Summer

In a few days I’ll be hopping on another plane to a place that promises lots of good food, relaxation, sunshine and wine. It’s a trip we’ve been planning for a while, but what I wasn’t planning on was real life enveloping the weeks before and after this excursion. In this case real life means work, and work means travel, and that means I’ll be up in the air and away from home for many weeks. When I return it will no longer be summer but early fall and I can’t help but feel slightly Rip Van Winkelish about the whole damn thing.

I’ve managed to cram quite a bit of summer in the past few weeks. Dinners outdoors with best friends, long walks in the muggy streets of NYC with my blogging family, even one last hurrah at our house just the other night dedicated to the bounty of figs. Summer is my favorite season and I just don’t like to see it ending, footstomp footstomp footstomp!

As a symbolic gesture I picked up stone fruit at the farmers’ market the other day, knowing that it could very likely be the last peach or plum I would buy and cook with at home for some time. Of course I’m looking forward to what’s around the corner but saying goodbye to stone fruit always leaves me a bit melancholy.

The local farmers market today was filled with several varieties of stone fruit, rhubarb, strawberries, and melons. Melons were everywhere. Red, orange, green, and white. I grabbed whatever I could carry, I couldn’t help myself.

After washing, cleaning and cutting all of my veggies, I stared at the amount (and size of the fruit) that now rested upon my kitchen counter. I had room in the fridge for most of it, but with an over abundance of watermelon, I was forced to find another use for it.

With several cups already cut up and stored in a glass container, I still had quite a bit left over. The weather today is quite spectacular and all I could think about was an “aqua fresca” with a bit of a kick. I went to work.

Limes are a household staple and with more than enough on hand, I started juicing. Freezing left over juice in ice cube trays gives me a head start on this Wednesday nights meal. Tequilla lime chicken is on the meal plan this week, and having one less step to do that day always puts a smile on my face.

There’s a new kid in my garden. Can you see that dainty little sprig of green right on top of that pretty scone? Well, that’s it. That’s the new kid. His name is Orange Thyme of the Thymus family. I’ve known his cousin, Lemon Thyme, for many years. For several summers, Lemon Thyme has been a favorite visitor in my kitchen, adding shindig to my sugar cookies, cha-cha to chicken, liveliness to my lemon bread and sassy flair to my salads. I love Lemon Thyme. When she’s not in my kitchen, she’s just outside the door basking in the sunshine.

And then, last weekend I spotted tiny Orange Thyme at the Kingfield Farmers Market in Minneapolis. I snapped up the potted herb and found a spot for it very near to Lemon Thyme. If all goes well, Orange Thyme should be making a perennial appearance in my garden.

I could not wait to snip a few stems of Orange Thyme and start baking. With a few stalks of rhubarb still in my refrigerator, I chose to make Rhubarb Scones with Orange Thyme, using my favorite base recipe for scones. I added a bit more sugar to balance the tartness of the bits of rhubarb that I stirred into the batter.

For those of us of a certain age, our first encounter with figs came not in life but in a movie theater when Oliver Reed used a fig, deftly cut open from the bottom, to help Alan Bates appreciate the pleasures of sensuality as he struggled with his attraction to Glenda Jackson in the 1969 classic, “Women in Love.”  Watching Oliver Reed spread open that ripe fig was the height of eroticism to a young boy.

After the movie I rushed out and bought a basket of figs and marveled at their round fullness.  The ones that were ripe had a heaviness that made my juvenile heart race with excitement.  But to my young palate, used to simple fruits like apples and pears, figs were much too strong tasting.

I learned to appreciate figs when I lived in a house with a fig tree. I enjoyed watching the fruit slowly form, first as a small bulb attached to a twig, then bulging into a soft, round shape, expanding into a fullness that invited the touch.

In one of my most pleasurable, early food-moments I watched a fig ripen and picked it just as its nectar collected at the bottom. Bitting into its warm sweetness, I was hooked. My breakfast routine after that required only a cup of black coffee, a piece of dry toast, and a trip to the fig tree.