Summer

My favorite cold weather desserts need to be sweet and full of flavor. When it's cold and rainy outside, nothing is better than a slice of flourless chocolate cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a bowl of hot apple cobbler and a spoonful of heavy cream. Rich and sweet or hot and sweet, yumm.

In summer, heaviness is out of place. My preferred dessert is beautifully ripe fruit from our local farmers' market: a bowl of ripe berries, a slice of ice cold watermelon or cantaloupe, a ripe pluot, peach, or nectarine.

When I want a more elaborate dessert, I supplement fresh fruit with custard.

Custard is easy to make, requiring only grade-school math: 2 (eggs) + 1 (cup cream) + 1/2 (cup sugar). Poured in a buttered pan, baked in a water bath. In and out of a 350 degree oven in an hour. Simple, easy, and delicious.

Then I had a thought.

Lobster season is in  high gear. While lobsters are of course most easily available on the east coast and New England, you can get pretty good live lobster now at reputable markets around the US thanks to purveyors who are not (luckily) locavores.

Folks who sell lobsters know that their product is so good that not even a politically correct eater can stay away from them. For those who are part of the extreme locavoreans, indulge yourself, suspend your obsession for just one meal - it will be worth it. 

Unfortunately, most of us still prepare and eat lobster the same way we have been taught for generations. The pleasures of boiling the lobster and eating it with drawn butter or with mayo in toasted rolls cannot be underestimated.

Lobster Fra Diablo or lobster with XO sauce are great, but merely variations on a theme. Here's a simple recipe for an appetizer/salad  that retains some of the familiar but introduces some nice new twists.

Just on the edge of the vegetable garden my Hungarian grandparents had on their Indiana farm was a cherry tree. The sprawling branches thick with leaves provided a welcome canopy on hot, sunny days — and a perfect climbing structure for fun-loving children.

I do remember climbing very carefully into the tree, not too high, but just far enough off the ground to be able to reach for ripe cherries that I would pop into my mouth, spitting the hard-as-stone pits onto the earth below. And, thus began my insatiable desire for sweet, rosy cherries.

Several years ago, I brought a handful of Rainier cherries home from the grocery store. I couldn’t resist their characteristic rosy blush with a warm, sunny undertone. I ate one. I was hooked. It was the sweetest, most delicious cherry I had ever eaten. The creamy colored flesh was juicy and much more flavorful than the traditional bing cherries I was used to eating. The Washington Rainier was cherry perfection.

I woke up the other morning craving roasted red pepper soup. Not for breakfast -- that would be weird – but for dinner.

Since I had recently purchased a dozen bright and shiny red bell peppers, I thought it would be a good idea to roast them first thing in the morning. So by 6:15 am, the peppers were sliced, drizzled with oil, and placed under the broiler.

Like wood-fired pizzas or chargrilled burgers, the smell of roasting peppers is utterly enticing. Except when it's not.

You see, that utterly enticing aroma becomes not-so-enticing by three o'clock in the afternoon. You can light vanilla scented candles (which I did) and spray air freshener (which I did). It won't matter. The smell will linger like an unwanted house guest.

So here's my advice: Make roasted peppers only after 12 noon. And then make this soup because it's too delicious to pass up.