When I think about summer I have visions of glossy postcard views; snapshots of sunny beaches, with lapping azure waves and yellow corn meal sand. I am thinking of shady front porch swings, and trips to the library. I remember summer camps and singing on bus rides, swimming, games of tennis and tether ball. Weaving misshapen lanyards. I cannot be tied to this adult reality of relentless heat, melting parking lots, indefatigable mosquitoes, and torrents of rain. I feel like the ladies in “To Kill a Mockingbird” – I have been reduced to becoming a talcum powder tea cake of a person, who must provide an evening meal. Since I cannot ignore the many realities of modern life, I will think about ways to have our cake, without actually baking one. Summer nutritional needs can be met and conquered — without turning on the oven.
Back in the day, before the ubiquity of air conditioning, we lived in a creaky, inconvenient, Victorian house. There was a stained glass sash window in the upstairs hallway, where every year, with much ceremony and bitter complaining, my father would muscle into the window frame an awkward and heavy box window fan, hoping that the breezes that it generated would be cooling. We slept with our bedroom doors flung open, dreaming of refreshing zephyrs, sweatily writhing under the weight of the cotton sheets. And this was before global warming. We lay in the dark, listening for faraway thunder, silently counting the Mississippis between flashes of heat lightning, willing a cooling storm to break over our sweltering heads. Ah, youth.
There is no summer camp in my immediate future. No swimming hole, no yellow sandy beach. There is the long slog of summer stretching out before us, and we have to make the best of it. I have been reading innumerable articles about the ridiculous excesses of the folks who summer in the Hamptons — thank heavens we don’t have to keep up with those arrivistes, with their private chefs, yacht crews, or their pricey provision shops and impossibly fashionable restaurants. We are thrilled with local produce, prestige-free grocery stores and the occasional field trip to a Trader Joe’s. One of these days I might even get to eat one of our home-grown tomatoes.
Charcuterie boards seem to have come and gone as a cultural phenom. Thank you. I really did not like the idea of eating salami that someone else had folded into Origami. But I do like the idea of finger food at sunset. Give me a bowl of carrot sticks, and I will happily crunch away. Or a bowl of cool, peppery radishes. We can get out the enire kitchen collection of tiny Pyrex bowls, and fill them with celery, red pepper slices, pea pods, green beans, hummus, Boursin cheese, ivory cubes of Swiss cheese, pepperoni slices, rotisserie chicken, rolls of deli roast beef, turkey or ham. I might have to turn on the oven to crisp up a loaf of bread. But only for a minute, before I can slather it with cool butter, or a schmeer of Burrata.
One of the best delivery systems for a moveable summer feast that I have seen is a muffin pan. Each cup in the pan can hold another food course – broccoli goes next to some pretzels, which are next to the blueberries, which sidle up to the Kalamata olives, which are beside the cherry tomatoes, which are adjacent to the guacamole. Cubes of watermelon nestle next to the spears of asparagus, and the curves of cantaloupe jostle with the peaches. Maybe you’ll get ambitious early one morning, and you will grill a few boneless chicken breasts, or a quick skirt steak, that you can slice up to have later. You can have some deelish Bernaise sauce in a muffin cup, for cold steak dipping. Or if that is too much to expect for a weeknight — nuts. Add nuts. Add wine. Add crackers, pita bread, Doritos, you name it. Take a night or two off and enjoy yourself. The news is dire, so create a luxe dining event, without needing the Jitney out to Quogue. Go sit in front of the fan, and feel the breezes, and wait for the thunderstorm. As George R. R. Martin is wont to tell us: “Winter is coming.”
Martha’s ideas involve actual baking – use caution if you are oven averse:
Muffin pan snacks Much more grown-up than standing in front of the fridge and grazing your way through the veggie bin.
“Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”
― Harper Lee
