Another Midsummer Day

Every once in a while I sit down to write and the topic that comes to mind feels familiar—as if I’ve already written about it. Today is one of those days. Here, I drop in a previous musing, written nearly a year ago to the day—but with fresh flower garden photos. With consistent watering, the flowers are flourishing in this humid heat, weathering it better than I am. Take a walk in my garden after my midsummer reflection…

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I’ve always said I love the four seasons and would find it hard living somewhere without four distinct seasons.  If I look a bit deeper, what I really like is the change of seasons: the shutting off of one and the opening of another.  At nearly 54 years old, I see that the four seasons are actually splintered into subsets.  About a week ago, we moved from early summer to midsummer.  Despite heat and humidity of this new sub-season, I’m yearning for the outdoors: away from visual reminders of projects and chores.

Today, I’m parked on the porch, perched at the typewriter.  Oh, I see my folly: I’m perched at the computer—and still wishing that I could find perfect alliteration with perched.  Whether typewriter or computer falls through my fingertips, neither begin with a “p” to sit nicely with parked, porch, and perched.

Since the turn to midsummer, each morning I get a jump on the sun and water the flower beds before ten; this guarantees that I’ll be in the shade of the maples surrounding our property – not standing in the sun with water spraying from a hose and sweat dripping down from my knees.  After hauling a 100-foot hose around for a half-hour to water, I return inside to where I’ve adjusted the air conditioner for what was the early morning “working-in-the-house-mode.” That has now changed to meat cooler temperature.

I’m sitting at the two-person bistro table on my porch.  The tablecloths are damp from the humidity.  A small rechargeable-battery operated fan sits on the table directed at my neck, which like my knees has a propensity to shed water in the humidity; I awoke at 5:12 this morning with a neck sweat.  There is a breeze crossing the porch, and the ceiling fan is whirring above me where it’s securely attached to the porch roof.  I rarely use this fan, so when I flipped the switch on a few minutes ago, I stood a safe distance away in the doorway watching it spin and studying how its action created a smaller rotation in the light hanging under the fan.  After a minute or so, the light was still attached to the fan; I have faith that the light was engineered so as to move with the fan.  This phenomenon must be related to the way skyscrapers are built to sway, in particular what used to be the Sears Tower in Chicago.  On average it sways six inches, but it could sway—if need be—up to three feet.  Like heat exchangers, radio waves, and airplanes, I accept these beasts’ ways although I don’t fully understand the physics. 

We have air-conditioning in the house.  When we added onto the house in 2012, the old air vents in the bedrooms were connected to the new vents in the master bathroom and bedroom.  When the air comes on, the sound in all of the rooms in the new addition sounds like we are about to set sail on a continental trade wind—those dry, hot prevailing land winds. On an island, where the necessity for full clothing coverage is diminished, the maritime trade winds are wetter but still warm, strong, and prevailing.  Given the humidity outside, I imagine we are sailing on the latter—while still having to dress as if we are on land.

The thermostat for the second story where the bedrooms are is in the hallway outside our sons’ small 1880-circa bedrooms.  Down the hallway eight feet and around the corner is the sailboat on-high in the master bedroom.  If the thermostat is set at what might seem to be a comfortable 72 degrees, the old ducts halt air flow giving way to the streamlined ducts in the new part.  So while the thermostat dutifully holds the hallway at 72 degrees, the new 2012-circa bathroom, located three corners away, drops to 66, perhaps 64 degrees.  “Houston, we have a problem” says no one, for they fear the wrath of a women whose neck and knees sweat.  (An alliteration by sound if not by letters… so comforting.)

I sat down on the porch thinking I would be writing about green beans.  I thought after twenty years that topic might finally be ready to hit the paper.  This proves yet again that I’m a “pantser” and not a planner; a realization I came to only in my recent writing years.  Yet I will not go there now as there is a future piece reserved just for that topic—when deemed ready.

Today is reserved for one of my evergreen topics: hot, humid, midsummer days.  I will leave you on the edge of your seat for those percolating essays on green beans and being a pantser.  On the edge of the seat, like where I’m sitting—where the water dripping down my back, having previously glued my shirt to a chair cushion, has a chance to dry up with the various winds blowing out and about.

On the other hand, the flowers are looking sublime. I can make them happy in this heat with my personal gardening therapy. They are marching through their summer blooms, ebbing and flowing as they should.

Kitchen Island Conversation

Over his grilled cheese and carrot sticks, Liam suggested an improvement to celery.  “They should cross-pollinate it with crunchy iceberg lettuce. That would get rid of the strings in the celery.”

“Lettuce is delicate,” I observed.  “I think the cross-pollination should be with something like water chestnuts.  They’re sturdy and perhaps could overwhelm the strings in celery better than iceberg lettuce.”

Celery is something we would both like to like, but just thinking about taking a bite off the end of a piece of celery and feeling all those strings refusing to release?  It brings me close to a gag reflex.  As a raw vegetable, it’s nearly untouchable; if finely diced in a lobster roll that I order without asking what the ingredients are, I can eat it.  Although I struggle with celery in its raw form, I fully acknowledge its usefulness as a cooked vegetable to flavor food like chicken broth, along with carrots and onions.  And that makes me think there is a name for this veggie combo… and that it’s holy-something…

***Internet Search Interlude***

The Holy Trinity, in cooking terms, is the base of celery, onions, and green peppers in Cajun-style cooking.  This sounds familiar from the days of making jambalaya when we would start with this trio in tiny, diced pieces and sauté them in butter until they became intertwined so tightly they looked and smelled like a new vegetable species.  The Holy Trinity uses equal amounts of each vegetable.

Similarly, mirepoix, pronounced meer-pwah, originated in France and is a base of celery, onions, and carrots.  The standard ratio of vegetables is heavy on the onions for mirepoix: 2 parts onion, 1 part celery, and 1 part carrots.  Again, this finely diced vegetable base is cooked in butter on low heat until soft.  The Irish Potato Chowder I make at Christmas time starts off with mirepoix simmered for ten minutes before adding the chicken stock and potatoes.  Then the magic of the base simmer melds into the potatoes.

These combinations of vegetables and herbs are considered “aromatics.”  Across cuisines, a standard base often defines the beginning flavor of a dish.  These combinations anchor a taste profile for many ethnic foods, yet there is no absolute aromatic combination that defines one type of food.  For instance, Chinese stir-fries might start with a quick cooking of ginger, scallion, and garlic, but if the dish is traditionally from the Hunan or Sichuan area of China, there’s a good chance for a pop of heat from chilies in the aromatic. 

For Thai cuisine, shallots, chilies, garlic, and lemongrass are commonly used as an aromatic.  This is one base that I’ve discovered from a bottle in the form of Red Thai Curry Paste.  This beautiful shortcut houses the aromatics in one jar of intensity and makes it possible to create Jamie Oliver’s Red Thai Chicken Soup with only five ingredients.  Basically, someone else has shopped the fresh aisle, then chopped and cooked down the aromatics to a thick paste that’s ready to set the stage for Thai cooking.

All of this aromatic chatter reminds be of a standby in many recipes from my past: Dry Onion Soup Mix.  Do people ever make onion soup out of this?  This seems like a kind of aromatic staple and reminds me of recipes found in hundreds of church cookbooks and Taste of Home magazine recipes.  While a super boost in flavor, I take a closer look at the sodium content and remember why I rarely use those boxes of envelopes in my cupboard that expired in… 2007.  Thinking about the bottled Red Thai Curry Paste, I should peek at its sodium content as well.

While recipes in this Taste of Home collection look tempting, dry onion soup mix is a world away from fresh celery, onion, and carrots building taste as they simmer away in a bit of butter.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_trinity_(cooking)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirepoix

https://www.seriouseats.com/chinese-aromatics-101-mild-ginger-scallion-garlic

https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chicken-recipes/thai-red-chicken-soup/

https://www.lindamalcolm.com/recipes/2019/11/17/irish-potato-chowder

https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/soup-mix-recipes/

Back to Dining Out

A couple weeks ago, I went out to lunch with four friends and ordered a caprese sandwich, a simple sandwich known for luscious tomatoes, creamy mozzarella, and fresh basil.  We sat outside laughing and chatting under an umbrella while we waited for our food.  Finally, my meal was delivered in the form of an extra juicy tomato and wet cheese sandwich, with not a leaf of basil in sight.  I called the restaurant from the table outside and asked about the basil.  They were out.  I ate the soggy tomato and cheese lunch, but I couldn’t let it go.  I called the restaurant when I got home and said that a caprese without basil wasn’t really a caprese.  The manager apologized saying she had new staff who didn’t realize the importance of basil—or telling the customer if they were out of an ingredient.  She refunded the $13.00.

Saturday my husband Bill and I ventured out for dinner with two other couples.  I had snagged a table for six at a lively restaurant in Lynn, about twenty minutes from our house.  Our table wasn’t ready when we arrived, but the two-host staff quickly pulled three high tops together against a wall, leaving about sixteen inches for three of us to scooch into; the wives looked at one another and with a nearly non-present nod, we slid in.  The men sat across from us where their bar stools had more space.  We laughed, we chatted, we fell into one another’s smiles. 

After fifteen minutes of delight, I caught the eye of a host, waved her over, and quietly told her that we hadn’t been served.  She rushed to find a server who promptly appeared at our table with pen and paper in hand; she asked what she could start us off with. 

“Menus?”  I suggested, and then second-guessed myself.  Was there a sign with a QR code that we should’ve popped into our phones? Some restaurants had gone to electronic menus, skipping paper altogether.  Alas, paper dinner menus arrived, and following our request for cocktail menus, those appeared as well from the host staff. 

A dozen raw oysters were delivered with our other appetizers as an appeasement for the rocky start.  The calamari, baked brie, and fries with truffle oil were delicious.  The guys enjoyed the oysters.  Five dinners came out just as we finished the appetizers.  Oh, the joy of having a plate of hot food delivered to you!  Er, to them.  My plate didn’t arrive.  

I encouraged the others to start eating without me, for the waitress said mine would be arriving shortly.  For five minutes, we all continued chatting over their food.  I joked that my salmon was still on the hook, so when it arrived it would be incredibly fresh. Finally, a tap on the hostess’ shoulder and a request to follow up on my salmon resulted in our waitress returning to the table.  “I’m sorry but your dinner was given to another table.  The kitchen is making another one for you, and you won’t have to pay it.  Can I get you another round of drinks?” 

I had already splurged on my one drink for the evening, but the others were served up another round.  “Glad I could get that one for you!  I’m taking one for the team!”  Knowing my salmon had slipped from the hook, they all started eating their dinner.  I had no more salmon jokes, but I held tight to the smile on my face.

My friend next to me said, “You can have anything on my plate, really!”  Moms are so easy to spot; lovely and thoughtful, they’d give you the food off their plate.  My over-done salmon arrived as the others were nearly finished eating.  Long after the plates were zipped away, we continued in our huddle of laughter and discussion.  We were one of the last parties to leave the restaurant.

Memorial Day Monday, Bill and I went out to a diner for breakfast; the parking lot was full, so we were surprised to be immediately seated.  The diner was hopping with a large group of twelve and most of the tables full.  We ordered food, and I ordered a mocha latte, but the espresso machine was broken.  I settled for ice water.  We sat and sat and sat.  All diners must have rolled into the parking lot around the same time.

Twenty minutes later the table of twelve was served.  Dribs and drabs of food was delivered from the kitchen over the next few minutes.  Finally, a half hour after we had been seated, our food was delivered.  My scrambled eggs were steaming hot and were hiding the corn beef hash underneath.  Eggs are like chicken in that they can soak up any flavor, yet these eggs were little more than fork scrambled, fried in a thin crepe shape—no seasoning, nothing fancy, no hint of even a bit of salt.  Basic diner scrambled eggs.  I ate enough to get some protein, then remembered the words from Prue on The Great British Baking Show: “It must be worth the calories.”  She was talking about eating desserts, but the same sentiment applied to the plate-loaded-for-two in front of me. 

Our return to dining out was eye-opening: the experience wasn’t as it was before the pandemic.  Most certainly, there will be a learning curve as restaurants rev back up.  While staff need to be hired and trained, my expectations of service need to be adjusted. 

The other eye-opener?  We’ve been cooking most meals at home for at least 400 days.  We wobble close to what Malcolm Gladwell states about people, “outliers,” who succeed amazingly well in their field: They’ve put in 10,000 hours.  Quick math:  400 days x 24 hours = 9,600 hours since March 2020.  It feels like I’ve been planning for, dreaming about, foraging for, and preparing meals for approximately 10,000 hours. 

The result?  My scallops and salmon are exquisite; my vinaigrette is kick-ass; my scrambled eggs are sublime.  I can make mac’n’cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches in my sleep; my steaks (barring no fire in the grill and not running out of propane) come off the grill tender pink inside with black grill marks on the outside; my risotto is too dangerously creamy and satisfying to make more than once every couple of months.  I no longer need a roasted chicken from the deli to make homemade chicken and rice soup; I can roast chicken thighs, make broth from the skin and bones, and deftly toss in memorized ingredients to complete this soup—the making of which is more cathartic than is the eating of it.  I slice up apples and swivel out stems of strawberries as if my knife is a magical sword. 

Despite all of this deliciousness, daily my head feels like I’m completing complex calculus problems as I figure out what will come forth from my kitchen to feed four people who have vastly different preferences.  How to work enough roughage into the carb-preferred diet; how to add protein to a ramen noodle soup day; how to make that burger edible five hours after it’s come off of the grill; how to avoid gluten, carbs, and sugar bloat. 

For respite, what do I want in “eating out”?  Am I wanting someone else to slide a plate in front of me and be content with whatever it is—as long as I didn’t have to make it?  Or, do I expect the food on that plate to be elevated to the likes of Gordon Ramsay’s overly-thought-out-but-scrumptious scrambled eggs  or Jamie Oliver’s roast beef to die for? 

I have turned these questions inside out and backwards looking for the answer.  I’ve walked away from this writing four times because I couldn’t put the answer down; couldn’t come to clear decision.  I now realize I’m trying to answer this eating out question with the wrong parameters. 

Given what we’ve been through, contemplating the quality of food served feels petty as I read back through this.  More important are smiles, laughter, and chatting across a table.  Give me this, and I’ll happily eat anything, anywhere.  

I should repeat this mantra five times daily and post it on the back door as a reminder when we are on our way out to eat.

Back to It

May 29, 2021

Back in the quiet room at the library, I thought there would be a bigger crowd fifteen minutes after the doors opened this morning.  I’m the only one here, so I am sitting in my seat.  On the five-minute drive from my house, I had acknowledged that I probably wouldn’t be able to snag my same old seat; I thought there would be a crowd.  And, yet, here I sit.  All is the same as if the pandemic never happened; perhaps the historical books ringing the room are making the old-book-air smell a bit stronger than usual? My face cracked into tears when I approached my table.

My 10-year-old Facetime niece was at Mom and Dad’s yesterday.  “Aunt Linda, I will probably cry when I see you,” she announced, like that would be a bit of a thing we would have to get through when I came home.

FaceTime niece and me—in real time: 2019.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll cry when I see you, too,” I assured her.

Then she plugged her face tightly into the camera and did a finger swish between her and my mom who wasn’t yet on the screen, and she whispered, “Notice we don’t have masks on!”  Her wide-eyed face was lit with a knowing smile. 

Mom and Dad joined her at the table, pulling chairs in on either side of her.  She was right in the middle.  “All three of us won’t fit on the screen,” she announced.

I know this screen pretty well: When Mom and Dad are on Facetime at the kitchen table, sometimes I just see Dad’s left ear and Mom’s right ear.  Between them, I’ve kept an eye on the wall calendar in the corner of the kitchen.  We’ve cycled through 15 different monthly pictures on two calendars.  Throughout 2020, the calendar featured farm animals; they got that calendar from the feed store, as they normally do every year.  However, they hadn’t been to the feed store in the new year, so 2021 is a bird and flower calendar, I think; from where, I don’t know. Above the calendar are the hooks attached to a 12” long 1”x12” board for what seems to be 100 keys.  It’s where I hang the rental car key when I go home—except for the $900 key fob I accidentally threw into the garbage that was then incinerated in the burn barrel.  That happened on my last visit in December 2019.

Fly swatters hang to the right of the calendar, always at the ready for when there is a “damned fly” irking Dad. To the left of the calendar is a plate that has hung on the wall as long as I can remember.  “Come in sit down, converse. Our place doesn’t always look like this, sometimes it’s even worse.”  I have the same plate hanging in our entry way.

Occasionally, if Mom swings the camera so that Dad is in the center of the screen, I can see over his shoulder into the living room, and on the top shelf of the bookcase are our wedding photos: mine and my sister’s.  I know that more family photos, including my brothers’ wedding photos, cascade down the shelves that I can’t see.  The light blue curtain to the right let’s in the bright, early morning summer sunrises.  And in December, the sparkling Christmas tree will sit to the right of those shelves in front of the curtain. 

This year, I’ll be there for both seasons of light.

Flights to Iowa are booked for June 30th.