WIAW 63 – Are You Sure It’s May?

So, you know how I’ve been complaining for two months that it is unseasonably cold, that flowers are blooming late, that I’m still wearing my winter coat, that we’d really like some warm weather, thank you? That?

This week it’s been in the mid 80s.

Be careful what you ask for, I guess… I didn’t want August – I wanted April, and never got it, and now we don’t seem to be getting May. (Only a week in, it may improve… we can hope…)

What does this have to do with food? Well… When it’s in the 80s, I want salad, and fruit, and light meals. Bright cool things. But since we never had April, my pantry is still stocked for March… beans and chili and lots of soup. All of which is, abruptly, terribly unappealing. Now, we do still eat beans in the summer – they’re a staple in hot climates, after all – but this week… I needed something else.

For breakfast, I had my tortillas and eggs, but heated and ate some of the shredded pork, from a slow cooked pork shoulder. (Local stores have had them at great prices lately, so I’m really stocked up with cooked pork – which will make many meals easier, down the road.) I just heated the meat in a pan, then fried the eggs – lighter than the beans, still easy…  (I’m going to have to lay in those egg muffins I wrote about – they’ll be much nicer in hot weather.)

Lunch… well… at lunchtime it was downright hot. At that point we gave up and said, never mind the date, we need the air conditioner… (Our apartment gets full sun all afternoon – and no breeze –  and it was very humid as well.) We just ran it a few hours, but it really helped. And I suddenly thought of the kefir I have…  I put a can of diced tomatoes, about a pint of kefir, a pinch of diced peppers, and a few ice cubes in the blender. Oh, that was perfect! I guess you’d call it soup – mostly because we don’t really think of a Tomato Smoothy (though why not?) Light and frothy and cool – and we just drank them from glasses. (And pink! Can’t you see this as the New Thing at summer parties? Bridal showers?)  This is going to be a summer staple for us, I’ll tell you now. (I can’t wait to do it with fresh tomatoes, when it is really August!) You could totally use yogurt, if that’s what you have, since I adapted this from soup I’ve made with yogurt, and from Indian salt lassi.

And since that alone does not make a lunch, I also had some rice cakes with cheese…

For dinner, I had some chicken pieces, and more tomato – half a can’s worth of puree left from something I’d cooked a few days earlier. (Should have used that for lunch… I’d forgotten it was there.)  Anyhow, it occurred to me that there’s no law that only pasta can be served alla puttanesca…  I added anchovy to the onion I was sauteing, browned the chicken, added the tomato puree and cooked until the chicken was done. Removed the chicken, threw in frozen green beans, served everything with rice, added capers and olives and romano cheese. Very good, very easy.

And I really hope the fresh spinach starts coming in soon… I am so in the mood for a nice big spinach salad, and barely sauteed spinach, and… Spring…

Well – the party doesn’t seem to have started, yet, but I’m going live anyway… since this is about us chatting, and what I eat, and how you can put food together (if something looks good…)  We’ll just hang out here until Jenn opens her doors!

All right! Jenn put the sign up, and we’re headed over to Laura’s at Sprint 2 the Table. (Oooopppsss. – and it was already over by the time I got there! So sad…)

But really – try the tomato smoothy…. we’ll have our own party.