kitchen, then made dinner. We had some garlic scapes from the farmer’s market, which I made into a pesto, chopping them and adding them to olive oil, walnuts, and grated Parmigiano Reggiano (we’re not supposed to be eating dairy right now, but we cheated). I also cooked down some disappointing grape tomatoes I picked up a couple of weeks ago at the farmer’s market, simmering them in olive oil, sea salt and sliced garlic until they burst. Made a big old green salad with lettuce from our local farmstand, and homemade vinaigrette. We had the pesto on linguini, and a second dish of the garlic-tomato stuff on linguini, along with the salad and a plain but delicious light Italian red called Becco Rosso, from the Veneto.
That was dinner — pasta with pesto, pasta with grape tomatoes simmered in garlic and oil, green salad with vinaigrette, and bright red Italian wine. It was awesome. That’s what’s so great about eating in the summer: a delicious meal is so easy to put together if you have fresh ingredients from the garden. Next week, we’re going down with the kids to visit Aunt Ruthie and our Louisiana family. My folks say the tomatoes, cucumbers, corn and suchlike is roaring in from their garden. If I can stay in the kitchen under the air conditioner (I grew up saying “under the air conditioner” meaning “in the state of being air-conditioned”), doing nothing but cooking and eating and drinking and talking, I’ll be just fine.
I like these weekend food threads from summers past, in which you readers talk about what you’ve been eating this weekend, especially from your gardens or the market. So … what’d you have?