Vacation was A-1 and everything it was meant to be. We started out in Boothbay Harbor, with friends who are now family, our only care trying to figure out what to make for dinner, and then drove off to Popham Beach where we camped on the beach, and then over to Lake Winnepisaki in New Hampshire for camp songs and barn dancing. I left my heart everywhere I went. I could have won contests with the amount of fried food that I ate, but it was all beyond good. There is nothing like having sand in your hair and between your toes and sun in your face and a pile of fried clams and french fries in front of you and a Moose Tracks (handmade vanilla ice cream with fudge swirl and reese cups) cone with your name on it, waiting at the scoop shop. I went ahead and awarded myself the award of “girl with unsurpassed good attitude, considering she’s in a tent”.
The best meal of the vacation went to my friend Tom who taught me how to steam lobsters caught that morning in an inch of water for 14 minutes. Lord have mercy, there are no words for lobster like that–there is no time for talking when there’s lobster like that.
The dining hall food at camp in New Hampshire got the prize for: not so much; unidentifiable meat and rice that had been through many lives before it reached us, but Ferdinand and I found plenty around the edges; boiled eggs, raisins, cereal snuck out in paper cups, salad bar and toasted marshmallows were enough to keep us running and swimming and barn dancing til we dropped into (sometimes flooded) bed.
How lucky am I that when we came home, a best friend of mine came to town from across the country, and we met at a hotel on the upper west side to snack and chat. I made a raw tomato confit with ripe, red plum tomatoes, full of summer, French green olives, chive (or try shallot), parsley, fresh orange juice, a little sherry vinegar, and salt.