It’s the end of the line for summer. Today is the last day of what some have said was the hottest summer on record. I believe them. I spent the season scurrying between air conditioned spaces, or dashing around the yard, repositioning the sprinkler to keep the tomatoes hydrated and the new pachysandra bed alive. I did a lot of sweaty running in the heat, while I was dodging the constant clouds of marauding mosquitoes, and avoiding the troop maneuvers of more ants than I have ever seen.

Here, late in September, the pachysandra have taken root, and the tomato plants yielded a modest crop. We were not carried away by the flying monkey-sized mosquitoes, and the ants’ mission remained top secret: they seem to have moved on. With the cooler afternoon temperatures, Luke the wonder dog and I have resumed our afternoon walks, so life is good. We aren’t trapped in the air conditioning, and we can stretch our legs again. The neighbors’ bushes have never smelled so sweet, or so I gather.

While I tend to whine about the summer heat and humidity, I am keenly aware that it is almost the end of the growing season for some of our favorite foods. Soon we won’t be able to hunt and gather our locally grown tomatoes and corn. It is time for all the wretched pumpkin-spice-flavored everything. I am preparing to transition. Last weekend we made a delightfully spicy tomato pasta dish with local cherry tomatoes. I am hoping it will taste as good, and feel as warming as the scorching days of August, in December, when all we have to choose from will be hot house tomatoes, or those trucked in from California for a king’s ransom, and a guilt-inducing carbon footprint. Mr. Sanders said that he preferred it to Martha’s One-Dish Pasta, which is in regular rotation for our Monday night pasta dinners. This is good dish to add to that rotation, albeit one with a more autumnal vibe. Plus you get to use four cloves of garlic. Yumsters!

Pasta with Simple Cherry Tomato Sauce

As usual, I made some changes to this recipe as I went along. Our humble grocery store does not carry orecchiette-shaped pasta. (Their summer-long sale on Woodbridge chardonnay more than compensates for that tiny inconvenience.) So I substituted penne rigate, which seemed to be sturdy enough for the sauce. You might experiment with Dan Pashman’s cascatelli pasta, which is also sturdy and can hold the bold sauce in its nooks and curvy crannies. And I skipped the pine nuts, because I am on a budget, and so are you.

Everything else we had on hand, no extra shopping required. For once, I am proud to say, we had a shallot in the vegetable drawer, because Mr. Sanders cooked a fussy and fancy chicken piccata last week. Chicken Piccata It was deelish, too. One of our back porch basil plants came through the summer magnificently, and is busting out with lush greenery. I have to figure out if we have a bright and sunny corner in the house where so I can keep it happy through the winter, because nothing kick starts a tomato dish like fresh basil.

Ingredients – we halved this because it is only the two of us. Sorry, Luke. You have plenty of kibble.
¼ cup olive oil
1 small shallot, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Kosher salt
12 ounces pasta, such as orecchiette,
1/2 to 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 pound small, sweet cherry tomatoes, halved,
1/2 cup grated parmesan
4 ounces small mozzarella balls (I cubed fresh mozzarella, left over from last week’s pizza night)
1/2 cup fresh basil, thinly sliced or more to taste
Black pepper – to taste

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.Pour olive oil into a large skillet, warm, and add shallot and garlic. Add a pinch of salt. Turn the heat to medium high. When the oil begins to shimmer, stir the shallots and garlic, cover, and turn the heat down to low. Cook for roughly 5 minutes, or until the shallots and garlic get soft. Keep an eye on the garlic, which tends to burn to an incinerated cinder the minute you turn your back on the stove.

Be sure to add a handful of kosher salt to the water when it boils. Boil the pasta to al dente. Meanwhile, uncover the lid of the pan with the shallots and garlic. Add the crushed red pepper flakes and stir briefly. Raise the heat to medium, and add the tomatoes. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes begin to burst and break down. Add 1 cup of water, and bring the sauce to a gentle simmer.

Before draining the pasta reserve a cup of the pasta cooking liquid, just in case. Drain the pasta. Do not rinse. Transfer the drained pasta to the tomato sauce pan and stir to combine. Turn heat to low.

Add the parmesan cheese and pepper to the pasta. Add some of the reserved pasta cooking liquid if the sauce has thickened too much, we didn’t need it, but it is always wise to prepare for emergencies. Then add the mozzarella and basil, stir to combine, and serve immediately. Have a big bowl of grated parm on the table. Break out the salad, some still-on-sale wine, candles and some focaccia. Yumsters. And easy peasy.

It’s not greatly different from Martha’s One-Pan Pasta , but the heftier pasta makes it seem like it will be an excellent dish for cooler weather. And maybe we will get some soon. Enjoy the rest of your summer!

(The clever cooks at Food52 have another end-of-season pasta dish you might want to try: Tomato Tonnato From Botanical)

“Our bathing suits, waving like summer flags on the clothesline were begrudgingly packed away, and replaced with long-sleeved sweaters and woolly socks.”
― Arlene Stafford-Wilson

Shanah tovah! A very happy New Year to you! Rosh Hashanah begins tonight at sunset. It is the first of ten high holy days, a time of reflection and celebration. We at the Spy Test Kitchens are always eager to honor cultures and faiths with food, and traditionally Rosh Hashanah is observed with many festive dishes.

You can begin your Rosh Hashanah meal with sliced apples dipped in honey, with the honey symbolizing the sweet possibilities of a new year. You can serve apple slices to dip in honey, or you can incorporate apple cider into a beef brisket. Apple cider brisket

It’s still a little too warm outside for me to think about cooking, let alone eating, brisket, but there is always a place at the table for Apple and Honey Muffins. Or you can bake some challah.

You might think of challah with candlelight, wine, family and blessings on Friday nights. It is a flavorful bread, almost a brioche, and makes divine toast. I baked a test loaf of challah last weekend, because we can never have enough carbs. There is a lot about bread baking that I have to learn, in tiny incremental stages. Like finding a reliable recipe. For my very first, time-consuming loaf of challah I tried the Youtube-famous “Challah in a Bag” which was indeed fun to do – but it produced an awful loaf of bread.

It turns out that kneading is necessary, and so is the correct oven temperature. I measured, weighed, poured and shook the ingredients. I heated water, then dipped and submerged the bag o’dough. I spent a lovely, sunny afternoon glued to my stool in the kitchen, waiting through various proofs and bag flips. Then I dusted with flour, rolled, pinched, and plaited. I let it rise again. I washed the surface with egg. I dutifully set a timer for the 40-minute baking process. I was amazed to peek in the oven and see a nicely shaped, almost-raw, beige pile of dough. The recipe had said to bake at 300°F. (Nothing is going to brown at 300°F. Silly me.) I popped the temp up to 350°F and the loaf finally browned, but the damage was done. It tasted like lightly-singed pile of Play-doh. Read your new recipes closely, she typed sagely. Don’t take anything for granted on the internet. Bon Appétit and Food52 have folks who proof read and test, and re-test, all of the recipes they publish. Careers can be ruined by a typo. Self-published sites are a lot more casual about these details, which can make all the difference in how your time and resources are spent. Challah in a Bag

Thank you, Food52: Honey Challah I wish I had found this recipe first, which also incorporates symbolic honey, before being lured by the siren song of Challah in a Bag. Baking temperature: 375°F.

Thank you, Bon Appétit: Challah Baking temperature: 325°F – 400°F.

La Boite has a very ambitious and beautiful Holiday Challah, which includes niches for bowls of honey and apple slices. Baking temperature: 400°F.

And a kosher recipe from Kosher.com: Best Challah Ever (This recipe is HUGE! It make 6 challahs. This is in case you need to feed the masses this holiday season, or if you want to bake loaves ahead of time and freeze them. Baking temperature: 350°F.

Happy baking, happy new year!

“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.”

–M. F. K. Fisher

Oh, I am going to miss those slow, lazy days of summer. When there was some time to think; I miss the time we had for making choices. School has started and we are back in our familiar, though swift-moving, routines. We leap out of bed to shower, Hoover up breakfast, gather lunch, dash out the door, work, learn, play, volunteer, weed, grocery shop, home to chop, slice, dice, cook and scrub. Whew. Not to mention getting ready to do it all again tomorrow. And laundry.

This is when we have to get strategic, and plan ahead, just a bit – even if the future only means saving enough time and energy to read a chapter of Lessons in Chemistry before bed. And maybe we’ll talk to our family while doing all the food prep. How else are we to experience teen angst all over again, if not through our children? (I’ve noticed it is hard to be glued to an iPhone when you are chopping onions, too.) We can conduct our own Cordon Bleu school of cooking – where else will you be able to experiment with different methods for peeling garlic? They certainly will never acknowledge us in the moment, but the children will learn more through osmosis and experience in your kitchen than from YouTube. As Julia says: “…no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.”

We like having a couple of recipes on our steady weekly meal rotation: Monday is pasta, Friday is pizza. I’m usually happy and ambitious on Mondays, and by Friday I can barely drag the stand mixer out of the pantry to make the pizza dough. If Monday is frantic we will have a simple, no extra-shopping-required pasta, like spaghetti with butter and garlic, or Cacio e Pepe. Recently the New York Times published a Baked Spaghetti lasagna-type casserole which is one of its most popular recipes. It is insanely easy, and has the added benefit of being perfect for left-overs: for dinner or lunch. Baked Spaghetti.

Baked spaghetti is as satisfying as lasagne, without the terrifying process of layering slippery, boiling hot, ribbons of lasagne in a pan, or remembering the proper order of sauce, mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese, ricotta cheese, hot pasta, sauce, which cheese? And with baked spaghetti you don’t have to make enormous commercial-kitchen-size pans of baked spaghetti. You can adapt it to the moment and the number of folks home for dinner tonight. This Sunday I am going to assemble a pan of spaghetti to bake on Monday night, to have again for lunch on Tuesday, and for dinner (again) on Thursday. I’ve never been able to re-heat Cacio e Pepe satisfactorily, so once we get this dish into the meal rotation it will simplify life. Which will save time and aggravation and will give us a brief moment of breathing space.

I can’t begin to contemplate dense and complicated fall and winter casseroles, and while this is warm meal, this pasta dish isn’t just for winter weather. It bakes for 40 minutes, so we won’t be heating up the kitchen too long. And it doesn’t require much in the way of fancy techniques or ingredients: it’s not Boeuf Bourguignon or Baba Ghanouj. It is warm, satisfying, and it re-heats well, making leftovers an added treat in our busy week.

If you have time on your hands on a Sunday afternoon, as I did last week, go ahead and bake this chocolate cake. We have been doling out pieces for lunch every day, and the cake just gets better as the week goes on: Ruth Reichl’s Giant Chocolate Cake https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017692-ruth-reichls-giant-chocolate-cake?unlocked_article_code=TkDK1ae-xVzuIIpW28vv9oEDVKoUiJaoio5wmt3_MpWXHF4UTRDT8sxmjrvUxmSrstkKld723jhGp65Gy0zI_v1REzz8m_JJjn3-IODZo-YEnjC-cyOnrhtRyQ__WDOSydOPSOgaocLjMbnCJMzZS0XwRFCf1l64lt4fe6fNOax8l_oudo9aLlXNamlwkNrAoL8zH4t5_pBhyY1OYqrJ682VVZFxQoUIc3UeuLKyyZ2jT9H3XCiEk2YvO5_SQjG3bPQlRChjooMrDaX8d64zvgPHEYE-PHVB2JAcrYa3sHMYj-v4L_sOjdYvgZu4pQBpBmN0EvzEBukqQ0EZrGmOjywk06fzYQ&smid=share-url I made it as a sheet cake, not a layer cake, and I halved the recipe, because we didn’t need that much cake tempting us every day. Deelish.

It helps to read the email notes from NYT readers who have already cooked the recipes. They tend to be amusing, acerbic, and insightful. One reader suggested substituting ziti for the spaghetti noodles – they thought the spaghetti dried out too much during the baking process and ziti stays moist and hefty. One other of the notes: “Classic! Whenever I use marinara from a jar, I rinse the jar out with 1/2 cup of red wine, which I add to the sauce. It transforms any off-the-shelf marinara.” That is pure inspiration. I love it when folks openly admit to buying jarred sauce. We are not alone.

“‘If you are careful,’ Garp wrote, ‘if you use good ingredients, and you don’t take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.’”

― John Irving

It was the hottest summer on record, and it is not exiting gracefully, or nearly fast enough for me. Petulant Hurricane Idalia has just swept through our neighborhood, bringing rain and downing some branches, but finally the hydrangeas feel relief after the parched arid summer month. The tomatoes haven’t fared as well. They’ve tumbled over, and the last few green tomatoes have nose-dived into the dirt of the raised bed. I am tempted to just walk away, and yearn to revel in crisp autumn weather and some crisp apple strudel. It is time for summer’s last hurrah.

Labor Day is a good time to get all of our summer ya-yas out. Let’s take one last trip to the beach, or the neighborhood pool. Let’s finally see Barbenheimer and sit in the dark, frigid air conditioning and eat greasy pawfuls of delicious popcorn. We haven’t cooked nearly enough hot dogs on the grill. We never spiked a watermelon. The Dairy Queen is about to close for the season – we should go get a Blizzard. We missed lying out on the back lawn watching the Perseid meteor showers this year, so thank goodness for the big Blue Moon this week. I did see it one night – before Hurricane Idalia blew into town.

Now that COVID is almost behind us we can see some old friends. Carefully. Let’s have folks over for an impromptu crab feast this weekend. I am like Jamie Kirkpatrick, from Chestertown, and I would rather bring my own poultry entrée to the event, although I tend toward a Stouffer’s Chicken Pot Pie, compared to Jamie’s gourmet treat of Royal Farms chicken, than spend hours picking and hammering away at crabs, but I do enjoy the spectacle. I love watching everyone pounding away on the steamed crabs with wooden mallets, drinking beer, licking Old Bay seasoning and crab bits from their fingers, gnawing on corn, elbowing each other for more room around the newspaper-covered picnic table. Luke the wonder dog wanders around, nosing for a surreptitious handout. Hope springs eternal in an old dog.

When I was a student at Washington College, in those bright and shiny days, we started every new school year off with huge, communal crab feast. We sat outside, under the big trees, happy to see each other again. This was back in the golden era when we were legally of age to drink beer. And yes, we did. The college sponsored a welcoming beer wagon for the incoming and returning students. No wonder we were so happy. My mother looked askance. I am sure it is a much healthier environment now for the students, with their abstemious and vegan ways. But I don’t think Pilates can be half as much fun as a crab feast with friends.

But here, in the grown-up times, without a cohort of Eastern Shore pals close by, we will have an end-of-summer feast of our own. We need to be sure that at least once this summer we ate coleslaw, potato salad, grilled sausage, strawberry shortcake, and shelled some peas out on the back steps. We haven’t made any ice cream! How about you? Did you grill enough hamburgers? How about corn on the cob? There is nothing like melting your fingerprints on a steaming-hot ear of corn, with a glossy trail of butter cascading down your chin. It is a feeling that you won’t ever enjoy in the delightfully cool autumn. It would just ruin your sweater.

I’m looking ahead to fall. I’ve already ordered next spring’s daffodil and crocus bulbs. I’m going to start some pansy seeds this weekend, too. I am already thinking about how the window boxes are going to look this winter. Last night, while the rain from Hurricane Idalia pelted the roof, Mr. Sanders tried his hand at making macaroni and cheese from scratch. Not from a box, with powdered cheese, which was another of my Washington College staples, but with Gruyère and sharp cheddar cheeses, with a white sauce and fresh bread crumbs. And we thought it would make a fine side dish to have with pulled pork for Christmas dinner. Because you know that Christmas is just around the corner.

Have an excellent Labor Day weekend. I hope it cools off soon.

“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.”
― E.B. White

This is the Spy Test Kitchen’s favorite time of the year – when we pull out our annual sandwich ingredients list. Have an excellent school year!

I always loved that first day of school: new shoes, new notebooks, new pencils, and a pristine box of still-pointy, aromatic crayons. I always forgot about my crippling anxiety about remembering my locker combination over the summer. I never thought about the social implications of lunchroom seating during those leisurely hours, either. As a responsible parental-unit, I loved shopping for school supplies, and shoes, and new lunch boxes. It was only the night before school started that I confronted the horror: the woeful lack of organization in our lives.

While the young ’uns were setting out their new sneakers for the morning, and frantically paging through books that should have been read weeks before, I was peering into the fridge and taking stock of our jumble of foodstuffs. What nutritional and tempting combinations could I conjure that would actually be eaten? Once, when Mr. Sanders had been out of town for a very long business trip, we attempted to set a world’s record for eating pizza for every meal, for many days in a row. I understand that that sort of tomfoolery doesn’t set a good example nowadays.

Now everyone has cute, eco-friendly, bento box lunch boxes, Mr. Sanders included. They have cunning little containers for vegetables, for fruits, for proteins. Some people cut vegetables on Sunday afternoons, and put them in the fridge for easy access on school mornings. They roll up lettuce wraps, dice carrots, prepare tuna salad, bake muffins and stack little cups of applesauce. These people also involve their children in the lunch assembly process. The despair I often felt in those dark, early mornings racing to get lunches made before the school bus arrived no longer exists, because now people are organized and thorough. And you can be, too.

While we are still leftover-dependent in this house, these folks know what to do about school lunch organization: Make Ahead Lunches

A handy guide to Sunday night preps: https://www.realmomnutrition.com/lunch-packing-stations/
And at Food52, the ever-clever Amanda always has some really fab lunch ideas. Amanda’s Clever Lunch Ideas

And now, with shameless drumroll, is the Spy Test Kitchen lunch list, which I haul out, shamelessly, every fall. Feel free to make your own spreadsheet, Google Doc or PowerPoint deck so you never have another moment of lunch ennui. The Test Kitchen came up with this flexible list of ingredients for packing school lunches a few years ago.
It is just as timely today:

Luncheon Variations
Column A
Let’s start with bread:
Ciabatta bread
Rye bread
Whole grain breads
Hard rolls
Portuguese rolls
French baguette
s
Italian bread
Brioche
Flour tortillas
Croissants
Bagels
Challah bread
Crostini
Cornbread
Naan bread
Focaccia bread
Pita bread

If storing overnight, layer bread with lettuce first, then add the spreads, to keep sandwich from getting soggy.

Column B
Next, the spread:
Mayo
Sriracha
Ketchup
Dijon mustard
Honey mustard
Italian dressing
Russian dressing
Cranberry sauce
Pesto sauce
Hummus
Tapenade
Sour cream
Chutney
Butter
Hot sauce
Salsa
Salsa verde

Column C
Cheeses:
Swiss cheese
American cheese
Mozzarella
Blue cheese
Cream cheese
Havarti cheese
Ricotta cheese
Cheddar cheese
Provolone cheese
Brie cheese
Cottage cheese
Goat cheese

Column D
The main ingredient:
Meatloaf
Turkey
Chicken
Corned beef
Bacon
Crumbled hard-boiled eggs
Scrambled eggs
Corned beef
Salami
Italian sausage
Ham
Roast beef
Egg salad
Tuna salad
Ham salad
Crab salad
Shrimp salad
Chicken salad
Turkey salad
Lobster salad
Tofu

Column E
The decorative (and tasty) elements:
Tomatoes
Lettuce
Basil
Onion
Avocado
Cucumber
Cilantro
Shredded carrots
Jalapenos
Cole slaw
Sliced apples
Sliced red peppers
Arugula
Sprouts
Radicchio
Watercress
Sliced pears
Apricots
Pickles
Spinach
Artichoke hearts
Grapes
Strawberries
Figs

Column F
Finger foods:
Cherries
Carrots
Strawberries
Green Beans
Broccoli
Celery
Edamame
Granola
Rice cakes
Apples
Bananas
Oranges
Melon balls
Raisins
Broccoli
Radishes
Blueberries

And because we live in a time of modern miracles, there are even apps for your phone so you can plan lunches ahead of time. Ingenious! LaLa Lunchbox and Little Lunches are among many apps.

“ ‘We could take our lunch,’ said Katherine.‘What kind of sandwiches?’ said Mark. ‘Jam,’ said Martha thoughtfully, ‘and peanut-butter-and-banana, and cream-cheese-and-honey, and date-and-nut, and prune-and-marshmallow…’”
-Edward Eager

During the last summer before COVID we took a memorable trip to New York City. It was July, and it was hot. We pretended that we could keep up with the speedy New Yorkers, striding along the melting sidewalks, jogging in the full sun along the High Line, muscling into the Metropolitan Museum. It gave us plenty of excuses to seek out ice cream, or tall cool drinks. I have never enjoyed air conditioning more than I did that summer.

Near Washington Square, where we caught some nostalgic whiffs of pot wafting above the chess players and skate boarders among the folks fully occupying the park benches, we found a nearly empty restaurant in the afternoon lull between lunch and dinner. We sat at the polished wood bar, dangling our hot feet over the smooth black and white tile floor, drinking restorative Italian beer. It was dark and cool and almost quiet, with muffled clinks of silverware as tables were set for the dinner service, and distantly Frank Sinatra was singing. It was another era.

We met friends for dinner at a restaurant with poised apron-clad waiters, white table cloths and many, many courses. We saw other friends and so enjoyed their neighbor’s pot luck that we missed the Fourth of July fireworks. We went to the theatre. We went to museums. We ate bagels and street vendor hot dogs and New York pizza. On our last night I wore pearls. We strolled through the plaza at Lincoln Center, watching the people milling, and others sitting near the sparkling spray from the fountains while the sun set. We walked through the golden summer evening to a restaurant where we drank frou-frou cocktails and giddily eavesdropped on our closely-packed fellow diners. Dinner proceeded: moules frites for Mr. Sanders, steak frites for me. And then there were the profiteroles. Divine.

As it has been stinky hot here, there and everywhere this summer, I decided last weekend to heat up the kitchen yet again and spent an afternoon attempting to recreate the dessert experience we had had in New York City, back in the before times. I wasn’t going to attempt profiteroles, because I didn’t want to deal with melting ice cream. I thought cream puffs might scratch the itch. And yes, they were everything I had hoped for. I hope you enjoy them, too.

Cream Puffs and Éclairs This is a straight forward recipe; it is just methodical and time consuming. I didn’t need to go to the store, for once: flour, butter, salt and eggs. The basics for choux pastry. I baked 2 dozen cream puffs and froze half of them, which feels like money in the bank. On Thursday morning I still have a plate of 5 filled cream puffs sitting in the fridge; such tempting riches! There will be 4 remaining after my lunch.

I abandoned the King Arthur website’s filling and icing recipes after I baked the choux puffs. I have much better solutions. One of the best cooking secrets I have ever stumbled over is about whipped cream. I am pretty sure the Brits are onto this, because they have Bird’s Custard Powder. We, plucky Americans, have instant vanilla pudding mix. I took 1 cup of heavy cream and whipped it until it was stiff, and then added 1 tablespoon of instant vanilla pudding mix, and 2 teaspoons of powdered sugar. The result is richer than regular whipped cream, but it is lighter than pastry cream. From now on I will be using this lighter homemade-ish pastry cream. Vanilla pudding mix and whipped cream

The icing that the King Arthur site suggests I think is too sweet. The crisp, eggy pastry and the cool, creamy filling deserve a snappy, sophisticated dark chocolate shell. I melted 3 ounces of good bittersweet chocolate (Ghiradelli, thank you very much) with 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter, and a tablespoon-ish glug of cognac. (You can use bourbon.) This was enough chocolate icing for generously dripping over a dozen cream puffs. Here is my Instagram of pouring the chocolate.

Be careful out there. COVID is roaring back. Stay home and enjoy your own cream puffs, and wait for the weather to cool down.

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life—and travel—leaves marks on you.”
-Anthony Bourdain

It is still hot, sticky August. We are counting down to the first day of school, the beginning of fall, the leaves turning, Labor Day, a break in the weather. As ever, torpid, slow moving August seems like the longest month. Spare me the pumpkin-spiced items that are popping up already. Do not put out displays of Halloween candy. It’s still August. It is National Peach Month. In fact, August 22 is National Eat A Peach Day and August 24 is National Peach Pie Day. I’d like to be a fly on the wall in the office that makes these bold pronouncements.

In the meantime, until National Day Of folks come calling, I feel honor-bound to celebrate peaches. Mr. Sanders and I wandered through our farmers’ market last Saturday, buying an assortment of colorful heirloom tomatoes and warm, fuzzy peaches. It looks like it has been a bountiful peach season despite the heat. The cheerful sunflowers are in bloom and the crape myrtles are nodding in their ruffled glory. As luck would have it, peaches, tomatoes and basil all make deelish salads, some of which don’t require much effort on my part beyond slicing, which is good because it has been so relentlessly hot that I have taken to napping in the afternoon, in a darkened room, alone with my Kindle and Gabriel Allon. It has even been too hot for Luke the wonder dog to go for an afternoon walk. Last night he had a twilight stroll around the block, when the sidewalk had cooled, and the fireflies lighted the way.

Our clever friends at Food52 have the perfect recipe for all those peaches and tomatoes; they call it the “supreme salad of summer.” It is lighter and tangier than the Caprese salads we have started to take for granted; no heavy, slick balsamic vinegar, but a tart apple vinaigrette. Tomato, Peach, Chèvre, and Herb Salad with Apple Vinaigrette. The goat cheese is lighter than fresh mozzarella, and has a little kick. Not that I will ever completely tire of Caprese salads, but I can always make use of another cool, easy-to-assemble dinner. The shallot is attractive and tasty, too. The chèvre was a challenge to find in my little grocery store, since we do not live in Brooklyn, but I was able to score a package, tucked away in the deli department. Be persistent! (I also used Heinz apple cider vinegar, not fancy-pants vinegar from Williams Sonoma, as the recipe suggests. We are on a budget.)

Martha suggests a Peach Panzanella, which I heartily endorse. I happen to have some day-old foccacia that will pair beautifully with the sweet peaches. Peach Panzanella. I am going to toss in a few home grown tomatoes, too, because we are experiencing a second wave of ripening tomatoes, just as the zinnias have started blooming.

Light, cool cheeses help vary summer meals. I love burrata cheese, but it is hideously expensive, and you have to use it up in mere minutes. It does not do well staying in the fridge; bring it home, eat it up. So plan on an early supper tonight. And get some great bread for grilling. I like to rub a garlic clove over the surface of the grilled bread , after it has cooled a little. Yumsters. This is a meal fit for your Tuscan fantasy: warm tomatoes, peaches and bread, with mouthfuls of cool, creamy burrata. Add a nice glass of cheap white wine. A veritable feast.
Tomato Peach Burrata Salad

We have lots of color in the garden these days. Ripening tomatoes, ranging from pale green, to yellow, to Indian summer scarlet. There are the tall and straggling zinnias, and a couple of bright green clumps of basil. The mystery guests have finally stopped noshing on the basil plants, so we have armfuls of basil again. I am hoping the enormous yellow garden spiders have been practicing their stitch-witchery magic in the raised garden bed because suddenly we seem bug-free. I saw the spider busily wrapping white bundles of writhing legs yesterday. Though the busy interstate traffic parade of ants continues, unabated.

“Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”
– Mark Twain

It has been a busy week in the Spy Test Kitchens. We have, in the interest of good taste and good food journalism, been testing cocktail recipes that we solicited from Food Friday’s gentle readers. I am surrounded by the detritus of the week’s experiments: every sort of glass, goblet, coupe, flute, Red Solo Cup and jelly jar that you can imagine holding a cool, refreshing summer cocktail. We’ve poured and measured, shaken and stirred gin, London gin, Navy Strength Gin, so many gins, vodka, rum, cognac, lemon juice, lime juice, pomegranate juice, simple syrup, coconut milk, tonic water, club soda, Coke, cranberry juice, Champagne and wine, and even elderflower liqueur. Oh, the things we do for the annual Summer Sips list!

In the Test Kitchen I have a little stash of Post-Its with scribbled notes in Mr. Sanders’s indecipherable scrawl. I’ve got a Google doc with recipes and links from loyal readers. There is even email with links to tasty drinks from the lovely Spy writer, Laura J. Oliver. Next year I think we will need an Excel spreadsheet to keep it all straight.

Our first recipe came from Spy reader Lesley Schless, with the intriguing name: Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler’s Gin Gimlet. You might remember the YA book, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg, about Claudia and Jamie, the children who ran away from home and took up residence among the treasures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. A dream come true for so many of us! At least the Gin Gimlet is an approachable escape.

Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler’s Gin Gimlet
From Lesley Schless

2 ounces fresh lime juice
Lime zest, to taste
1 ounce simple syrup
A few fresh basil leaves
4 ounces gin (or vodka)

Muddle basil leaves in the bottom of a cocktail shaker. Add lime juice and zest,
simple syrup, and a few ice cubes. Shake shake shake. Add clear stuff and shake some more. Pour in a chilled martini-type glass.  Aahhh….

Another reader recipe comes to the Spy from Lisa Meyers, whose recipe is capable of serving a party of hearty vacationers. Sunset on the dock, while waiting for the Sturgeon Moon to rise, is the perfect time for a pitcher of fruity sangria. Before the mosquitoes carry us away.

Peach and Blackberry Sangria
From Lisa Meyers

2 bottles white wine, such as Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc
1/2 cup Lyon Blackberry Rum
1 peach, in bite-sized slices
1 cup blackberries
1 can peach hard seltzer, such as White Claw

In a pitcher combine everything but the seltzer and chill for several hours. When ready to serve stir in peach seltzer and pour over ice and enjoy!

Should I be surprised that the French 75 is a favorite drink for Spy writers? It is my fancy, go-to cocktail, and it is Laura Oliver’s, too. Her recipe comes from the venerable Bon Appétit magazine website.

French 75
From Laura J. Oliver

1 1/2 ounces gin
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
3/4 ounce simple syrup
2 ounces Champagne
Long spiral lemon twist

Combine gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup in a cocktail shaker. Fill shaker with ice, cover, and shake vigorously until outside of shaker is very cold, about 20 seconds.
Strain cocktail through a Hawthorne strainer or a slotted spoon into a large flute. Top with Champagne; garnish with lemon twist.

The French 75 received its name after the French 75-millimeter light field gun used during WWI, the Canon de 75 modèle 1897 is the source of the name of the cocktail. It is a kick-y drink that packs the punch of artillery. I never have more than one. The Olivers also enjoy a Pomegranate Martini, which is a pretty pink, perfect for the holidays, or your Barbie-staycation sunsets on the back porch.

Not to be outdone, Mr. Sanders has three recipes for the French 75; two with gin, one with cognac. He is a completist. This weekend we managed to find the time to make Limoncello Spritzes. Wowser. Talk about artillery fire! Easy peasy, but a little too strong and sweet for me:
Thanks for sharing your recipes, Gentle Readers. Be sure to serve lots of deelish nibbles with your cocktails, and to responsibly enjoy your cocktail hour.

“The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you. It’s the same as going on a vacation. Some people spend all their time on a vacation taking pictures so that when they get home they can show their friends evidence that they had a good time. They don’t pause to let the vacation enter inside of them and take that home.”

― E. L. Konigsburg, From The Mixed Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Welcome to the hottest summer on record! As we try to walk every day, lingering under the shady trees as much as possible, Luke the wonder dog and I are longing to be home, in the coolth. He can at least lie on the floor, on top of the air conditioning vent. He also doesn’t have to worry about what to do with the sudden abundance of zucchini. Like Homer Price’s doughnuts, ripening zucchini is everywhere. Luckily, there are just about as many recipes for zucchini as there are the ubiquitous and magically regenerating vegetables themselves.

Very popular this year are zucchini boat recipes. I like the idea of filling hollowed out vessels of zucchini with a variety of fixings, vegetarian or not, and using up all the lingering leftovers. Zucchini Boats

Luckily, zucchini is oh, so versatile. You can find it in soups, salad, chips, galettes, casseroles, hidden in breads and cookies. You can roast it, slice it, twirl it. This is a link to a virtual compendium of zucchini recipes.

Do not be sneaky with zucchini. You don’t want to be the formerly favorite aunt who brings zucchini ginger cupcakes to the birthday party. Kids have a different perspective on summer. They never forget so-called “gourmet” baking experiments, or deliberate kid deceptions. https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Zucchini-Ginger-Cupcakes-1222207

Nobody is fooled by zucchini bread. Least of all the small children into whom you are trying to stuff healthy vegetables. They are wise to your ways. Discuss the benefits of adding vegetables to your daily diet before feeding them this delicious Lemon Zucchini Bread.

Good luck with the annual glut of zucchini. Just remember that they are the harbingers of fall and cooler weather. We just have to get through August first. And a good way to enjoy August is sitting in the shade, hoping for a breeze, having a cocktail before engaging with that pile of zucchini. Maybe even listening to a podcast, like Slate Magazine’s Culture Gabfest’s Annual Summer Strut.

Every year (except during COVIDtimes) these podcast hosts have asked their listeners to submit their favorite Song of the Summer, for strutting along merrily through the summertime heat. We listen to all these songs of summer as we walk the dog, walk to the ice cream shop, mow the lawn, and drive to the beach.

Here in the much vaunted Spy test kitchens, we will be listening to the Summer Strut while testing perfect summer cocktails. Something to sip after a long day at the drawing table. After walking on the sun-softened sidewalks with Luke the wonder dog. Something cool and delicious to remind us of summers past: vacations, sojourns, by the lake, by the ocean, in a hammock. Won’t you join us? We are asking Spy readers for their favorite drinks of summer: the Summer Sips 2023. Please email me your favorite summer cocktail recipes: [email protected] and next week we will share your recipes.

“The trouble is, you cannot grow just one zucchini. Minutes after you plant a single seed, hundreds of zucchini will barge out of the ground and sprawl around the garden, menacing the other vegetables. At night, you will be able to hear the ground quake as more and more zucchinis erupt.”
*
-Dave Barry

*This is my favorite zucchini quotation of all time, and I haul it out almost every year.

Summertime. Summer vacation. Long days on the water, or on the front porch, reading piles of library books. Waiting for the Good Humor man. Walking to the corner store for an Italian ice. Slicing into bone-chilling watermelon. Turning the hand crank to churn the ice cream. We have lots of childhood summertime memories.

Mr. Sanders remembers icebox cakes fondly. His mother would assemble Famous Chocolate Wafer icebox cakes in the summer, using the recipe printed on the side of the yellow, cellophane-wrapped box. She’d layer the brittle chocolate cookie wafers carefully, nestling them in a pan swathed in clouds of cool, whipped cream. After a few agonizingly long hours she would serve slices of cake – sweet, cool chocolate-y zebra patterns of black and white. A young boy’s dream dessert.

Snap awake in the present day: in the twenty-first century Nabisco has stopped making Famous Chocolate Wafers. Boom. That’s it. It’s over. Discontinued. There wasn’t even an announcement so we could stockpile them for our Doomsday prep. Unaware, I had been looking for them periodically as I walked by the wire shelf near the ice cream in our grocery store where I remembered seeing the packages, and there just never seemed to be any Famous Chocolate Wafers. There were plenty of bottles of Smucker’s Magic Shell Chocolate Fudge. And Hersey’s Syrup. And lots of ice cream cones. Plenty of sprinkles and dragées. But never any Famous Chocolate Wafers.

Last week NPR released the sad, sad news. NPR Famous Wafers Are No More There went a cool, sweet summer memory of childhood that could be recreated by a well-meaning grownup, now in our dotage, in the hottest summer we’ve ever known. In the grand scheme of things, with all of the problems of our post-COVID existence, this just seemed unfair. It was the very last straw. There wasn’t even an appeal process.

I set out to make that childhood taste treat. If NPR could publish a recipe for ersatz Famous Chocolate Wafers, then I could certainly follow it, and bring back a halcyon moment. I am nothing if not dogged.

I followed the directions in the article for “Chocolate Wafer Cookies and Ice Box Cake” from Zoë Bakes on Magnolia Network as reported by NPR, measuring carefully. I sifted together the cake flour, unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder, baking soda and kosher salt. I hauled out the enormously heavy KitchenAid stand mixer and religiously tipped in the room temp butter, the fog of confectioners’ sugar and the two teaspoons of pure vanilla extract. To which I added the sifted flour mixture. And then I looked sadly at the dry, crumbly mixture that resulted. It was evenly mixed, but it was never going to be dough. It looked like gritty cocoa. So I did a little backtracking, and found that even though NPR must have spell-checked the recipe, no one thought to compare the list of ingredients with the recipe writer’s actual recipe. There was no liquid listed to wet the ingredients, and hold them all together.

So DO NOT FOLLOW THE RECIPE in the NPR story. Here is the fancy pants version of it, with all of the ingredients listed: Fancy Pants Chocolate Wafers

In the end, I still could not make that modified recipe work. I could not slice the well-refrigerated dough into 1/8” circular slices. They wobbled. They oozed. They were not circles, but instead they were wily amoebas. Short of stomping my feet and huffing out of the kitchen, I improvised. I didn’t want to waste all that expensive Dutch processed cocoa, plus I had invested several hours on this sentimental journey, and we still needed a dessert. So I rolled the dough into little balls, rolled the balls in granulated sugar, and flattened the balls with a jelly jar dipped in sugar on parchment paper-lined cookie sheets to get a nice crisp sugary surface. Once the cookies had baked, and cooled, I slathered them with some softened mint chocolate chip ice cream. Yumsters.

And thus we began our new summer tradition, Faux Famous Wafer Ice Cream Sandwiches, with fat, homemade chocolate cookies. We now have a little stash of ice cream sandwiches in the freezer. They are perfect for today, when it is 91°F before noon. Thanks a lot, Nabisco. Thanks for the memories.

“Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.”
– Russell Baker