good­bye woodfires

Sum­mer is back! I can’t believe that two nights ago it was so chilly and damp that I was cooking:

Kris­ten’s Pre­ten­tious Meatloaf

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Since then the sun has come back out, and today the humid­i­ty is RAM­PANT. We spent a sweaty hour on the ten­nis courts this morn­ing, and a sav­age­ly cold dip in the com­mu­ni­ty pool, and came home starv­ing and hot. So today’s lunch was the ulti­mate sum­mer cooldown feast. I call it “pink gaz­pa­cho”, for which I must give you the recipe because it’s sin­ful­ly sim­ple and inex­pen­sive, and aside from a cucum­ber and an avo­ca­do you can eas­i­ly have every­thing on hand in your pantry. It was first made for me by my beloved friend Jeanne, and served in green porce­lain bowls in the shape of let­tuce heads:

Jeanne Grieger’s Pink Sum­mer Gazpacho

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In any case, we took Avery to Mys­tic, to reunite with her beloved friend Cici, made plans to come get her on Sun­day (which turned out to be today, the days FLEW by!). On the way home from drop­ping her off, we turned off the road to pop into a local insti­tu­tion (no, not the one you’re think­ing of, prob­a­bly, with restraints and bars on the win­dows), but Abbot­t’s Lob­ster in the Rough”, a real­ly, well, ROUGH place to have seafood. Cici’s moth­er had warned us against it, say­ing it could be hor­ri­bly crowd­ed, and I can see that if we’d gone at a more nor­mal time to eat it might have been, but we end­ed up there around 4, and it was near­ly desert­ed. You place your order and then go stake out a pic­nic table right on the water, look­ing out over what might be some­thing like Mys­tic Sound? Love­ly, sail­boats every­where. Then your num­ber is hollered over a loud­speak­er and you go pick up your food. Here’s my advice: look at the menu, for fun if you like. But skip every­thing else and go straight to the LOB­STER. We felt adven­tur­ous and ordered an enor­mous lob­ster feast, to share, so we could try some of every­thing. And try we did. But, I know this will sound harsh: every­thing but the lob­ster was com­plete­ly for­get­table. The clam chow­der we used to get in Isles­ford, Maine, unfair­ly blows away any oth­er, but even with­out that for com­par­i­son, Abbot­t’s was watery and dull, dis­tin­guished only by its tem­per­a­ture which burned the roof of my mouth.

Then the shrimp was fine, but ordi­nary, a tad over­cooked as the insti­tu­tion­al nature of the process might pro­duce. The clams and mus­sels were fresh, but unre­mark­able, steamed as they were in the aus­tere New Eng­land recipe of… water. I like my mus­sels in a nice gar­licky wine-laden broth, call me decadent.

But the LOB­STER! The fresh­est we’ve ever had out­side Maine, and cooked to per­fec­tion, so it did­n’t take long for us to wash our hands with the insuf­fi­cient lit­tle wet wipe and cozy up to the “Retail Deck,” manned charm­ing­ly by a nice young man who thrust his arm in a tank and brought up two mad­ly wav­ing spec­i­mens which we hap­pi­ly brought home and steamed. DIVINE. Run, don’t walk, to Abbott’s.

Let’s see, we spent the time Avery was away play­ing ten­nis (my new obses­sion, must find a place to play in Lon­don), and vis­it­ing… Olimpia. I will tell all tomor­row, but for now, can I just say that she sent us home with the most delec­table meat­balls and beef ribs swim­ming in toma­to sauce, and guess what? She had already fed us lunch, a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent menu. I will divulge as much of the mag­ic as can be felt and expe­ri­enced with­out Olimpia being here, which sad to say she is not. But I got to stand in her kitchen, and learn at the knee of the mas­ter, and I came away with… recipes. And left­overs! Quite the best host­ess in the world, Olimpia is, with her loy­al side­kick hus­band Tony there to roast the shoul­der of pork and pro­vide per­fect con­ver­sa­tion. But more on that later.

Suf­fice to say this evening, we’re hap­py to have our lit­tle chick home again, grate­ful to Kath­leen and John for host­ing her and feed­ing us such a deli­cious din­ner tonight, and we’re miss­ing our lit­tle niece Jane. Aren’t the two girls adorable togeth­er? A week from now will find us tucked up in our flat in Lon­don, so this week must cram in as much Amer­i­cana as pos­si­ble. And lunch with Olimpia, a bagel brunch with Anne and her bril­liant vio­lin­ist sis­ter Alice, and a vis­it to the impos­si­bly charm­ing South­bury His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety all fill the bill. I have a lot to tell you.