Meg'sfoodandwinepage

You (and all your ideas) are totally unmarketable

I'm so lucky to live in a big city with (O god I hope) deep resources of like-minded individuals.  This idea, in fact, is Main Reason Number One I keep living here despite the strong hankerings of one side of my soul for a garden, for the land, for space and views.  I hold onto that ideal on days like today.

Today Manhattan was drenched with a technically 'light' rain that had amazing powers of full soaking. (I ran 7 miles this morning in "mist" which never coallesced into raindrops and yet was so uniformly soaking that I dripped puddles all the way up the stairs home.)

These coastal-soaking rain days are days on which it is a major pain in the ass to do my job, since for me to carry a good number of wine samples to my customers requires a backpack (which the umbrella drips on such that in a soaking rain the backpack then gets soaked and starts draining onto my lower back &etc= wet ass).  Also a side wine bag which I have to put down if I need to answer the phone or hail a cab, which = wet thigh when I pick it up again to  carry.  Of course in addition to that there is the fact that there is no way around  wet feet and ankles from walking around.  So one gets pretty wet in general.  Not to mention the annoyance of the total physical inconvenience of wielding all these bags plus an umbrella and a cell phone (esp a Treo which refuses to get your email and/or work as a phone if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, not to mention a coastal soaking rainstorm). . .

On these days it smarts all the more to be confronted with what we shall delicately call an unreceptive public. In short, today I got soaked to have some customers (well one, but it's his store so no one, especially me, could disagree) totally dismiss a  wine for the "sin" of having acidity (and we all know how I feel about acidity as a trait in wine).  What could I do but bite tongue,  as in this case it is impossible for me to empathetically second the customer's opinion and hell, at least at this very moment I'm not getting rained on so it could be worse.  Only thing to do is to continue sales call.  Get order in the end, although it's clear that despite my best efforts at diplomacy a chill has fallen.  Schedule tasting for later to express my good will (however fake!).  Linger a few minutes longer in an attempt to show that I'm really happy to be here!  Feel clearly unwelcome!  Leave awkwardly!  It's pouring!!  by the time I reach the corner I'm soaked!!

Know I have way too much wine to carry to my next appointment (where I'll drop off 4 bottles, but now I have 10!! I weigh 123.5 pounds!!  My bags weigh almost half that!  it's pouring!!) so plan to take a cab.  No cabs coming!  I get further soaked! An off-duty cab driver finally takes pity on me and takes me to my next appointment.  My second wine bag drips onto my feet as I call orders into the office and (for once) feel grateful for the traffic that makes it take ages to get where I'm going.

The rest of the day progressed in better form, thankfully.  I decided NOT to drive to Columbia County in the dark tonight on flooded roads and instead came home and made a lovely dinner.  Had a glass of the wine that my customers rejected as too "tart" (and enjoyed it totally) with my dinner.

But of course that was not the only lesson of my day.  I also read about this book on Dooce's post from today and so was reminded, for the second time today, that my tastes are totally unmarketable (also that I should never be trusted to date anyone ever again because the red flag dates?  I marry them). It is true that I actually do care about what certain people (Clotilde, Pim, Joe Dressner, just to name a few) might have had for lunch.  I hope that some people might care about what I have had for lunch if I find it interesting enough to post about.  But the fact remains that I was reminded by this post that 99.9% of the world does not care about lunch (or what anyone including themselves have eaten lately) in general. They are followed by a more giant subset that never really think about wine.  Some of them are my customers.  Such is life.

But I am off to watch one of my all time favorite movies.  Might need to watch it twice, but that should do!

(Late) August is my favorite month

The light has changed; the weather has changed:  we have passed mid-August, the precise date each year when I feel the summer ending.

Today is the kind of day that makes this part of August so wonderful in its peculiarly heartbreaking way:  bright sun, clear air, a warm and totally cloudless day following a cool night with another one to follow.  And yet, I noticed last night that twilight had started to fall at 7:00; by 7:30 the shadows were long and by 8 it was already evening. . . . the light more golden, more angled, more precious for shortening. . . .And now the garden reaches the point where its produce can no longer be consumed at once and must be preserved for winter -- the way in August the present collides constantly with its own ending. 

I remember a particular late August as one of the most golden moments of my life. I had recently finished at Bard, and I was living at Rokeby Farm in Barrytown that summer, renting a room from the couple who lived in the gardener's cottage.  They had a spectacular vegetable garden (which I had the run of) and a beautiful English black lab named Tila who became my fast friend (I devoted hours every morning to throwing her frisbee into the river).  I was realizing my love for food and cooking more fully through that garden and by working in some good local restaurants and had begun learning about wine.

The weather that summer had been beastly hot, with thunderstorms that arched themselves up like persnickety cats over the Hudson and stayed, night after night, with no break in the humidity.  The weather abruptly changed on August 14th and was suddenly wonderful for days -- just like today -- bright and clear and sparkling.  The early part of the summer had been tumultuous and difficult for me, making the transition from the easy transience of student life to 'real' adulthood, but I remember that August as perfect.  I had a friend to stay, and we ate, and drank, and talked, made perfect snacks (peasant bread with tapenade, cream cheese, tomato and basil leaves is what I remember best) and went out to the first 3+-hour restaurant dinner of my life.

These late August days always remind me of that summer, now.  It has even more resonance, in retrospect, for being the time that launched me into what has become my job -- my career I guess -- in wine (I left for London in September, where I worked in a wine shop and never looked back). 

Looking back, I see the pleasures of that August (the food, the wine, the view of the Catskills from the Hudson) as so pure and uncomplicated.  For once in my life I was living in the present tense in the best possible sense.  I am reminded every summer as the sparkling days begin and the crickets get louder in the long evenings, to banish nostalgia and do the same.

We're cooking in New York! But not in our Kitchens!

Since this is going to be a post partly about the weather, I feel as if I should start out with some funny comment about how boring it is to talk about the weather.  Except the topic of weather is never boring, if you live in the North-Eastern half of this country.  This is why we live here.  If we didn't enjoy the occasional bout of extreme weather we'd all move to Santa Barbara (where I'll be for all of next week, and where I'm expecting Perfecly Boring Weather.  Which quite frankly will be a welcome change.)

Anyhow, this has been an extraordinary, record-breaking heat wave here in New York.  Actually on the entire East Coast and beyond.  So extremely hot that instead of the usual bitching and suffering and saying "hot enough for ya?" and randomly shooting each other, there's been a sort of feeling of community, that we're all going through this Historic Event together and coping as best we can.  Um, let's just hope the power stays on, though.  There's only so much Historic Event I can take.

Personally, since Al Gore is/has always been one of my great heroes, I decided only to install one small air conditioner this year and use fans to do the rest.  So this week I've been having to camp out in the living room.  On Tuesday I caught the cat lying miserably in a limp pool back in the un-airconditioned, south-facing bedroom (this animal is completely nuts, what's wrong with her?). From that point on the bedroom was officially cut off, door shut!  It's been like living in a studio apartment for the last two days -- sort of fun for a while but I'm looking forward to reclaiming the square footage (not to mention that the novelty of the sofa bed wears off quickly). 

Fortunately, in anticipation of a few hot days (not that I imagined THIS hot, never actually having experienced this hot before, because it has never BEEN this hot before, can you say GLOBAL WARMING AL GORE DOES NOT LIE) I spent a good deal of Sunday up at my house cooking.  I haven't had to turn on the stove and have been dining very well on the bounty while hiding out from the heat.  The haul consisted of:  some leftover farro salad, a whole grilled chicken,  a piece of grilled skirt steak, a huge pile of blanched string beans for salad, and a batch of ratatouille (which I froze half of for later in the year when fresh produce will be but a memory).  Supplemented by some produce (cucumber, carrots, a few tomatoes) and the giant bag of basil which became pesto, I've been eating quite well despite the total infeasibility of cooking.  In case you were worried.

I read last night with amusement that Marsha had adopted much the same technique (creating uncooled no-go areas) for her house.  Except?  She took advantage of the cool zone by canning some cherries.  The woman never ceases to amaze! I love it.  Also, I'm never inviting her over in a heat wave, unless she promises to bring cherries that are ALREADY CANNED to have on ice cream.

Now that I've nattered on and on about the weather. . . here's what I really wanted to say today. One of the things that finally prodded me back to writing this blog again was a post that Joe Dressner wrote on his last month that resonated with me profoundly.  Specifically, this: 

"I want to apologize to the readership for the personal character of this blog entry. I often hear the criticism that for a wine blog my blog has very little about wine. I suppose I should be tasting wine daily and writing fabulous notes here about how they smell like tobacoo and are smoky in the mouth.  . . .
. . . I never quite manage to write those sort of wine notes. To me, being a wine importer is almost like being on a mission and its a mission that is filled with circuitous routes, missed flights, turbulence and discomfort. Simultaneously, I have the privilege of being associated with an enormously gifted group of vignerons who bring the earth to life and into the bottle. Even a night in South Jamaica's Hampton's Inn can't ruin that. "

and also this:

"I fell in love with wine in the Maconnais and fell in love with my wife there and had two children there. All done in an ancient farmhouse facing vineyards which have been there for time immemorial, even if they have now been mechanized, pulverized, chemicalized and denaturified to produce something unattractive to drink. It will be wonderful to go home again, a home I never would have guessed existed some 23 years ago when I started this adventure."

Thank you, Joe, for continuing to speak of wine as a process, not a product.  For speaking about our business not as an "industry" but as an adventure.  For reminding me that it is about the people and the land and also the crazy trips we go through to see those people and places.  All of which can make a bottle of wine resonate profoundly with experience.  Those are the only bottles really worth drinking.

I want to blog again. . . I think I will

It’s time to get back to blogging.  I’ve been putting it off, mostly because I didn’t know what to say on my first post back.  At times it has seemed too hard to have to explain everything that has happened and changed about my life in the 7 months since I last posted.  And frankly I haven’t had enough perspective to write anything worth reading, anyhow.

 

And I probably still don’t, but the fact of the matter is that I’ve been making farro salad – and I want to write about it.  I’ve been tasting, and drinking, some incredible wines – and I want to write about them.  And it’s the middle of summer and I’m holed up during the heat waves in front of my computer selling wine over the phone (god bless the phone when it’s 120 degrees on the subway platforms, it really is! Go down there if you don’t believe me!) and so there’s no time like the present to start writing again.

The problem is that to start blogging again, for me, necessitates writing about the ending of my marriage.  Which ended legally last week, technically in early February, and in retrospect actually late last summer when my now-ex, no-longer-dear husband informed me that he simply thought it best to end our marriage because he wasn’t happy with it, more specifically with me, and hoped that that could be that.  Of course that can never just be that, at least for any person with any sort of feeling or complexity.  In fact I know it will take me years to finish dealing with what I can only describe as my bitter disappointment.

At any rate, all that is so very private.  It’s not what I want to write about.  I want to write about cooking, and growing food, and eating, and drinking because those are the things that enrich my life immeasurably on good days or simply give me a reason to get out of bed on the bad ones. But all of these topics (with the possible exception of gardening, I suppose) are so intertwined with the relationships they foster, the people that they feed, that it is impossible to avoid writing in the cast of characters.  And I felt no need to be guarded or careful about that, so settled and right and progressing-along my life felt to me.  (There’s a sentence that is densely layered with lessons to be learned.)

So my cast of characters has changed.  Mostly it’s just me, and I’ve discovered that for the moment that suits me fine.  I’m lucky to have a good job that makes it possible to afford an interesting place to live in the city that I’m still ambivalent about living in but love to play about in drinking and eating whatever I please.  Actually, I’m much more lucky than that:  I’m lucky enough to work with, and for, some of the greatest people in the business I somehow ended up in.  The enthusiasm, support, and wisdom I have rather taken for granted over the past several years has only deepened over the past difficult months and I only hope I can find a way to thank those that need thanking if thanking ever becomes necessary.  I certainly don’t take it for granted any more, for what that’s worth.

My much-beloved little house is for sale, though (and I don’t know if this is happily or sadly) it seems to be falling victim to the Terrible Slowing of the real estate market and so there it sits and I have been spending half of my weekends there when I haven’t been away this summer.  There is even a vegetable garden (I just harvested garlic last weekend) which was deeply wrenching for me to get planted but of course now that the house hasn’t sold is nice to have.  Between reluctant garden-sharing between the two concerned parties and strange weather (cold-cold, followed by hot, then very rainy, and now blistering) it is nowhere near as bountiful as last year’s garden.  But nice to have, the produce, even so. 

(On the off chance that you know anyone who wants to buy a very down-to-earth little house in Columbia County. . . won’t you please send them here?  My house deserves to be loved by someone, and the perennials do have potential and the garden is big enough for strawberries and asparagus in addition to the annual stuff, and . . . )

At any rate, I'm blogging again.  Farro Salad recipes, anyone?

Transit Strike. . . .

Because I don't have a TV (well, we have one but it doesn't get any stations besides a fuzzy version of Public TV so we never turn it on) I feel as if I am totally missing the Transit Strike, even though I live in New York.  We live above 96th St. and don't have jobs where we are obliged to go downtown (and from here 96th St. is downtown!!) at rush hour.  In fact, all my clients are the other way in Westchester. So the transit strike is a non-event Chez Moi.  How strange!!

Yesterday I "worked" from home (which I would have done transit strike or no because this is one of the busiest weeks of the year for my clients -- wine stores and restaurants -- so I don't have much to do.  They will call me if they need anything!).  I prepared some reports I need to do that I've been putting off, but it really felt like a snow day. Today I did more of that, plus ran a few miles at the gym (too cold to run outside!) and drove to Westchester to do the last Christmas shopping I have to do (most of my family live far away so I had wrapped and sent their boxes off last week).  I actually find myself wishing I had a TV that had cable so I could see scenes of the transit strike and feel as if I were living through it, too. <sigh> 

On the way home tonight I stopped at my beloved Fairway Uptown for coffee (why does my husband always buy half-pound bags of coffee as if we are not complete addicts!?!?!!) and also picked up the Christmas Eve Capon (it had just been taken out of the freezer so it might as well defrost in my fridge and take some stress out of Christmas Eve shopping) and some cranberries and horseradish sauce for the sauce I wanted to make (courtesy of this month's Gourmet.)  The sauce is actually quite delicious, so I recommend it for Christmas goose, duck, capon, turkey!  I used just above 1/4 cup of prepared horseradish, 1/4 c water, 1/4 sugar, and half a bag (1 pound?) of cranberries.  It has a nice sweet/spicy flavor.  But you'd have to have a lot of meat to make the whole recipe (double this). . . . .

Anyhow, I won't most likely post before Christmas, so Merry to all.  Eat well, drink well, get some rest!!!!

Blog Sloth, that's it!

Julie at "A Finger in Every Pie" (one of my favorites, and apologies to her for not updating my links yet!) explains the symptoms, and also typical possible causes, of my recent blogging malaise better than I could, and I thank her for expressing things so well (as always).  I've been working a lot (including weekends!  Friday nights!  you name it!) for weeks now.  And as much as I have things I'd like to blog about (how the deer ate the end of our garden, the hooved rats! about all the stuff in our freezer and how we are trying to eat it!  My new favorite wine obsession!) I find myself running out of steam.  In my off hours all I want to do is sleep.

The good news is that my workload should FINALLY start to lighten up. . . in about a month or so (ouch!).  But that seems really soon to me after more than two months of crunch-time.  In the meantime I will search for ways to return this blog to topics related to food and wine.

And I will leave you with my favorite guilty pleasure.  Alas I did not blog about her soon enough -- she has been Discovered.  But the Bruni Digest has been making me giggle for weeks now.  (And if the site offends you, don't say you weren't forewarned.  I personally find it, in her words, 'totes hilaire.') 

Long Lost Blogger

. . . . it's been so long since I've blogged that the garlic I blogged about last has already sprouted and started coming up.  Which may say something about my lack of blogging, but really says a lot about the BIZARRO WEATHER we've been having.  First really warm, then monsoon, finally a frost (last week!!!) and then more monsoon.  Hope the garlic makes it after this early sprout and then all the rain/freezing.  It snowed up north at my Mom’s in Vermont last weekend (insane!!) and we might get some snow in Columbia County tonight (even more insane!!).

Anyway, apologies for the long absence.  Here's a summary of the important topics in my life:

Home Improvement:  previously mentioned Monsoon reminded us of Several Important Projects that had not been completed (leaking vent over the stove in the kitchen, bad windowsill upstairs that does not drain in conjunction with lack of one pane of storm window on same window.) Water is not our friend!!!  Fortunately we were at the house the first weekend of deluge, and fortunately the deluge subsided, so water damage was mopped up before it did more damage to several floors and said window was covered securely (we hope) with plastic until spring when we can replace the damned storm window.  In the meantime need to figure out how to fix the drainage issue for good.  Fortunately we have re-enlisted our friend Steve to do some sundry Home Improvement jobs now that inside work is the order of the day.  Steve came this past weekend and installed the new stove hood we bought and started patching the kitchen wall and sealed up the hole where the stupid duct was installed stupidly.  It doesn't look great at the moment from the outside, but hell, it's no worse than the ugly (leaking) vent and now doesn't leak. Hooray for sealed exteriors of the house, is all I can say.

Work front:  It’s been busy and just got insanely busy.  Plus I can't say no to anything so I'm doing tastings, classes, you name it, galore on what seems like every night of the week plus weekends.  Good thing I actually love teaching wine classes (once I’m doing them) and seem to have a surprising resource of patience for talking about wine to the “general public” or I’d lose my ever-lovin’ mind. 

Which leaves the home/cooking/drinking wine front.  We've been dealing with drying herbs and preserving the last of the garden produce like mad.  For example: this week?  when to find time to make sauce with all those un-vine-ripened last vestige tomatoes that are ripening?. . . . plus roasted buttercup squash -- frozen, plus freeze-dried chives and parsley.  My sister just called and is my Heroine of Tomatoes for the moment because she’s been dealing with her indoor-ripened tomatoes thusly:  core, chop in half, chuck into roasting pan with some whole garlic and salt and roast for 45 mins at 400 degrees then puree.  Thank god for family that is as crazy as I am, if only for the canning/food preservation tips that can be exchanged in the midst of mutual madness!! (she called me the other week for applesauce instructions – I wish I could say I’ve made some this year, but that would be a lie. )

Both apartment and houses have been only cursorily cleaned (since it's now Indoor Season) but need more. 

Wine tasting has brought some new favorites.  For example, I'm obsessed with Lagrein, a Northern Italian grape variety!!!. . . some good ones tasted at tastings, a couple of good ones drunk on variously successful nights out. . . conclusion is I love this grape.  Can’t decide if it reminds me more of Loire Cabernet Franc or Northern Rhone Syrah, but has qualities I like in both (a little rustic, but not heavy, a little spicy, a little note of green. . . )  I’ve also decided to bite the bullet and teach a French wine class in January. . . . since French wine always seems to be my reference point I’ve really avoided having to put it on paper and do this class. . . . so much easier to teach about things I know nothing about – say, for example Portuguese wine which I’m talking about on Thursday, god help me! But maybe I can pull it together and do justice to the wines I really love in three weeks?

Speaking of France, P just left for ANOTHER two week + buying trip in France (I am so jealous. . . .).  Supposedly I'm going to use these few weeks of bachelorette-dom to catch up with cleaning, writing, friends, and general sanity.  In fact I think I’m just going to work a lot, forget to eat dinner and throw away a lot of those not-quite-ripe tomatoes I’m supposed to deal with.  Oh, and keep the cat happy by being hers alone for two weeks +.  Little does she anticipate the few moments per day I may actually be home, poor beast.

Will try to get it together to blog more, at least!

A Week of Murky Slog

The weather (at least I think it's the weather) is making me exhausted. Last night on the way to dinner in the City the air was so moist that my cheeks actually felt dewy-damp as I walked down the street.  So I pretended that I was in the midst of a facial that would make me glow and carried on down Broadway.  But stifled yawns towards the end of dinner, anyhow.

Seriously, it's been a drag to have to return to having air conditioners on.  P's week has been crazed (it's his company's big tasting this week and there are seemingly hundreds of French suppliers in town, all of whom need attention, to be taken to dinner, etc.).  So meanwhile I've been home on my own every night, each night intending to Accomplish Things.  The list of things to be accomplished included getting lots of evening work done (emails, work paperwork I've been putting off), blogging copiously, and getting our apartment tidied up (we both have a hard time throwing things away).  Also had a couple of weeks of New Yorkers to read!

Instead?  I made myself dinner both nights.  I barely managed to read the Ann Beattie story in this week's New Yorker (the one with the Bush Administration up to their necks in water in the Oval Office -- a GREAT COVER!!) which made me unaccountably sad.  (I should know better than to read Ann Beattie for feel-good, but it made me sad to think of how we can let ourselves fall out of love, how we can be deceived by appearances. . .  I think of this as being just laziness, but it can happen without one's noticing, Beattie believes.)

Then?  nothing!  No work got done, no blogging, no cleaning -- by the time I got home, and ate, and read a little, somehow I was exhausted by the heaviness of it all and fell into bed.

Today I'm still sleepy, but trying to knock off some of the work at least as well as trying to feel motivated by thinking of all the other necessary mundane things I managed to do this week (haircut, oil change for car, new phone battery) which have also been nagging at me.

And then Jola's post from yesterday reminded me that I meant to send some long-overdue emails to old friends who I've let drift away (as is my wont).  Must not only keep this on my list but actually do it.

On the weather front, this horrible murk is supposed to clear by Sunday.  So one more day of slog, one day in which to succumb to it (Saturday=sleep all day, guilt-free!!) and then hopefully my mind will be as fresh and clear as the expected autumn air.

And then I will really post about growing garlic.  Till then -- lay some compost on a bed in preparation!

No Cooking News, But. . .

Just wanted to mitigate the dire tone of my last post.

Things seemed dire at the time, but have since progressed to merely difficult. 

Still need a little extra "family time" at home to help things get more back to normal, so I'm taking it easy with the cooking projects and my tendency to work at my job a little too much.

And it's still icky-sticky hot, ugh!!  So much for my brilliant weather theories.  Hopefully after the 15th it will cool off?  I remember some beautiful clear, crisp Augusts. . . . .

Okay, a few food notes (I can't resist).  Our tomato yields have been drastically reduced by lack of rain.  Since we can only water on the weekends, the entire weeks with little or no rain are tough on the garden.  On the upside, the tomatoes are deliciously sweet!  On the downside, there may not be much canning to be done.  Or maybe that's an upside?  At least as far as not having to do major cooking projects is concerned.

I did make the pissaladiere following Lulu's directions (as I remembered them, not directly from the book).  It was delicious.  And a mean lamb marinade with chopped fresh garlic and rosemary, salt, pepper, olive oil -- smeared on a boned leg of lamb and set to rest all day.  Grilled, it was delicious.

This weekend -- maybe a tomato tart (just pastry baked with sliced tomato and anchovies, so simple and good).  Or maybe just extra time sitting on the deck with my favorite person who needs some extra time, sometimes.

This was the hottest day of the year.

I'm sure of it.  It was 84 degrees by 9 am, and throughout the day the feeling of relief when entering an air conditioned account was palpable, even delightful.  (Given how much I detest air conditioning, this says a lot).  I think it was 96 degrees at the limit, but with the humidity, etc. felt much hotter.  They were talking about 105 on the radio.  And anything over 100?  Ridiculous! (I will NEVER EVER live anywhere further south than here, so help me god.  Winter I can take.  Humid hot summers?  Let's say if I make two more in Manhattan I'll be amazed.) Note to self and husband, there!

Anyhow, we're at the breaking point in the summer's weather when the crazy-hot-humid Southern weather is starting to lose out to the dry-high-pressure-cooler Northern weather.  The South reared its ugly head in protest over the last two days, but we felt the Cool North last weekend (bless it and it's abundant clear sunshine!) and it is coming back via strong storms for this one, too (the wind was borderline tornado stuff this evening -- I was glad to be piloting a Volkswagen GTI rather than a plane, that's for sure.)

I love August for that reason -- whatever hot  humid Southern days might linger, the high-dry Northern systems also start settling in to stay.  I am convinced that August brings some of the most perfect summer days of the year -- despite its reputation for being the "dog days."  So, hurrah for August!  As much as work is starting to get much more demanding (and whooo-boy, no rest for the weary there -- I thought I'd earned a little bit of a respite in my job but apparently I was mistaken given the swift kick in the teeth they've administered to me via my workload) the fact remains that there will still be plenty of down-time this month.  With better weather, more produce (can we say "pickled beans?", and "hello Tomatoes!!" we may get the first ripe cherries this weekend, and could I just give you thirty zucchini/pattypans PLEASE TAKE THEM) and more entertaining of friends (because suddenly those last few precious free weekends are being counted off, one by one) August is shaping up to be the best month of the summer.

Meanwhile, please note the latest "Book I'm Reading" in my sidebar.  Lulu, channelled by Richard Olney, simply rocks my world.  Perfect recipes when the garden is at its peak.  For example, for our weekend-after-next house guests?  Menu already sorted: Pissaladiere (we have sweet fresh onions!  I'll get anchovies!! I make a mean short crust!!), followed by a leg of lamb just DRENCHED in rosemary marinade and then grilled, with a side of Zucchini flan (will post recipe this week, promise -- it's easy and yummy and you can't make it until August, when there are enough cool nights to allow for an oven to be on for a while).  Tomato Coulis on the flan if there are enough tomatoes.  Maybe a cold salad of carrots, beets, or beans -- whichever is most pressing. Easy, delicious, fresh.  Oh, and there is a recipe for tiny tomatoes in this book (we'll have a bazillion of those) stuffed with fresh pesto (we have plenty of that, did I mention) and chilled so the cool pesto gets solid and then explodes in your mouth as you eat the tomato in one bite.  Divine. 

Long live August!