Summer so far
An A+ margarita, an owl, a Gilbert, and a thing I'm learning
This just in: there are four spots left in the food writing retreat I’ll be co-leading at Villa Pia in Lippiano, Italy, this October 11 to 18. I booked my flight today, so this thing is on. My brilliant friend Charlotte is one of the organizers, so we can count on it to be an unforgettable week. These photos, both taken by Charlotte, give me the same pleasurable ache I get when I watch Call Me By Your Name, and you know what that means. In preparation, I’ve begun doing Italian on Duolingo. Today I learned, “How much are clothes?” — in case I forget mine? — and “Chiara is very nice,” which will be a slam dunk if I meet someone named Chiara.
If Italy is a bridge or a continent too far, there are spots available at my memoir-writing workshop at Asilomar, near Monterey, California, from October 27 to 31. This one is focused on food memoir writing and will be led exclusively by me, whereas the Italy retreat approaches food writing more broadly and will be co-led by Mark Diacono and Felicity Cloake. If you are a writer of personal narrative or memoir — or aspire to be; all levels are welcome — I hope you’ll join me for immersive days of writing, craft discussions, and good conversation on the rugged California coast. You’ll leave with a handful of fresh starts and first drafts to continue at home.
In Seattle they say that summer doesn’t begin until July 5, but it’s been so dry and sunny, it feels like summer’s already been in town for a month. Our household is still easing in: June’s weeks of camp are yet to come, and we haven’t gone camping, gone to the beach, or picked berries. But the mornings are warm enough to take my coffee out to the deck, and sunset doesn’t come until nine. Even with the recent years’ terrifying uptick in wildfires, and even though it might be a jinx to say what follows when floods are taking lives in Texas and Europe is sweltering under a heat dome, summer in Seattle still awes me with its relative gentleness.
In Oklahoma City, where I spent my first 19 summers, July and August days are so hot that, as a child, I remember scorching my fingers just opening the car door. But that was only the beginning: before you climbed inside, you’d suck in as much air as you could through your teeth and clamp your lips shut, so you could hold off as long as possible inhaling the oven-hot air that awaited you in the car. This breath control was difficult to sustain, not because the human body needs oxygen, but because the surface of the seats would be scorching. It would take a minute or two for the skin of your thighs to stop registering the heat. I remember that my mother’s car never liked to start when it was hot. It would whine and wheeze. I remember feeling so sorry for it, that car. It all seemed so cruel. One of the many gains of my now-23 summers in Seattle: I can reserve my empathy for actual living beings.
As is the case for many parents, summer is bad for my work and good for my everything else. Bananagrams on the deck > Bananagrams anywhere else, especially since I restocked our citronella candles.
Matthew and I recently recorded a subscribers-only bonus episode of Spilled Milk called “Matthew Drinks a Cocktail.” This idea came about because Matthew gets very silly after approximately 0.5 cocktails. For the episode, he made what I realized was my very first homemade margarita, using the Classic Margarita recipe from Serious Eats. It was exceptional. I’ve now made two more of them at home, using Libélula tequila, and though neither is pictured above — pretty sure that glass contained Deschutes x Patagonia N/A Kernza Golden Brew, which is 🔥 — I intend to drink a margarita on the deck very soon.
Thanks to our Local Roots CSA share, we’ve been eating a lot of tiny perfect heads of lettuce, many of them dressed with Julia Turshen’s perfect Parmesan and Peppercorn Dressing, from Simply Julia. If not, it’s been my basic vinaigrette: 1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard + 3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar + 1/2 tsp. Diamond Crystal kosher salt, whisked well, into which you then gradually whisk 6 Tbsp. olive oil. A simple vinaigrette like this will keep indefinitely, and in the summer, I make sure there’s always a jar of it on the counter. In other news, I’m on a kick of peanut butter toast for breakfast, plowing through a jar of Santa Cruz Organic Crunchy Dark Roasted Peanut Butter1 approximately every ten days.
We hear barred owls hooting and caterwauling around the neighborhood in all seasons, but a couple of weeks ago, I saw one for the first time. It was about nine in the evening, and I was walking home from the bus stop. There it was: a distinctly owl-shaped silhouette on the electric wires above a neighbor’s house. I immediately texted Ash, who was at home, who rushed to the window and caught a glimpse too. After much debate, we decided to call him(?) Nimbus, and we continue to look for him(?) most evenings, though he(?) has not offered an encore. But that’s okay, because I’ve got all the wildlife I need in Gilbert.
God he’s awful. I love him immoderately. At his annual vet appointment, we marveled at the fact that he’s made it this far, age three years and three months, because this bro has an intractable habit of stealing and eating both edible and inedible objects. Despite our best efforts, this compulsion has resulted in at least three trips (that I can remember) to an emergency vet clinic, including surgery for a bowel obstruction when he was 13 months old. (Thankfully, several months before that, a vet tech at one of those emergency clinics recommended that we get pet insurance, which we did, and it has more than paid for itself.) Half a dozen times now, I’ve started an essay about Gilbert’s oral fixation, because it’s truly remarkable and very funny if you’re not the one prying his jaws open. But I’ve never finished the essay, because he’s gotten much better in the past year, and I fear that publishing it would tempt fate.
He’s a mystery. His best friend is our guinea pig, Percy. I don’t believe he would ever even think of putting Percy in his mouth.
If you ever see Gilbert out in the world, you will be awed by what a good dog he is. People ooh and ahh. He’s a friend to all. He’s our Retail Boy, a true gentleman in stores, malls, and restaurants. Last Friday I took him to a new-to-us off-leash park, where both of us grinned for the entirety of our visit.
But god help you if you leave a plate of toast unattended on the table, or if your toddler drops one of his eight million Hot Wheels mini-cars on the floor.
I’m going to drop a little paywall now, because what follows is more personal, about some ideas we’re grappling with this summer. I feel better this way.
