The High Sign

Final days of August, the dog days, are always hot, humid and unnerving -- what, summer is almost over? I lie low, work as little as possible, fix and serve summery lunches on the screened porch: here a favorite salad of shrimp, grapefruit and avocado with mustard-tanged dressing, and a glass of prosecco (sparkling dry wine, not quite champagne) to pay myself for being a good human.

Spooner's frozen custard, located up a steep driveway on a hilltop, is our local version of the famous St. Louis frozen custard called Ted Drewes'. My favorite sundae is called the "109-er" after the highway. One recent evening I went there. I am always alone. No one else is. This way I can concentrate on my ice cream. I order at the window, sit on one of the perforated metal benches and wait in the blanket-warm purple twilight until my sundae is ready and my name is called. Meantime I gaze at the green hills in the distance and up at the stars, slowly emerging like an understanding, and perhaps the moon, and listen to the passing trains. I look for the rabbit in the moon. Summer food, savoring summer -- is there anything better? Can it be late summer already? This August marks my 30th year in Missouri.

Salad Days

I felt seasonally bad, holiday bad -- I really did -- and thought it might be a relief to quit this plane of existence (hey, in winter I have those thoughts while bundling up indoors as if to go skiing, while the dry air deepens lines beneath my eyes) -- until I went to the salad bar --

and loaded up a carton with all I wanted, as much as I wanted, including corn salad, pasta salad, kale salad, beets, imitation crabmeat, greens of every footprint, garbanzos, croutons, tomato; three meals' worth) and went home and ate a plateful --

and realized that in death I could no longer have hot chicken noodle soup with a grilled cheddar on swirl rye -- with kosher pickle --or a broiled trout --

and although there are no bills or heartaches or body aches in the next life, there is also no hard stuff, although there might be wine, and no grilled cheese sandwiches or pasta pesto (world's greatest anti-depressant), so I decided to hang in there and focus on what's good. Ninety percent of the time things turn out okay. The trick is having something or someone to look forward to, and taking a walk even when you'd rather not. The solstice is imminent: December 21 at 10:29 a.m. In its honor I'm throwing an Irish high tea. Already have the Kerrygold butter, the clotted cream, the jam, the tea, the scone mix . . .

December's Garden

Temperatures have been in the 60s and 70s most of the fall, including last week, meaning that the fall vegetables my neighbor and I planted in September haven't frozen yet, and today I plucked up and scissored four scarlet radishes, and small lettuce, spinach, and kale leaves, holiday colors, enough for a full salad bowl. Not only that, but while I was at the store I saw and bought 1/4 of a watermelon because I have so missed the taste of it. Except for tomatoes and hummingbirds I can still pretend it's summer. First snow predicted in a few days.

The sunsets now are pretty, too, but the best thing about mid-December-- it's only two weeks until the days begin to lengthen.

Ye Shall Know Them

I plant arugula, a peppery little salad green, always, because it's easy to grow -- like a weed, the more you ignore it the better -- and because it's expensive at the store. The seeds resemble poppy seeds. In March I poked a pencil tip into the cold ground, dropped a seed in the hole, and after 30 days, ruffly healthy plants. Clip the larger leaves to eat and the plant will generously make some more.

The most helpful quotation I know comes from gardening: "By their fruits ye shall know them." (Matthew 7:20). It reminds me that we are what we do, not what we say. You can gauge moral character by the results of people's actions, by the grace or disorder they leave in their wake. Just sayin'.

Meal #53,672: Organic Beef Salad

Hawkeye and I were dining out and she & I figured we each eat 1,000 meals a year, given that we skip some, and she had therefore eaten 55,000 meals and me 53,000 and change. If you work hard and play hard it stands to rights that you should eat well. Here you see that a friend gifted me with an organic beefsteak I pan-fried and sliced and tossed into an organic-lettuce salad -- that way I got everything good-for-me in one bowl. It looked so tasty I wanted you to at least see it. Dessert was watermelon. That's not wine; it's grape juice cut with water. I never drink by myself (wish you'd been here; I would've brought out some real wine!). But I like the look and it don't taste bad either. Some time ago I realized that if I don't feed myself good no one else will!

Yeah, it's the same kind of bowl I use for grits. I have a passion for this set of 6 (now 5) Williams-Sonoma pasta plates from the middle 1990s, got pictures of herbs in the bottom.