Get your salsa shoes on because it’s grilling time and there is no need to stick to the same old tired ketchup when you have world of fresh fruit and possibilities out there. I have half a ripe tomato and a peach left, and (although I have been known to yell at my mother when she insists on using up all the old stuff for a quick clean up and says “just get it all out of the fridge and make some dinner with it”), I am going to get the two in a bowl together. Chop up the same amount of each, and for one ripe, firm tomato and one firm ripe, peach (or nectarine) add two tablespoons of finely chopped small, fresh red onion, sea salt to taste, a half to a whole teaspoon of toasted whole cumin seed that you crush yourself (with a mortar and pestle or the bottom of a heavy frying pan), a little olive oil, a squeeze of fresh lime juice, a drop of orange juice and a good chop of fresh cilantro or parsley.

I was reading in the Style section of the Times that one of the tricks of staying young is to be happy at least once a day. I’m almost done trying to stay young, but around the anniversery of my birth, I feel compelled to give it a girlscout try. So let’s just say that to keep from getting irritated that you now have one more thing to do, you combined getting happy with making dinner. Shellfish. Ha Ha!!! Done ahead of time. Ha Ha Ha!! Pea salad. Cute little tiny new potatoes (you can roll them around on your plate with the peas). I asked Ferdinand if he wanted some pea salad and he thought it was hysterical. Being able to spit litttle bits of your food out is always funny so fresh watermelon for dessert, and s’mores done under the broiler or over the sterno.
For your seafood, get a pot of water going with a leek, a little piece of ripe tomato, a piece of fennel, a peice of parsley, a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme, or whatever you have. Let that simmer for a few minutes. Pick out your favorite shellfish–mussels, shrimp, crab, crawfish–and drop them by type into the water, one batch at a time, covering for about three minutes, and then lifting them out with a slotted spoon. Keep going until all the seafood is done. You can hold it, separate from the cooking liquid in the fridge until you are ready to serve, then just it all come to temperature for about 20 minutes before serving. Strain the cooking liquid, add a little white wine, and simmer to reduce for about two or three minutes. Pour over the seafood with a sqeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil. For the pea salad, get some scallions going in a saute pan with a little olive oil. Add the peas (frozen from the box is OK). Season with salt and black pepper. Off the heat, stir around a tablespoon of butter. Do the same with the potatoes, once they have been boiled until tender, crowded into salted water. Combine with the peas or keep separate.
To make the s’mores, lay the graham crackers out on a sheet pan with a marshmallow on top of each one. Fire up the broiler, and right before serving, watching them like a hawk, toast the marshmallows. Immediately top with a piece of your favorite flat chocolate squares.

Jonathan is working upstate for four days, so Ferdinand and I are trying to write the blog together. He says “write down ice cream and ice cream and chocolate; that’s what they can eat.” I wouldn’t mind that, except we ate that yesterday and I’ll tell you a diet rich in ice cream and chocolate did nothing to help the bloating that comes along with the heat. I suggest tapas when you are in an exclusive with a five year old. Small dishes of fresh pineapple, peanuts that have to be opened, and raisins for breakfast. For lunch, little dishes of noodles, cut up carrots, and string beans, and a dish of peanut butter for dipping. If you have it in you, you can easily stir around a little chili garlic sauce, a squeeze of fresh lime and a little soy into your own mix with a chop of cilantro and green onion. For dinner go out.

There are people that will not date a certain someone because they don’t have the job or the house or the cash. I remember a girl in college who said to me that she wouldn’t marry a man unless he had good hands and good ankles. I like hands and ankles, a job is OK, real estate and cash I have issues with, because I don’t like it when it comes down to you or the real estate and cash, but I had to end a relationship once when that person told me he would eat no garlic. I got up from the table right there in the restaurant and said, “I have to go now.”
Just in case you have to be polite about it–dinner guests or in-laws–I made a pasta last night that will do the job, and the secret is leeks. If you can find leeks at the farmer’s market, even better, because a fresh, slender leek is a delicious leek. Chop off the dark green ends (leaving some green) and the roots. Slice each leek down the center lenghthwise, and cross wise into three inch pieces. Let them soak in a bowl of cold water, rubbing them gently to release the sand. Lift them from the water, and check to be sure they are clean. Get a pot of salted water going for the farfalle. In a heavy saute pan, add a few tablespoons of the best olive oil you can find. (If you have to, add a whole uncut clove of garlic until it is golden, and then get it out of there and throw it away; it will have done it’s work.) Throw in a handful of a mix of fresh parsley, basil leaves and thyme sprigs. You don’t really have to cut any of the herbs, but you can tear them up if you like. Let them go dark green without browning. Slice the leeks into half inch pieces and add those to the pan. Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cook over a low/medium heat until the leeks are softened. Taste for deliciousness. Add less than half a teaspoon of lemon zest and a tablespoon of unsalted butter OFF THE HEAT. When your pasta is al dente, drain well (For nine ounces of pasta you probably want three whole slender leeks) and toss with the leeks. Taste for salt, pepper, and if it needs it just a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Add hand grated parmesan and serve.

Everything, every little picking up paper, washing my face, finding the phone has been taking years today. Dinner is only beginning to think about itself, it’s past dinner time, and I am nowhere near the kitchen. And yesterday, just what happened to yesterday is what I would like to know. Every once in a while you find a pack of opened cookies and there are a few broken bits left and crumbs that taste like they have given up on being found and if you said to me, how would you describe the state of affairs in your head, I would have to say something like a leftover, opened up pack of cookies. I am working on a revival.
Like a miracle I could cook the other day; but that’s what love does. One minute you’re a paper invitation that has been rained on, sunned on, and beginning to separate, and then a friend shows up and you’re on your feet. I called the menu in over the phone–me in a traffic jam that stretched from the New York state line and her in Mystic–and we shopped when I got there. We had fresh corn scraped off the cob and into a chowder, skewers of chicken breast, red pepper, fresh sage and onion (meant to have sausage as well on there, but no time, no time), a pile of roasted potatoes, and a big salad with everything in it. For dessert we had Dilly and Buster bars from Dairy Queen.
Make the corn chowder, if for nothing else because who eats corn chowder anymore? Start with a soffritto of minced by hand carrots, celery, and onion with a few sprigs of fresh thyme, and sea salt. Let that cook gently until you can barely keep from eating it on it’s own. (one onion, four carrots and the inside stalk from the celery I think). Add the kernels from 8 ears of corn. Stir around after you add the corn for about five minutes. Add milk to barely cover and then add a little bit more. Bring to barely a simmer. Sneak in just a little heavy cream, maybe 3 tablespoons at the most. Adjust the salt, grind in some black pepper, and add two fresh basil leaves and the teeniest piece of fresh rosemary you ever saw.

When a tomato is a tomato, you can call a whole lot of other into the equation, or not. Imagine THE one takes a walk across your path, and stops right there in front of you and in that second every sense is satisfied and at the same time wanting more, and not from anything that you could possibly add to him, like different pants or changing his part, but just more of what he’s already GOT. A good tomato, red, still firm but full of juice, smelling sweet, deep and light like the moment that a summer day melts into evening is going to move you from the inside, and you might want to pick some basil to go along with it, or you might not. You might leave yourself hanging long enough to slice it and get it into a sandwich with good bread with nothing but mayonnaise and a little salt, or you might not. I ate quite a bit of mine before it made it into the pasta last night. I seeded the tomato, chopped it, added olive oil, salt, torn basil leaves and minced fresh garlic. When the pasta was ready, I strained it, tossed it with my tomatoes and added some salt. You want to add parmesan, or black pepper or a little chopped shallot, or get the garlic golden first and then crisp the basil leaves to a dark green and swirl in the tomatoes, you can do that too, but raw is very good.

Bless the little chicken meatballs that Ferdinand will eat. I saute half an onion in tiny bits with a pinch of salt and a whole sage leaf, so that there is no green to be found when all is said and done; I just lift the leaf out all together (and a whole clove of garlic). When the onion is cool, I add it to a pound of ground chicken, a few more pinches of salt, a three inch piece of baguette that has been soaking in whole milk, just to moisten, half an egg, and that’s it. I know I have told you how to make these a million times over, but they are so cute and delicious, browned in olive oil and butter and then served up with mashed potatoes and buttered carrots and zesty little salad of bitter greens and a favorite cheese for after. You can make an onion gravy, or not, by adding sliced onions to the pan once the meatballs are out and done, with another tab of butter until the onions are golden and softened, then a sprinkle of flour, only a tablespoon or less, a spill of good dry white wine, a good whisk, and taste. Add a bit of water or salt or freshly ground black pepper. I saved the cooking liquid from the potatoes (lifted the potatoes out and added the carrots) and carrots to make a potato leek soup with white beans and shavings of parmesan, the next day for lunch.

On Wednesday we close on our piece of land, and I’m not sure exactly what happens after that. The cost of building is making me feel like maybe we should think more along the lines of a cooking trailer and guest tents. My motto is why panic about today when you can throw in tomorrow and the rest of your life along with it? Let’s just say instead of real estate, you’re worried about how to get your vegetables and your pasta and your chicken and your garlic all cooked exactly to their own individual “YES” points. Think about it all, one bit at a time. Bring the water to a boil. Set a steamer basket on top. Add 3 or 4 carrots sliced into narrow batons, about the size of matchsticks. Add salt and a drizzle of olive oil over the top, and as soon as the carrot is beginning to soften, but still has some crunch, remove it all from the water and drain. Rest them on a paper towel. Do the same with a zucchini, taking them out almost immediately. In a frying pan, add 3 cloves of chopped garlic, a few torn leaves of basil, a little chopped parsely and a few red pepper flakes. When the garlic is golden, throw in the carrots and zucchini and toss. Salt to taste. Remove from the heat onto a plate. Wipe out the pan. Add a little more olive oil and a whole clove of garlic; add two chicken cutlets, seasoned with salt. Don’t move. After about three minutes, they should be going white at the edges, and a lovely golden on the bottom. Flip and cook only until just done. Remove. Drizzle with a little more olive oil. Get your penne cooking in boiling, salted water. Shred the chicken. When the pasta is al dente, drain well, saving a few tablespoons of the cooking water. Toss everything together, with a handful of parmigiano or romano, a squeeze of lemon and a grind of black pepper.

The teeny tiniest weeniest things can make a difference when you bake. Set your eggs, still in their in shell, into a bowl of warm water while you get ready. All ingredients should be room temperature. Open up your bag of flour and stir it around with a fork before you measure. Spoon the flour into a cup til it’s heaping and without banging or tapping or smacking anything, slide the flat edge of a knife across the top to level it. Use your hand or a rubber spatula to mix the wet and dry ingredients together, stirring only until you don’t see any more flecks of flour; lumps are OK if for instance you happen to be up and at ‘em to make blueberry muffins. Bake the muffins at the right temperature (400 degrees) or they will be flat from not enough umph or peaked like teepees from too much.
This is the same recipe as in the book. You need some things in life that never change.
Mix 3/4 cup of room temperature whole milk with 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature. Add 1/2 cup of granulated sugar and 1 egg, lightly beaten.
In a separate bowl, add 1 3/4 cup of all purpose flour with 1 tablespoon of baking powder, and a scant half teaspoon of salt. Combine the wet with the dry, using your hand, and mixing just until there are no more specks of flour. Add 1 cup of fresh blueberries. Grease your muffin cups and spoon the batter in until it is level with the top of the tin. Bake at 400 degrees.
These make a great base, sliced into rounds for berry shortcake, covered with fresh, sugared berries and topped with whipped cream.

As I get out of bed in the morning, I remind myself that I know how to make coffee, I know how to type, I know the way to my subway stop, and I remember my middle name. Not so bad. The problem is, I need to know about fifty hundred million times that for what I am about to try and take on this year. That’s why for the food, I’m sticking to the basics. If I could I would only serve peaches whole and in their skin or take out chicken. Just because it is in my drawer, and couldn’t look threatening if it tried, I’m considering taking on Israeli Couscous. It looks like undersized moth balls; who could run from that? Couscous is pasta that you dont’ even have to cook, instead you pour an equal amount of boiling water over the top of the dry couscous that you put in a bowl and then cover with plastic wrap for about 12 minutes and toss it with a fork. I can always chop. No one could say I don’t have it going on with the knife. Zucchini in half inch cubes, can be roasted right in the pan with a few cloves of garlic and seasoned with salt and fried basil and a few red pepper flakes. Once you have that done, you may as well do the same to a red bell pepper, an onion and an eggplant. Toss the whole thing together and you can only feel your heart start waking up and hunting olives in the fridge to add and maybe even tiny sprigs of fresh rosemary. Then there is nothing to do but finish it with a little balsamic that was made to make life better, and an olive oil made to make life even better than that. Taste for salt.