I love soup. Even on a hot day.

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But you can't have hot soup on a summer's day like today. 

I've been working a lot lately, so I decided to play hooky with my Bride today. I even took off early yesterday afternoon so we could meet up at Ceia, my favorite restaurant up on the Massachusetts north shore to try out their current charcuterie menu as a kick off to a self-granted long weekend. We got a plate of beef lingua pastrami and house-cured lardo.  Anyplace that cures their own lardo gets top marks in my book. 

The Critter is off at camp, but the Boy was along for the ride. I didn't tell him that he was happily chowing down on beef tongue. I'll save that little revelation for later.  

 

Today, I gave the pigs a bigger water trough, and spent a little time in the garden before it got too hot. They were all appreciative. The heat has been hard on my early greens and peas, but some of the warmth-loving plants are thriving. The cucumbers are in full crop at the moment - I got a new variety this year that's short and fat and super sweet.  

We ended up with a stack of cucumbers (and zucchini. But I expect that from zucchini). My Bride set them next to our new Vitamix blender (which I love) and suggested we do a gazpacho taste-test. 

Who am I to say no to that? 

She's never really cared for traditional tomato gazpacho. But the bounty of cukes we ended up with inspired her to try a few different recipes.  

We tried three different recipes - a pineapple + cucumber (Whole Foods recipe).   Cucumber & avocado (Food 52) And cucumber mint (BBC Good Food).   

 

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With nice chilled batches of soup, it was pleasant to sit out on the porch and have a taste test in the warm sunshine.  

The cucumber mint tasted too bready for me. Not a bad taste, but I wanted the mint to come through more clearly. I'd double up on the amount of mint next time (and we certainly have more than enough in our garden).  

My bride threw a slice of bourbon-pickled jalapeño into the pineapple + cucumber gazpacho, which gave it a nice heat. A little too much for the small batch we made. We could have doubled the recipe and still kept it at one slice. Still. Those jalapeños are the absolute bomb. 

My favorite was the avocado cucumber gazpacho. Which isn't a surprise. Pretty much everything we've tried from Food 52 is excellent. It was also the simplest, cleanest recipe of the three.  

  • 1 avocado
  • 1/2 cucumber
  • 1 small garlic clove
  • 1/2 teaspoon sherry vinegar
  • salt & pepper to taste.
  1. Peel everything. Blend with a half cup of ice water to taste & desired consistency. 

Chill. Serve. Enjoy. Get yourself another helping.  

 

Far too reflective for a Monday

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Last week was one of the harder weeks I've had recently.  

My company's website was brought more or less to its knees on Monday by a combination of a technical bug and a third party service. It worked, mostly, but only if you didn't want to buy something during the day. Come back at 7pm when no one else is on the site. Then you'll be fine. But during the day, with peak traffic?  No such luck. 

This meant working with the team until late into the evening every day, and through the weekend. Except Thursday. Because Wednesday night, I managed to crack a tooth. And had to go into the dentist for a filling. Because what I need when there's a crisis in play, what I really need is a punch in the face by a lady with a power drill. And who doesn't love to return to the office with a numb face and drool on your chin? 

The same day, the Boy was scheduled for oral surgery. Because he had an extra tooth growing in right in the middle of his upper front palate. Which is just about as awkward as it sounds. There's a name for this - it's called a mesiodens ('middle tooth' - but that does sound way more medical in Latin, doesn't it?). He's 5, and is deathly afraid of doctors. However, he has no problem at all with the dentist's chair. I do not understand this. The doctor I like (except when he's got large hands, and he gets over familiar). The dentist, I dread (because it is unnatural to have someone sticking their hands in your mouth). 

The Boy came through it just fine, but we did make a family pact to try not to schedule multiples of our family in for dental work on the same day in the future. 

I also got a call the night my tooth broke that one of my uncles had passed away. A few days previously, we had learned he had liver cancer. And then, he died.  Either he had the diagnosis, but didn't want to share with the family early on, or he had avoided going in for the diagnosis.  I'm not sure. We weren't close. 

When I was a kid, I remember my mother's younger brother as a reasonably nice guy, but usually drunk. He was the first adult that I remember noticing as intoxicated. As in, can't really walk upright down the driveway unassisted to his car (where he got in and drove away. It was the 70's. The cars were big and steel. I dunno). He was also one of the first adults that I ever swore at, for showing up intoxicated at one of my events when I was 14 or 15. (I think it was a horse show. I can't remember now). I remember my mother being horrified that I spoke to him that way, and my step-father saying something along the lines of 'well, he's not wrong.' 

After that, we didn't talk much. But I learned a couple of things that day. About him. About my parents. About myself.  

A few years later, my uncle did replace the engine of my first car later on when I blew it up through neglect. He was, by all accounts, always a pretty good mechanic. Maybe that was his way of making things a little more right.

Maybe he got sober later in life. I don't know. As I said, we didn't talk much.

I was saddened to learn of his passing. I figured his liver would get him in the end. I think we all did. Including him.

But not that way. 

I wasn't sure if I was going to write about all this. It's not the fun, light stuff about eating good food or raising pigs or firing off trebuchets with the kids that I normally like to wax prolific on. And in Southern families, one does not talk about family problems. It's just not the done thing. Which (along with not being disrespectful of an adult) was what horrified my mother at the time. But not talking about the drunk in the family isn't helpful to anyone.  Especially not the drunk. And in between the temporary moments of webified crisis last week, as I drove back and forth from the dentist or to the office, I had plenty of time to think. And be - well - maybe 'sad' isn't the right word. But regretful  that   another member of the generation before me. Something there about the irrevocable loss of those connections to my mother, our family, & our shared history which has passed away. Maybe it's just because it puts me a little closer to being the old guy in the family. But I hope it's less self-centered in origin than that. 

I don't know if this story has much of a point, other than that, perhaps. And to reflect that as bad as my week was, it was ultimately trivial things like a flaky website or an extra trip to the dentist.  

Not all stories have an arc and a tidy resolution.

Sometimes, it's just... life.