Summer

Summer is here and our bar-b-que is cleaned and ready to roll. I love summer grilling. Not just the food and the luscious flavors that come off the grill, but the whole idea of being outside. The bikes get used more, the art supplies emerge from the garage, and the use of “screens” becomes almost non-existent(the key word here is, “almost”).

Last weekend I had returned from the farmers market with enough produce to feed my entire neighborhood.  As the red, green, purple, yellow, and orange vegetables stared me in the face, I instantly knew what I wanted to do.  

I grabbed the eggplant, zucchini, purple onion, orange pepper, and a few tomatoes, sliced them and rubbed them with a bit of olive oil and red wine vinegar.  Tossed them in a bowl with Celtic sea salt and some fresh ground pepper.

The grilled ratatouille was eaten, outside, as the rest of the meal was cooking on the grill.  The kids took a few bites, shot a few baskets, then came back for more. 

I’d flown to New York for too short a time and then extended my stay because I had too many things to do and then flew home. Crowded/full flights both ways, a little delay, and by the time I reached L.A., I was flat on my back. Jet lag. No. Fever.

And for me a completely curious thing - since I think the cure for the stomach flu is a chili dog or a hamburger please with French fries - absolutely no appetite. None. I was nervous about that.

I didn’t eat anything for two days – don’t discuss my metabolism, two hours is a long time for me.

But by the third day, I still didn’t feel like I could eat anything.

Unaccustomed to any processed food, maybe blame it on the “cheese plate” if you can call it that that comes packaged on the plane if they put enough on and you can in fact purchase one, I felt only the freshest thing would do. Not even chicken soup. (I have a theory by the way that chicken soup is not a curative but quite the opposite, but that’s another story.)

All I wanted was some kind of broth, no, something slightly more substantial. Home-made vegetable soup. The easiest thing in the world.

We celebrate summer with grilled meats and boiled corn, the golden ears arriving at the table, resting in silky pools of melted butter, ready for a dusting of freshly ground sea salt and black pepper.

Many people hunger so much for corn they eat it every chance they can to such an extent that, sooner or later, familiarity breeds disinterest and even a little disdain.  Where it seemed so celebratory at the beginning of summer, by August they turn away when a platter of corn is placed on the table. 

That's pretty much the way it's been for me.

On my last trip to our local farmers market, I hadn't planned on buying corn until I noticed that very few farmers were selling corn and those that were had very little to sell. Arriving late, the corn was almost sold out. Talking with a farmer, I learned that local corn will disappear from the market in a couple of weeks. After that, no more corn until the spring.

Red currants, the beautiful ruby red berries pictured above, make the perfect tart jelly. Growing in grape-like clusters on small bushes, the fruit has become a rarity in the United States. Mistakenly thought to promote a tree disease, currant bushes across the country were systematically uprooted in the early 1900s, and production was prohibited for many years.

Currants are high in vitamin C and taste tart but pleasant when eaten. Commonly red and black currants are made into jellies. In fact black currant jelly or jam is very popular in England. I remember that while studying abroad in London, no matter how hard I looked, I could not find Concord grape jelly for my peanut butter sandwiches, so black currant jelly became my unusual but greatly liked substitute. Red currant jelly is practically the same color as black currant jelly, so after making this you really won’t tell the difference.

Every year we pick every last red currant berry off the small bushes in my parents’ yard and make jelly. It has been a summer tradition since I can remember. I really appreciate that we have the berries available at our fingertips.