Summer

When you start shredding napa cabbage an amazing thing happens. It explodes. Napa cabbage grows so densely that a relatively small or medium head of cabbage not only weighs a ton, it seems to expand when you cut it up. So after shredding two heads there was no room to fit the already shredded red cabbage in the mix. I also realized there might be someone who didn't like cilantro and making two batches would allow for a little more choice of flavors.

The red cabbage cole slaw included shredded red and yellow peppers and carrots. The napa cabbage cole slaw included slivered green onions and cilantro. Both were quite tasty and tasted different though the Asian inspired dressing was exactly the same.

I like to make the cole slaw the night before I serve it. It tastes better if it has some time to mellow out a bit and soften. The other trick to making cole slaw is to add things like cilantro and green onion at the last minute, right before serving, because neither of those ingredients improve the longer they sit around.

Nothing really speaks summer better than fresh rhubarb and fresh strawberries. I love going ot the farmers market and smelling the scents of summer. Fresh fruit is everywhere: berries, stone fruit, citrus, it’s at almost every stall and one piece of fruit tastes better than the next.

Wanting to create something that screamed summer, it was a crumb cake recipe from Canelle et Vanille that inspired this recent dessert. With lots of strawberries on hand, not only did I make a whole tart for our Father’s day, family dinner but I made individual cakes (in Weck jars) for end of the year gifts.

When I stumbled upon the recipe, it inspired a memory from middle school. My first memory of a crumb cake was an aluminum, massive tray, manufactured, in the school cafeteria. I didn’t buy lunch or snack often, but on coffee cake day you can bet I had change in my pockets. The flavor of my first coffee cake is a far cry from this wonderfully light cake, but a crumb topping is a crumb topping – and that flavor is hard to beat.

Isn’t it great to be blessed with friends who entertain beautifully, who attend to every detail, artistically, with care and flare? Friends who take pleasure in delighting with beauty and richness?

I am one lucky ducky in this department for sure. Most of my friends enjoy setting a pretty table and “doing the flowers” as I call decorating when having guests over for a meal. A couple of my peeps, though, are off the charts in this department which causes me to spend most of my time wandering around their house saying “wow I love that,” like I haven’t read a newspaper in weeks and have nothing else to say for myself, or like a gal from East Podunk, straight off the farm, who’s never seen a formal place setting before let alone matching salt and pepper shakers. Or someone in awe of people who create beauty and inspire me by the things they think of and do. Please say the latter.

One would expect our friends Heidi and Guy to have a great house. She’s been selling prime LA real estate for 25 years, and he is the proprietor of Ligne Roset Los Angeles, the go-to store for architectural furniture. Ten years ago Heidi and Guy combined tastes, talents and 3 young teens and moved into a sprawling and spacious Spanish, Mission- style house in a canyon with a never ending view of LA’s immense valley. Guy is almost apologetic in sharing in his off the cuff, just between us, way that the style of the house, the architecture, is not really him so much, (like any of us who know him and his exquisite design sense need to be told), but the interior and over all vibe of the house is so him and Heidi in all of their beauty, creativity and warmth; the art, furniture and fabrics, the two gorgeous greyhounds, the family photos taking up a whole wall in the kitchen juxtaposed with the Chanel Houndstooth fabric on the family room couch.

I couldn’t possibly have known that the books I managed to read this summer, in some convoluted way, would all share a common thread: success.

In "The Hidden Staircase" by Carolyn Keene, Nancy Drew, using her wits and intuition, solves the mystery of the old stone mansion successfully.

Splat, from Rob Scotton’s "Splat the Cat", has an anxious but ultimately very successful first day of school.

Don Freeman’s "Corduroy", a department store bear missing a button who yearns to find a home, does.

Stephanie Plum, not surprisingly, figures out in the nick of time who decapitated the celebrity chef in Janet Evanovitch’s "Finger Lickin' Fifteen".