Sunday, June 24, 2012

Embracing the season

Yesterday was the first day of summer!

Even though yesterday was just the official kick-off, I have been appreciating many of the season's hallmarks already:

  • the long, long hours of daylight
  • how easy it is to go for a walk or run (no bundling required)
  • the green scenery all over the state
  • the bounty of produce in the stores and at the farmers markets
Also, I remember a conversation Josh and I had back in January or February about getting a dog, and he one person in the conversation said, "Shouldn't we wait until spring when it's warmer?" and the other person said, "No, no, we can get one now! It will be fine!"  It turns out that it has been so much easier to get Wish settled into a routine (especially with his walks) in a season when we aren't fending off icy sidewalks, blizzards, and windchills.

Anyway, I am definitely not here to talk about windchills today.  Blech!

Today at about 3 p.m. I realized that, completely unintentionally, I had gone hog wild embracing the spirit of the new season, ending up with a list of activities that my January self would approve enthusiastically.

1) I woke up, rolled out of bed, and went to the farmers market for the first time this year. Because my basil and mint stock was recently depleted, I left the market with monster bags of them, plus a bunch of zucchinis for two recipes I'm eyeing for the week and a big, big bouquet of blooms.


2) Then I realized that the recipe that called for basil called for eight leaves of basil, instead of the 8,000 I had obtained. And - too bad - I had to make pesto for lunch to use for caprese sandwiches. (Cue the violins, right?)  If you were over at M&L last summer, you know that anything caprese is a summer staple - meaning that it feels like I wrote about it a bajillion times. It feels good to get back to caprese and good to have found and practiced a pesto recipe enough to make it feel doable.

3) So, that mint? I bought it on a whim. I spent a few minutes googling fun mint recipes. Then I disregarded all of my ideas and made my favorite summer beverage: the mint fizzy!  It's club soda, a dash of sugar, muddled mint and lime juice. To make it extra-fun, I put the glass in the freezer earlier in the day so it's frosty and pretty when I want it. (My dad taught me this trick for root beer floats.)

4) And then Josh and I were at Target, and I ended up bringing home a watermelon!


After dinner, I am planning a little walk with the pup and then some reading, possibly outside, if I want to really conform to a summer routine. I have one more kitchen project for the evening, too - the temperatures are supposed to soar again this week and I'm trying to get the oven's work out of the way before that happens.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend!  I still have some mint left over.  Any ideas to share, besides making mint fizzy after mint fizzy?

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