The Spy Test Kitchens have been enjoying a breath of fresh fall air. The days have been beautiful with bright azure skies, brisk zephyrs, and a touch of frost on the windshield in the morning. It is a good time for walks with Luke the wonder dog, who was heartily tired of the hot summer. The brown, fallen leaves make poking his nose in every bush smell even more intriguing from his point of view, while more annoying to my end of the leash. Though I do enjoy trailing a curious, buoyant dog, happily trotting ahead of me, than the pokey puppy I was hauling around the neighborhood all summer long.

Luke is also fond of taking car rides. He likes going along on short excursions to the farm stand for various seasonal purchases. In the past few weeks we’ve taken trips to buy chrysanthemum plants for the front porch, pumpkins that we will never carve, and the most recent visit was to acquire more than enough apple cider to make a batch of apple cider doughnuts. There is nothing more tempting than a clutch of home-made doughnuts over a weekend. We have no steely resolve in this house as we prepare for our annual doughnut nosh.

At least we aren’t frying the doughnuts, so we can enjoy the first tastes of fall without worrying about fats and all of the cardiac dangers associated with fried foods. I love the silicone doughnut molds we have, which are bright Lego colors. That way we don’t have added temptation of orphan doughnut holes, sitting sadly on the kitchen counter, singing their alluring siren songs. I love the genius of reducing the cider on top of the stove to concentrate its flavor. This is why we like to read recipes, to gather in the vast and varied experiences of the home cooks who have cooked before! These doughnuts taste like a visit to the farm stand, without all the car windows wide open to give Luke the cheap breezy thrills of a car ride to the country: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/baked-apple-cider-donuts/

If you do want the experience of frying doughnuts, à la Homer Price (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Price), please take a look at Mark Bittman’s recipe for fried apple cider doughnuts. I haven’t tried this recipe, but I bet it is deelish: https://markbittman.com/recipes-1/apple-cider-doughnuts

Apple cider doughnuts only require about a cup and a half of cider. Whatever should we do with the rest of the half gallon? We are concerned about food waste, and apple cider is so delicious! Naturally our thoughts first turn to cocktails:

Apple Cider Smash: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/apple-cider-smash/

Spiked Hot Apple Cider Punch: https://www.joyfulhealthyeats.com/easy-hot-spiked-mulled-apple-cider-recipe/

And you can kill many trendy birds with this stone: https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a41312899/apple-cider-spritz-recipe/

But life is not a big cocktail party, sadly. We do need to eat dinner and be civilized for the greater part of the day. This is an ingenious way to use up some cider, and do something different with sausage: https://food52.com/recipes/73115-sausage-and-apple-pie

And here is a handy dandy list of recipes, for when you are tired of apple cider, but don’t want to waste a drop: https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/recipes/2016/09/10-recipes-to-make-with-apple-cider

It is a good time for change. It’s nice to wear sweaters again. Socks! What a novelty! I even had to pull on gloves for this morning’s trot through the neighborhood. I know in November that a 36°F morning will seem balmy, but today I watched mist rising from the grass where the sun was burning off the frost, and it felt good to bundle up a little bit. It will be divine to sink our teeth into warm, sweet apple cider doughnuts, too. Welcome, fall!

“Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable…the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street…by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.”
― Hal Borland

The Spy Test Kitchens strive to be au courant and topical. We read food columns, pour over cook books, watch trends, and avidly consume restaurant reviews. Because the writing can be delicious and clever, we get all sorts of ideas of what is new and innovative, and what to cook next. By the time a novelty food is featured as a gag on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” I think it is safe to assume the train has left the station, the novelty has worn out, or it just wasn’t a really great idea to begin with. It is passé. I point you to NyQuil Chicken, as an extremely bad cooking idea. Less dangerous, but no less odd, are butter boards.

NyQuil Chicken, also reported by NPR, was a bad joke popularized on TikTok, which is a popular site for young cooks to get new and groovy cooking hints. I like chicken, and once a year I like having a cold that demands a nighttime drug experience with NyQuil – I would never combine the two. I have seen photos of cooked NyQuil chicken: it looks sky-blue, not a color that is any way appetizing. In this NPR report, which details the dangers of poaching food in chemicals, it is green, and not in a healthy, leafy green vegetable way. DO NOT COOK NyQuil Chicken. https://www.npr.org/2022/09/22/1124252556/nyquil-chicken-challenge-fda-warning

Butter boards are extremely photogenic food and greatly popular on TikTok as well. (I first heard about them on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell me”, the NPR news quiz, which easily explains my demographic.) Butter boards are the natural progression of charcuterie boards, which seem to have outlived their usefulness as a novelty. The thrill of rolling up bits of deli meats have given way to schmearing cutting boards with pounds of softened butter (which is costly now, and in some markets, hard to find).

The butter is then covered with artfully tossed bunches of edible flowers, fresh herbs, handfuls of artisanal salts and peppers, and jewel-like baby vegetables, over which your guests then fawn, while spewing fresh post-COVID germs over each other. Your guests are supposed to twirl crusty slices of freshly baked peasant breads through these careful arrangements, scooping up butter and toppings, which in turn help to sop up the wine your friends are inhaling.

Add figs, add nasturtiums, add pomegranate seeds, add hot pepper jelly. You can clean your fridge out of all the fancy little glass jars of preserves, relishes and spreads that you own. But don’t make the cheese board an entire dinner. Maybe assemble a modest butter board for an appetizer while you are frantically shredding a Costco rotisserie chicken in the kitchen, attempting to make everything you serve look homemade.

You can pair a butter board with a cheese board, a crudité board, and a charcuterie board and put them out on the sideboard. So 1950s cocktail party. Peg Bracken would approve. Be sure to have lots of wine.

There is nothing that I like better (food-wise) than a glass of nice red wine, with a piece of crusty, warm and yeasty bread, with good butter. I tend to stop after one piece, though. I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, and I imagine she will look askance if I told her I was consuming mass quantities of butter for my dinner tonight. https://www.tiktok.com/@food52/video/7146324658722180394?

Go be trendy. Enjoy modern life. If you can find good, affordable butter, and want to share it with your friends, make a butter board. It’s easy, it’s pretty, and it’s tasty. And the holidays are upon us: https://cookthestory.com/holiday-butter-board/ Just no experimenting with NyQuil Chicken, please.

“‘Two days wrong!’ sighed the Hatter. ‘I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works!’ he added, looking angrily at the March Hare.
‘It was the best butter,’ the March Hare meekly replied.
‘Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,’ the Hatter grumbled: ‘you shouldn’t have put it in with the bread-knife.’
The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, ‘It was the best butter, you know.’”
-Lewis Carroll

This is a column from last year – I am gadding about on a field trip out of town. Have a great weekend. Go pick apples!

We almost always have a big bowl of green apples sitting on the kitchen counter. I tend to buy green apples, and that is the way I think of them, “green apples,”  when I should be thinking “Granny Smith.” Granny Smith apples are popular for eating raw and also for baking in pies. Which is about the extent of my apple repertoire.

The smart folks at Saveur magazine have a more novel approach, apples for every dinner course; “An All-Apple Dinner.”
http://www.saveur.com/article/Menu/An-All-Apple-Dinner

Apples are the harbinger of autumn and of school lunches and snacks gnawed after school while sitting at the kitchen table. I remember lolling the summers away in a neighbor’s back yard, where blowsy hydrangea blossoms wavered and the grass was covered with fragrant, rotting crabapples. That crabapple tree was a good height for climbing, too, always an added kid bonus. And there were grapevines, with lip-puckering green grapes. Eventually the grapes ripened into sweet purple orbs, which were perfect for spitting.

Apples remind me of brown-bagged lunches, with warm, wax paper-wrapped cheese sandwiches. They were an intrinsic part of the lunchroom smell: apples, old bananas, sour milk, vomit and the green sawdust the janitors used for sweeping up the floors.

Apples make me think of Jo March, scribbling in her cold New England attic, her inky fingers clutching apples as she nibbled away, scrawling her latest lurid tale. Apples bring knowledge and comfort, and at this time of year, and in these perilous times, there are plenty of reasons to eat them often.

There seem to be an equal number of apple dishes we can prepare as there are varieties of apples: apple sauce, apple butter, apple cake, apple pie, apple tart, apple cider, apple crisp, apple brown betty, caramel apples, apple turnovers, apple pancakes, apples and cheddar cheese… (Here are 80 apple recipes, all in one place: https://www.delish.com/cooking/g1968/easy-apple-recipes/ ) We discovered last night that Luke the wonder dog likes green apples. (He also likes iceberg lettuce, fresh asparagus, Roma tomatoes, green peppers and the sound of plastic-wrapped slices of American cheese.)

It’s a little early for the strolls through crunchy leaves, but the autumnal yen of eating crunchy apples can be indulged right now. You need to travel to your favorite farmers’ markets this weekend, and stock up on freshly picked treasures. Of course, it is always gilding the lily to do anything to an apple except wash it and take a bite. Even pies seem unnecessarily vulgar. Does an apple really need brown sugar, cinnamon and dabs of butter to taste better? Of course not! But any iteration of an apple is a good thing.

This Apple Crumble is easy peasy.

6 Golden Delicious or Braeburn apples, peeled, sliced into 1 inch pieces
4 tablespoons sugar
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoon lemon juice
Grated zest of one orange
2/3 cup melted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup uncooked oats

Preheat oven to 375°F

Mix apples, sugar, lemon juice and orange zest. In another bowl combine flour, oats, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Toss with butter. Combine with apple mixture in a buttered baking dish.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before serving. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a nice big wodge of whipped cream. Yumsters. All of the taste of apple pie with no fragile or temperamental pie crust to contend with.

The Farmers’ Almanac has a handy-dandy chart for which apples are best suited to various dishes: sauces, cider, pie and baking. http://www.almanac.com/content/best-apples-baking

“And there never was an apple, in Adam’s opinion, that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into for eating it.”
Neil Gaiman

Storm Ian will be paying us all a call this weekend. After it tore through Florida and then meandered its way up the coast, it’s going to be here in time for the weekend. I think it is safe to say that autumn has arrived.

It’s still too early to pull out all of the casserole dishes and stew pots and the slow cooker, but it seems like a little comfort food should be in order. There is nothing I like better than a nice roasted chicken, with a side of fluffy, buttery rice, but if I cook yet another simple, roasted chicken, Mr. Sanders is likely to keel over with boredom. I like monotony. I like predictable. I like routine. I like the fact that I can finally roast a chicken well. He would say that I like bland, white foods. He might have a point.

It has taken me a while to cotton onto the beauty of cooking in a cast iron skillet. They always seemed too heavy and unwieldy, and difficult to clean. It seemed like something we would bring camping, not use for home cooking. Now that I have been using this pan for about five years it isn’t intimidating any more. I can appreciate its versatility. I can admire its heft. Not only can I roast a chicken, I can make great personal pizzas, Dutch babies, corn bread, pork chops and even chili. And so I adored mastering Mark Bittman’s roast chicken recipe. https://markbittman.com/recipes-1/simplest-roast-chicken-8-ways

Much of my cooking is for just the two of us. Even if I think roasted chicken and rice is about the best possible home cooked meal, I need to respect my dinner companion’s tastes. And so, in consideration of our marriage, I upped the game ever so slightly recently, and I made lemon-strewn Chicken Française for dinner, with a side of fancy, cheesy risotto. There is nothing like a little continental flair to make dinner seem special. And the lemons were very pretty.

Chicken Française

(I halved this recipe. In fact, I used just one boneless chicken breast, slicing it to get 2 thin pieces, which I then flattened it with a rolling pin to get truly wafer-thin portions.)

4 large skinless boneless chicken breast halves (2 pounds total)
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 large eggs
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice plus 1 whole lemon, thinly sliced
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Step 1
Place chicken breasts between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and gently pound chicken with flat side of a meat pounder or with a rolling pin until 1/4 inch thick.
Step 2
Heat oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat until hot but not smoking.
Step 3
While oil is heating, stir together flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a shallow bowl. Dredge chicken, 1 piece at a time, in flour mixture, shaking off excess. Lightly beat eggs in another shallow bowl. When oil is hot, dip floured chicken into beaten eggs to coat, letting excess drip off, then fry, turning over once, until golden brown and just cooked through, about 4 minutes total. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels and keep warm, loosely covered with foil. Fry remaining chicken in same manner.
Step 4
Pour off and discard oil, then wipe skillet clean and heat butter over low heat until foam subsides. Add wine, broth, and lemon juice and boil, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until sauce is reduced to about 1/2 cup, for about 6 minutes. Spoon sauce over chicken and top with lemon slices and parsley.

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/chicken-francaise-108667

The risotto, since the truth must be told, came from a box. But I did make salad dressing from scratch, and for once I ironed the napkins. And there was candlelight and music, thank you, Alexa.

Mark Bittman thinks that risotto is a meal unto itself: https://www.bittmanproject.com/p/371308_mb-risotto-5-8- And I promise I will cook it his way one day, since he did not lead me astray with his roasted chicken, for this meal I took the easy way out.

This was a dinner that could not be beat, and it was fancy enough for a Sunday dinner, and familiar enough to satisfy my yearning comfort. And it was pretty.

Be careful with the tidal surges this weekend.

“Ordinary folk prefer familiar tastes – they’d sooner eat the same things all the time – but a gourmet would sample a fried park bench just to know how it tastes.”
― Walter Moers

“If we have less time alive than the time we have lived, shouldn’t it all be comfort food?”
― Terrance Hayes

We were entertaining grand delusions this past weekend. It was almost the end of summer, and the leaves were streaming down in the back yard. The light seemed to be changing angles, and there were new birds lining up at the bird baths. Surely fall must be right around the corner, so let’s start cooking for colder weather.

“Ha,” I say. “Ha, ha, ha!” It was 75 degrees this morning when Luke the wonder dog and I did our morning rounds. It’s going to 92 degrees this afternoon. Shorts are the order of the day, or naps in the cool, air conditioned shade under the drawing table if you happen to be of the canine persuasion. What were we thinking on Saturday when we started on the long and elaborate steps for making a short ribs ragu?

One of my favorite cold weather occupations is sitting at the kitchen island watching Mr. Sanders leisurely putter while preparing a spaghetti sauce. He opens many cans of fancy imported tomatoes. He rolls out perfect meatball orbs. He browns pounds of sausage links in his deliberate, messy way. He will use many pans and pots. There will be splatters of tomato sauce found in the strangest, most far-flung places. Luke is on constant patrol for any deliciousness that happens to fall off the cutting board. It is obviously why people love to go to open-kitchen restaurants: food is theatre. It explains The Food Channel.

I took up my station on top of my favorite stool on Saturday, watching the Byzantine process, as we were lulled by the calendar into thinking that fall is just around the corner. It’s going to be time to cuddle up inside, and keep each other warm, and entertained, and well-fed. In the meantime, I can watch the painstaking process of making the gremolata:

• 1 large garlic clove, minced
• Grated zest of 1 large lemon
• 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon olive oil

Watching the washing, peeling, mincing, chopping, grating become mesmerizing. My suggestion of using the food processor for this stage of food prep was met with a withering look. How dare I? His slow, dextrous, manual labor is a part of the creation; the process.

On Sunday night, once the ragu had aged in the fridge overnight, we went full tilt with salad, garlic bread, red wine, candles, and short rib ragu served on a bed of Pappardelle pasta. Then we waddled into the living room to watch 60 Minutes. Just like our parents did. We managed a little time travel while we were deep in denial about the current weather conditions. Welcome to our delusions!

Here is a handy list of the many different kinds of pasta. This should keep you busy until spring: https://www.tastingtable.com/764058/types-of-pasta-and-when-you-should-be-using-them/

Our friends at Food52 devised this version, but Mr. Sanders preferred to use the Pappardelle pasta – as he is trying to recreate a meal he had years ago at a very swishy London restaurant, of a wild boar ragu served with Pappardelle. He came pretty close this time. If only it had been raining and 50 degrees…
https://www.seriouseats.com/food52s-short-rib-ragu

This is a fussier version of Mr. Sanders’s Sunday Short Rib Ragu: https://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/short-rib-ragu-with-fresh-pappardelle.html No cinnamon sticks were to be had, sadly

This illustrates clearly the many steps required: https://www.sipandfeast.com/red-wine-braised-short-ribs/

We are not the only folks who are thinking ahead a bit prematurely. Yesterday, on the last full day of summer, Luke and I noticed that one house on our street has gone full-steam-ahead with their Halloween decorations. There are fluttering ghosts, wispy witches and a plethora of pumpkins. We are not the only folks getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. Keep cool!

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”
― Tom Bodett

There is less than a week of summer to go – though judging by the current temperatures, we might have another couple of weeks of warm weather. If you have packed up your white shoes for the season already, you can join us for a cocktail on the back porch, and wait for the leaves to start falling. Fold up those sweaters. We can chat about some of our memorable summer meals.

In June Mr. Sanders finally ordered his dream Ooni pizza oven, which is supposed to revolutionize the way we make Friday Night Pizza. I am not sure if the quality of the pizza has improved – but the speed with which he makes a pie has certainly increased. And our carbon footprint might be lessening, too. When we make pizza the old fashioned way, in the house, we heat up the pizza stone in the gas oven for half an hour at 525°F. That’s a lot of gas. The Ooni, which resides on the back porch, is also gas-fueled, heats to the eyebrow-singeing 900° F in about 10 minutes, and then the pizza cooks in a flash: about 90 seconds. Amazing. There has been a steep learning curve, and we have found that the corn meal we like to put on the pizza peel for easy sliding of the pie into the oven doesn’t work well in the Ooni. It incinerates, practically upon contact with the Ooni pizza stone. One of our favorite home cooks advised us to switch to semolina flour, and that works like a charm.

We enjoyed al fresco dinners on the back porch during June and July, and then the summer visitors, the mosquitoes, arrived for their turn in the timeshare. Ah, well.

This was the summer of Old Bay Seasoned Goldfish! That was a joyous event. Sadly we have never been able to buy more than the initial couple of bags. But it gave grocery shopping a new sense of purpose and adventure to be hunting for Old Bay deliciousness.

Sweet juicy watermelon this summer was fantastic. And so were the peaches. Oooh, and icy radishes with good butter. And then we ventured out for dinner for the first time since COVID and had a lovely appetizer with slices of local tomatoes, peaches, basil and tiny little clots of a soft bleu cheese. We recreated it at home with cherry tomatoes, local peaches, arugula and soft, fresh mozzarella. That was a taste of summer we can never have in January with hot house tomatoes, imported peaches and refrigerated mozzarella.

Mr. Sanders travelled to Boston where he had a hot dog at a ball game at Fenway, which I am assured is an almost religious experience. It was enhanced with lashings of yellow mustard. And beer. I think that beating the Yankees helped give the hot dog some extra umami. He also had a lobster roll along the way, a taste of New England. Another New England friend had lobster, clams, oysters, crabs, shrimp, mussels and every other sort of seafood she could order at every possible opportunity. Everything tastes better with butter in the summer. https://food52.com/blog/13581-how-to-clambake-at-home-without-a-recipe

We ventured out for barbecue a couple of times, which isn’t necessarily a summer food, but the smell of the hickory wood smoke makes it a delightful temptation. Throw in some cole slaw, and I am happy.

The little girl across the street had a lemonade stand one day this summer. One glass of sickly sweet Wyler’s-powdered-lemonade-mix-lemonade is about all my fillings can stand a year. The home-baked, lopsided sugar cookie was also very sweet, but less chemically so.

We made strawberry shortcake a few times, with locally-grown strawberries. But we still haven’t had any Key Lime Pie. Shocking. I am going to bake one this weekend. Even though I get the juice from a bottle from the grocery store, it still tastes of summer. As if one ever needs an excuse to have whipped cream. We’ll say goodbye to summer with style. Maybe we can find a Red Sox game on TV, and have hot dogs, too. https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/nellie-and-joes-key-lime-pie Don’t even think about doing meringue, whipped cream is the way it is done in Key West.

And finally, marmalade sandwiches will never seem the same after this summer. Too sweet, too poignant. Thank you, Ma’am.

“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

We got out of town on Labor Day weekend – just for a day trip on Saturday. No trips to the beach, no mountain excursions, no lounging by a hotel pool. (Also no Luke the wonder dog, who spent the day frolicking with other dogs at the Spa.) We drove to the big city (Raleigh, NC) for some serious consumering. And we may have surpassed any previously established endurance record, even for us: three grocery stores and one farmers’ market in one day. We have skills.

We live in a small town, which has adequate grocery store choices, and a nice weekly farmers’ market, but sometimes we just want to be amazed. The North Carolina State Farmers Market is glorious to behold. It is open 365 days of the year. It is vast and sprawling. https://www.ncagr.gov/markets/facilities/markets/raleigh/ The market is 30,000 square feet of fresh produce and plants, with baked goods, crafts, and floral displays. It is enormous.

We parked the car under a shady tree and began to wander though the crowd with our NPR shopping totes grasped in our sweaty little paws. We pushed our way through the first building, looking at artful piles of peaches, tomatoes, okra, onions, and cabbages. There were also displays of potted garden plants, hand-tied bouquets of flowers, hand-made baskets, watermelons, sunflowers, burlap bags of peanuts, and an abundance of brightly-colored dahlias. It was difficult to know when to stop and make a decision. If we buy peaches from this farmer, what if the next farmer’s booth has prettier peaches? Suddenly we were confronted with our inability to make a single choice. Stendahl Syndrome had overwhelmed us in under half an hour. We were not in Florence, nor were we viewing magnificent paintings, but our senses were quickly overloaded with information, colors, options, babies in strollers, the rich and heady smell of fresh lilies, and noise. Luckily, sharing a freshly baked chocolate cookie seemed to revive us.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2018/dec/18/stendhal-syndrome-botticelli-the-birth-of-venus

Nothing on earth could prepare you for the peppers display in one enormous and colorful booth. It was incredible. It was epic and grandiose. It was Homeric. Ronnie Moore’s Fruits & Veggies floored me. Listen to the varieties of hot peppers arranged on one side of the display: Thai Chilies, Tabasco, Scotch Bonnet, Jamaican Scotch Bonnet, Big Red Naga, Big Black Naga, Naga, White Ghost, and Habanero. You were invited to mix and match. There are more: Death Spiral, Bleeding Borg, Big Red Mama, Sugar Rush, Serrano, Hot Banana, Dragon’s Toe, Cayenne, Carolina Reaper, Holy Mary and Wicked Ass.

Holy smokes, literally. I grew up very bland food home. We had the occasional green bell pepper, sliced and tossed into an iceberg lettuce salad. I am so much more sophisticated and worldly now – I buy red, yellow and green bell peppers for our bagged spring greens and spinach salads. I use at least one jalapeño a week. I have a jars of cayenne powder and paprika tucked in with all my out-of-date dried spices. Ronnie Moore would laugh at the lack of pepper heat in our diets. There is a lot of living to be done outside our little town.

I bet the heat from all those peppers ranges from mild, fruity and sweet, to spicy and feeling a little heat, a bit of singe, to an intense, crazy burn. I don’t know if I have the genetic fortitude to tolerate the intense heat, since mere pickled jalepeños make me sweat.

Luckily, there have been brave folks who have done the research and invented the Scoville Scale which measure units of heat in peppers. Example: Carolina Reaper: 2,200,000 Scoville Heat Units, while a Scotch Bonnet has a mere 350,000 SHU. A Tabasco pepper has 50,000 SHU, while a Jalapeño has 10,000 SHU. A Bell pepper has 0 SHU, and a Chipolte has 8,000 SHU.

Here is a handy, dandy reference for you if you wander into a pepper display: https://pepperjoe.com/pages/hot-pepper-heat-scale

We came home from the Market with big bags of tomatoes and peaches, and a cardboard container of okra. We’re going to enjoy a couple more sweet tomato sandwiches, which taste like summer to me. I’ll wait until winter to try the warming heat of a Scotch Bonnet or a Dragon’s Toe. Go visit a farmers’ market this weekend, and be prepared to be amazed!

I love the warning that precedes this recipe – to wear gloves when handling the Scotch Bonnet peppers. I have gotten jalapeño juice in my eyes before, and it is painful. Scotch Bonnet juice must be truly alarming. https://www.savoringitaly.com/easy-pickled-scotch-bonnet-peppers/

“Pepper and salt are indispensable in a delicious meal but if they dominate other ingredients, the meal is ruined.”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu

It’s that time of year. Again. Neighbors furtively slipping their excess zucchini harvest onto your front porch, before dashing back home. These are the times that try cooks’ souls: what to do with all the excess zucchini baggage.

Luckily tomatoes are peaking now, and they provide excellent camouflage for zucchini: https://www.eatyourselfskinny.com/summer-zucchini-tomato-gratin/

What are we to do with all the zucchini? It doesn’t look very nice on the windowsill – the many tomatoes in varying stages of ripening are much more attractive. With school starting soon it is time to say good–bye to summer, and to turn on the oven, as you rid yourself of demon zucchini.

An elegant galette is a good way to start your purge. The crust is easy and forgiving, and it is soothing to lay out all the zucchini rings in ever widening circles. You will look very competent and trustworthy. And then you can start to spring these other surprises on the unsuspecting. If you have a garden, you have been harvesting tomatoes with a greedy heart, thinking about the jars of spaghetti sauce you will enjoy this winter. But what about that ever-rising green mountain of zucchini? You need to put on your thinking cap, and find some creative culinary solutions. https://www.purewow.com/recipes/zucchini-ricotta-galette-recipe

That one packet of seeds you planted can probably take care of a family of four from now until next planting season. The prospects are daunting. But do you want to be the formerly favorite aunt who brings zucchini ginger cupcakes to the picnic at the lake? Not if you want those kids taking care of you in your old age! They never forget so-called “gourmet” baking experiments, or deliberate kid slights. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Zucchini-Ginger-Cupcakes-1222207

Do not be this person. Do not be a vegetable sneak. Those fourth grade girls will make your life a living hell, and I will pay them to do it! Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies http://www.food.com/recipe/chocolate-chip-zucchini-cookies-61402

Instead, be like Nigella. Warm, earthy, sweet and flavorful. And perhaps you will develop a cute British accent. Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Chip Cookies https://www.nigella.com/recipes/chocolate-chip-cookies

Nobody is fooled by zucchini bread. Least of all the small children into whom you are trying to cram healthy vegetables. You might fool them once, but never twice. Here is one recipe for you to try, you shameless exploiter of small children. Lemon Zucchini Bread: http://www.lemontreedwelling.com/2017/03/lemon-zucchini-bread.html

One of the best ways to reduce your zucchini surplus is to invite unsuspecting houseguests. Breakfast is usually a good time for a surprise zucchini onslaught. The white wine from last night isn’t out of their systems yet, and the coffee hasn’t kicked in. They will need food. A hot and cheesy frittata, please. If they were raised to have minimally good manners, they will eat whatever is placed in front of them, and then they will ask for seconds, and also for a copy of your recipe. Print the recipe in advance, so you look gracious and artfully prepared. Ina Garten’s Zucchini and Gruyere Frittata Squares https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/zucchini-and-gruyere-frittata-squares-5505844

It has been a record year in our neighborhood for zucchini harvests. You should have a variety of zucchini recipes lined up: breakfast, lunch and dinner. You are going to be working on a veritable squash assembly line. And you will look back fondly on these wacky summer zucchini days when you are scraping ice off your windshield come February. Really.

Breakfast: Thank you, Food52, Lemon Zucchini Pancakes 
https://food52.com/recipes/17054-lemon-zucchini-pancakes-with-a-heart-of-brie

Lunch: Thanks to A Spicy Perspective, Zucchini and Green Chutney Salad
http://www.aspicyperspective.com/zucchini-and-green-chutney-salad/

Dinner: Cooking to impress, from Sur la Table – Baked Sole Roulades http://www.surlatable.com/product/REC-204/Baked+Sole+Roulades+with+Zucchini+Stuffing

Get cracking!

“Vegetables cooked for salads should always be on the crisp side, like those trays of zucchini and slender green beans and cauliflowerets in every trattoria in Venice, in the days when the Italians could eat correctly.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

Food fads, like fad diets, come and go. Seasonally, month-to-month, by region, per pop culture or by evil corporate design: avocado toast, cold brew coffee, kale chips, everything bagel seasoning, sun-dried tomatoes, fast-casual dining, cupcakes! I haven’t been out of town for a few months, so I cannot say with any authority what is happening on the rest of the planet, but in the tiny corner that I inhabit it looks as if pickle juice has taken over the food world. Just a few minutes ago I was idly wandering through the Facebook minefield, as one does when procrastinating, and I found this link in Bon Appétit via Vivian Howard: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/pickle-juice-ice-pops? That’s it. The summer of pickle juice has jumped the shark.

I used to snap photos of bizarrely flavored potato chips to send to my college- aged son, since we largely communicated about food the way we used to chatter about Harry Potter. He is living in a big city now, and has developed new layers of civilization and couth. I doubt if the pickle juice phenom has entered his ivory tower. But pickle juice is ubiquitous. It might not seem bizarre any more, merely mainstream. Have you ever been stopped in your tracks by the sight of a bag of Lay’s potato chips?

I visited the Lay’s potato chip site, and the marketing mavens there have answered my unspoken question: “LAY’S® has potato chips for any occasion”. I mainly think of potato chips as a lunchtime, salty, crunchy treat. What better accompaniment to a sad, lonely tuna sandwich than a little bowl of chips? And at cocktail hour, potato chips and perhaps a piquant dip are divine. How many other occasions are there, that we need flavor-specific chips?

What is the perfect occasion for Flamin’ Hot Flavor? Lay also have Chesapeake Bay Crab Spice Flavored Chips, and Limon Flavored, as well as Chile Limon Flavored. (I fully embrace Sour Cream and Onion chips, having consumed several dozen bags during my college years, but Utz was always my fave.) And, of course Lay has two varieties of pickle: Dill Pickle and Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle. Which should I serve for cocktail hour? Which is more correct – one wouldn’t want to appear gauche or unsophisticated. But why stop at potato chips?

Pickle juice is the newest flavor for so many taste treats that we must have been taking for granted all these years. Consider dill pickle peanuts. Dill pickle soda. How have we lived without Archie McPhee’s dill pickle mints? Did you know there are pickle-flavored sprinkles, that you can scatter on bowls of ice cream? Trader Joe’s has pickle-flavored popcorn seasoning. There is even pickle-flavored vodka – better for cocktail hour, less so for lunchtime.

We did some research here in the Spy Test Kitchens. Yes, we took the easy way and bought some potato chips – just Dill Flavored, not Flamin’ Hot. And if I ever get to Trader Joe’s again I plan to pick up a jar of dill pickle seasoning salt for popcorn. We have actually cooked some chicken that had been brined in dill pickle juice. We always have multiple jars of pickles in the fridge. A jar of Vlasic, one jar from Aldi, and a hotter variety by Wickles (https://wicklespickles.com) Yummm. Thank you Food52: https://food52.com/recipes/77484-pickled-chicken

The chicken was tasty. I don’t know if the novelty of its extra tang warrants permanent inclusion in our chicken dinner rotation, though. It reminded me of Chick-Fil-A, without the waffle fries. Better to have chicken at home.

Here are some other ways that you can use the taste of summer: https://www.seriouseats.com/a-gazillion-ways-to-use-leftover-pickle-juice

I found this mother-daughter Tik Tok pair a delight: https://www.tiktok.com/@floridamomof3/video/7125388826205375786?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

https://www.tiktok.com/@floridamomof3/video/7124816889439784238?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

https://www.tiktok.com/@floridamomof3/video/7121875932842855726?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

You can reenact scenes from The Bear, and make your own Italian beef sandwiches: https://www.readyseteat.com/recipes-Spicy-Italian-Beef-Sandwiches-10164

Maybe it is the heat, maybe it is the residual effects of post-COVID. Pickle juice is all around. Plunge in.

“But in a jar put up by Felicity,
The summer which never maybe was
Has been captured and preserved.
And when we unscrew the lid
And slice off a piece
And let it linger on our tongue:
Unicorns become possible again.”
-John Tobias

The Spy does not have an annual Summer Strut feature like Slate Magazine’s Culture Gabfest. Every year (except during COVIDtimes) the podcast hosts solicit the listeners to submit their favorite Song for the Summer, for listening to while strutting along merrily through the summertime heat. These are zeitgeist songs we hear blaring out from passing cars, or wafting over the hedge from the neighbor’s cookout, or from a dance floor. 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.

It’s a way to feel good in all of this sweltering heat. The Slate folks have compiled the list for more than ten years. It is a great reminder of how much popular music there is out there, and how hard it is to keep up. So you should liven up your playlist, and try something new. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2oc68EJC3OyLUi1Honhxlw?si=44ec68203e8d47a9&nd=1

Here in the much vaunted Spy test kitchens, we will be listening to the Summer Strut songs while testing perfect summer cocktails. Something to sip after a long day at the drawing table. After walking on the melted 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? Next year we will solicit Spy readers for their favorite drinks of summer: the Summer Sips 2023.

A classic, bubbly vodka and tonic immediately brings to mind the thrill of trailing your hand through the water while idling in a lazy canoe. But that was then, this is now. How about a Dirty Shirley? It’s been suggested by the New York Times that this is the drink of Summer 2022.

Dirty Shirley

Ice
2 ounces vodka
1 ounce grenadine
8 ounces Sprite or 7-Up
1 maraschino cherry
Fill a tall glass with ice. Add the vodka and grenadine to the glass. Add Sprite and top with the cherry. Yumsters.

Here is a classic that’s not so sweet: Aperol Spritz

2 parts Aperol
2 parts Prosecco
1 part club soda
Combine over ice in a wine glass or any glass you’d like. Garnish with an orange wedge.

My mis-spent youth: Cape Codder

2 ounces vodka
2 ounces cranberry juice
Juice of half a lime
Club soda
Use a tall glass and combine vodka and cranberry juice, lime juice and some ice. Stir. Top with club soda. Garnish with a lime wedge.

We’ve missed Wimbledon, but surely there is a croquet game in our future before school starts again? In which case, Pimm’s Cups are in order:
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/drinks/a9967357/pimms-cup-recipe/

Frozen Prosecco.
One of my favorite Saturday evening indulgences: https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a21085218/frozen-prosecco-recipe/

Not every drink has to be alcoholic. There are plenty of non-boozy ways to cool off this summer, too. Mr. Sanders is very fond of an Arnold Palmer – simple, thirst quenching, IG-ready:
https://www.thespruceeats.com/arnold-palmer-mocktail-recipe-760357

This is as refreshing and cool as sticking your feet in a pool: Cucumber Lime Mocktail
https://www.vibrantplate.com/cucumber-lime-mocktail/

All those blueberries in your freezer can now be pressed into service for something other than pancake and muffins: Blueberry Ginger Coolers: https://www.cookwithmanali.com/blueberry-ginger-cooler/

To celebrate summer winding down, you need to plan ahead a little bit, and make your own homemade Limoncello. It takes a week or so. You can pretend to be in Italy, sitting out on the piazza with the rest of the village, groaning with pizza and pasta. A cool digestif is just the thing while finishing a nice indulgent evening meal, with the sun going down, feeling the ancient cobbles that are still warm under your weary, sandal-shod feet: https://food52.com/recipes/76746-limoncello-e-pepe Now that is a dream summer vacation.

“Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered…sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks…”
― Ray Bradbury