This entry has nothing to do with May. There aren’t even any pictures.
But it’s my birthday and I want to talk about food.
It’s August and the Farmer’s Market is overflowing with an embarrassment of riches. August is gazpacho season here on Willow Ave., and I’ve just made my first batch of the season. Five kinds of tomatoes from the heirloom tables, sweet onions, two frighteningly large cucumbers, no peppers (Christopher hates ‘em), and a gracious plenty of garlic. Season with salt, pepper, more salt, more pepper, and oil and vinegar. And a little more salt and pepper. That volume of veggies requires a lot of seasoning.
I like to eat it with a hunk of bread. Sourdough. Or the good baguette from Hi Rise in Harvard. On a hot day, there are few things finer than an ice-cold bowl of gazpacho. The hardest part is right now, actually – waiting for the soup to get ice-cold in the fridge. Warm gazpacho is nothing more than salsa.
The berries and stone fruits are in. Berries annoy serious bakers. Serious bakers depend on art and science – a careful knowledge of chemistry and chocolate – to make drop-dead fabulous desserts. But any idiot can toss some sugar and some berries, put biscuit dough on top, and bake until bubbly. And it’s just as good as anything I spent six hours in the kitchen to make.
(My own vanity insists that I add that my biscuits are probably better than those of the average idiot, but who is eating the biscuits anyway? Besides, some sugared bread crumbs are almost as good.)
Soon there will be corn. Barely boiled and dripping butter and salt. I love corn. Better than boiled corn, though, is corn on the grill. Smoky and sweet – and dripping butter and salt.
August is wanton in New England kitchens.
But then comes Septemeber and it’s even better. Because not only do you have gazpacho and stone fruits and berries and corn – and watermelon, did I mention watermelons? – you’ve also got the start of the fall fruits.
Apples. I could write about apples all day. I could eat apples all day. When I was pregnant, I ate five a day. May is built almost entirely out of apples.
Apple cake. Apple pie. Apple brown betty. Apple crisp and apple crumble. Apple pancakes. Apple fritters. Apple muffins. Apple turnovers. Apple sauce. Baked apples wth cinnamon and butter. Fried apples. Poached apples. Apple tarts and
tarte tatin. Abelskivers. Cider! Hard cider, sweet cider, fresh cider still clear from the press before it’s turned brown. Cider syrup and cider doughnuts and cider-boiled hot dogs. Sausages with apples in. Venison roasted with apples. Apples in a gruyere fondue. Apples and proscuitto on good sturdy bread with a little farm mustard and sharp Vermont cheddar.
There’s this thing I do on Sunday mornings where I make a batch of oatmeal from steel-cut oats and then while it’s cooking, I chop some apples into some cider and cook that down until it’s reduced by half. Pour the apples over the oats and add a splash of heavy cream and it’s the best thing on an October morning, when the sky is high and deep blue and air smells like fallen leaves and wood smoke.
It’s good in November, too, when the air is gray and the slush splashes up into your shoes. Perfect for Thanksgiving morning.
This morning, I was thinking about what to make for Christmas dinner. The menu, as it stands now, is simple. Butternut squash soup to start. Roast goose. Potatoes cooked in goose fat. Apple and sausage dressing. Roasted fall vegetables with sage and brown butter. Butter rolls. A wilted spinach salad with oranges.
Which is all fine and fabulous and makes me hungry to think about. But now, right now, I wish my gazpacho were cold.
Nikki came over last Friday, which is why it rained that day. The humidity is why May's hair has that funky baby-'fro thing going on. Nikki, ever the attentive godmother, has found us a paint called "kinder paint" that has none of that bad stuff that makes that new-paint smell so toxic. 
