Hot

When Paul and I started dating¹, I was living in Maryland and he was living in Seattle. I finished teaching my summer course and flew out at the beginning of July. Seattle was having a heat wave. Late on the morning I arrived, a radio announcer said, “It’s 80 degrees, and it’s not even noon yet.” This was where my culture shock began.

In Baltimore in July, it often doesn’t dip below 80 degrees at any point in any given 24-hour cycle. In Baltimore in July, it is always 80 degrees before noon, often before nine, often on its way to 99. With 99% humidity. In Seattle, it will hit 90 degrees for two days all summer long, and the humidity is perfect, and at night it cools down to 55, and you put a fan in the window and wake up freezing at two AM. And the next morning at 11:30, it’s 69 degrees and partly cloudy.

If you’re reading this and you’re my mother, move to Seattle!!

(If you’re reading this and you are not my mother, I am really sorry, but there are already too many people here and traffic is getting terrible.)

What one must acknowledge, however, is that in Baltimore there is air conditioning. It is hot outside, but inside, it is temperate. In Seattle, we have no air conditioning because we only need it a couple times a year, and even then, it usually cools off at night².

Right now, however, we are having a literal heat advisory. It might be 89 degrees today. Children are opening fire hydrants. Stores are out of fans. I am trying to convince my dog to let me hose her down³. We east-coast transplants are still mocking all the wilting Pacific Northwesterners, but I must admit that if I had A/C, I’d turn it on this evening.

Actual footage of my actual thermostat inside my house last summer. And in case you’ve never had the pleasure, 91 inside is much, much hotter than 91 outside. And this was downstairs. Upstairs, where our bed is, was unspeakable.

Anyway, since I know it’s hot and smoky where lots of you are, I wanted to send along some small pieces of hot good news. Ready?

1. Gazpacho. When it is too hot for soup, you still need soup — you always need soup — but you need cold soup.

   

   I mean honestly look at it.

   There are infinity ways to make gazpacho, and far be it from me to harsh on yours except to say this: For a long time, I loved but didn’t eat much gazpacho because the raw onion made me feel gross a short time later, and I am here to tell you if you grill⁴ your onion, it does not lesson the flavor or kill the vibe or invalidate the raw cold soup situation, BUT it does mean you can eat much more of it. I peel a sweet onion, cut it in half, and put it on the grill just like that, no oil, no salt, no anything. Flip over once. Remove when lightly cooked. This not only takes the edge off, it imparts some nice smokiness.

2. Salad is summer soup. Like soup, salad needs no recipe and will welcome anything in your fridge and much of what’s in your pantry (artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, tuna, lentils, peas, beans, quinoa, farro, dried fruit, seeds, nuts, etc). I like salads that are 93% lettuce/kale/whatever-green with, at most, three other things. Two is even better.

   

   Mostly lettuce.

3. Popcorn exists. Both soup and salad want something alongside. As pictured, sometimes this something is bread. But at least every other night in summer, we have popcorn with (for) dinner. Popcorn and salad. Popcorn and soup. Popcorn and grilled snap peas. Popcorn and grilled green beans. Popcorn and blueberries. (Is that enough dinner, you ask? It is if you eat enough popcorn and enough blueberries.) This below was my family popcorn popper in the 80s, and it is our popcorn popper still. (Not the same one. But essentially the same one.)

   

   Timeless.

   Paul is in charge of popcorn popping in our household, but I can still advise that air popping could not be easier, and since air is made of air, you get to add as much butter as you like without fear, and Paul also likes to sprinkle on nutritional yeast which literally has the word nutrition in it. Nutrition + air = perfect dinner. Plus whole grains. Also, of course, popping popcorn, unlike heating bread, does not make your hot house hotter.

4. It is baseball season. Baseball is the perfect diversion when it is hot or you feel cranky or you’re stuck inside or life feels boring or unfair. Or really at any other time. Baseball itself is not always fair, especially if your baseball team is in the same division as the Yankees, but it happens nearly every day all summer long, sometimes twice, and there is always a story, and if tonight’s game is unfair, there is a good chance tomorrow’s might not be. And unlike, say, soccer, you can read a book while you watch.

5. There are local and excellent blueberries. Blueberries are the world’s greatest food, and for three-ish blessed months, including this one, they are in season. When they are, I eat a pint every morning for breakfast — I am partial to topping them with cottage cheese and topping the cottage cheese with a little cinnamon sugar — and then another, plain, with lunch.

   

   My happiest happy place

6. You can eat outside while reading a book. The best thing about blueberries is everything, but one of the best best things is that when they are in season, usually you can eat breakfast outside while you read, and even if it’s going to be a hot day, it’s probably not that hot yet, not even in Baltimore. And as if that weren’t good news enough, as you can see, Chad Harbach has a new novel. It’s not out till late October, but I have read it and it is excellent. While you wait, you can read or reread his first novel, which I adored both times I read it.

   

   The Art of Fielding has baseball, Moby Dick, great characters in great relationships, a wonderful story, much love, and every good thing. It is an excellent read for the beach or the air conditioning or the smoke or your hot house or the baseball game or really wherever you find yourself. And by the time The Brightness comes out, we will be firmly back to hot soups and sweaters and complaining about the rain (and the crappy, off-season blueberries.)

What’s not great about summer is going to the airport which, at least in Seattle, is on beyond mobbed. But I’m thrilled to be off again next week anyway, bound for Minnesota, and if you are as well, or you’re already there, please come because these are going to be lovely — and air-conditioned — events:

• Stillwater Public Library with Pamela Klinger-Horn | next Wed. July 29 at 6pm

• Wine and Words, Friends of the Brainerd Library | Grand View Lodge | July 30-31

Sending love and cool thoughts meantime. Remember to hydrate!
Love Laurie

1. “Dating” isn’t really the right word here, but let’s go with it.

2. Which works unless there’s smoke. When there’s smoke, everything is terrible.

3. A proposition she has rejected in favor of the devil she knows

4. Because obviously it’s too hot to turn the oven on