suc­co­tash, 2010

Yep, I know it’s a bit sil­ly, on a gor­geous blue-sky day, to spend it in the kitchen.

But I did, and I was in heav­en.  Hey, the kitchen has win­dows over the sink, so I had a love­ly view…

(I did think ahead and clean the win­dows so I would­n’t obsess while I spent the day look­ing through them…)

With a bag full of the fresh­est pos­si­ble veg from Painter Ridge Road farm­stand, I set to work.  A strange zuc­chi­ni, half green, half yel­low?  Check.  The firmest pos­si­ble head of gar­lic?  Yep.  Scal­lions, a juicy red onion, but­ter-and-sug­ar corn picked this morn­ing… sev­er­al glugs of the best olive oil, the spark­ly zest and juice of a lemon.  Stir it up with just the right zeal, sprin­kle with a bit of crushed red pep­per flakes, and you’re home free.

Suc­co­tash

(serves 4 as a side dish)

1 large zuc­chi­ni, diced

1 red onion, diced

a bunch scal­lions, sliced thin

1 clove gar­lic, minced with lemon juice and sea salt

4 ears corn, cut off the cob

4 tbsps olive oil

zest and juice of 1 lemon

sea salt and black pep­per to taste

a dash of crushed red pep­per to taste

Find your­self a large bowl and mix every­thing togeth­er.  You might want to try cut­ting your corn right into the bowl, first thing, or else those lit­tle ker­nels will POP off the cob and jump with alacrity all over your floor.  Mess!  Kit­tens like it, though.

And why mince gar­lic with lemon and salt?  Because the chem­istry of acid and salt com­bine to break that gar­lic DOWN to the small­est pos­si­ble mince.  Goes far­ther, more sub­tle. ENJOY.

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We spent the ear­ly after­noon in Wash­ing­ton, CT, the only super-posh New Eng­land town I know of whose res­i­dents have all stood up on their par­tic­u­lar 21st cen­tu­ry soap­box and refused cell­phone cov­er­age.  No cov­er­age.  At all.  I could SO live there.  I met up with an old friend from art gallery days, now a cre­ative rights attor­ney, for lunch at Mar­ty’s Cafe.  My good­ness, that reuben was deli­cious, and our con­ver­sa­tion the same.  He under­stands, as does nobody else, the painful suck­ing-in of regret that occurs to any “for­mer” art gallery own­er… that sense of “Where did all the fun go?  Where did all the cre­ativ­i­ty go?”  As well, how­ev­er, he total­ly gets the awful feel­ing of dread I used to get as the cal­en­dar pages got clos­er to “rent due” day.  Ah, the dual fun/pain of “every­thing hap­pen­ing in this space is MINE…”  We got it, togeth­er, over lunch.

John and Avery amused them­selves at the Hick­o­ry Stick Book­shop, a sum­mer­time must-vis­it place for any­one look­ing for a book that will not pop off the shelf at Bor­ders.  It takes the per­son­al atten­tion, the love of books, that floats in the air at the Hick­o­ry Stick.  I hope I do not out­live that book­shop.  “What’s the best way to sell a bug­gy whip?” John asks under his breath, and his repeat­ed death knell to the print­ed book makes me CRAZY.  I plan to make a list of the books — all out of print for at least 20 years as of now — that I want to be buried with.  I LOVE books.

On the way home, we stopped at Painter Ridge for our veg­eta­bles, and just to rev­el in the atmos­phere of being high above the rest of Con­necti­cut, on a per­fect sum­mer’s day (plus the sight of at least six dif­fer­ent sorts of zuc­chi­ni in cap­tiv­i­ty)… and home to cook.

And to wan­der around the big red barn look­ing at the new­ly-paint­ed shut­ters (a gor­geous near­ly-black green), John brings one out to hold up against the house while we imag­ine what sort of hard­ware they will need, since our attempts to find the orig­i­nal 1810 hard­ware in the barn has NOT been suc­cess­ful.  Who took it all away, and when?  Do we want S‑curves, or no hard­ware at all?  We are deep in the throes of plan­ning the 200th birth­day for our house, and I want it to look its best.

So we drag out shut­ters, count win­dows, pri­or­i­tize them in the event that there aren’t enough for every win­dow.  All around us, squir­rels dash about suc­cess­ful­ly steal­ing from John’s anti-squir­rel bird­feed­er, and goldfinch­es fight them for every square inch of real estate.  Mark and Kon­nie’s hors­es whin­ny in the pas­ture behind the house, where we are con­tem­plat­ing putting a cou­ple of goats, inside an elec­tric fence, to mow down the rest of the mead­ow.  Inside the house, Avery com­munes with her three feline angels, all draped around her neck, lap and arms as she tries to get through the pile of books from Hick­o­ry Stick.

Alto­geth­er, the most peace­ful day.  How lucky we are.  I hope it’s love­ly where you are.  Tomor­row… what a roast chick­en does on its sum­mer vaca­tion.  I promise.