humid days, over­flow­ing with charm

Well, every new­born thing has its grow­ing pains, I sup­pose, and my new blog is going through one… I can­not post pho­tographs now.   My bril­liant designer is work­ing on it in far­away Lon­don, in a dif­fer­ent time zone, try­ing to con­vince the mys­te­ri­ous pow­ers that be who con­trol my blog­ging that it isn’t enough for me to tell you that Avery has invented the best dessert of peaches and fresh cream with vanilla.  I also want you to SEE the dessert.

And I want you to see a beau­ti­ful thing that hap­pened two evenings ago: the sight of Avery through the kitchen win­dow, across the dark ter­race and through the lighted bath­room win­dow, cajol­ing, caress­ing, spoil­ing each kit­ten in its own way.  That’s right: we have kit­tens!  Three of them, adopted on Mon­day from the Dan­bury Ani­mal Wel­fare Soci­ety in a pour­ing rain­storm.  These kit­tens were described as “nearly feral,” and if only I could post about one of the thou­sand and a half pho­tos we have taken of them, you’d see the magic that Avery has wrought.  Right now two of them are on her lap and the third beneath her chin.  Nearly feral?  Not any more.  Two of them are long-haired gray and white striped, one with a white mask over her nose and mouth, and the third is short-haired and dark gray, with the same white mask and white socks.  Jes­sica, Jamie and Jes­samy.  We have five weeks to find homes for them, so con­sid­ered your­self informed.

I want you to see Avery atop Red Baron, the retired thor­ough­bred she’s been rid­ing on these hot, still, humid days.  It’s a funny mother thing with me: I always can pick her out of the crowd in the pool even with­out my glasses, or in a big group of girls on ponies, by the straight set of her shoul­ders, the proud curve of her back.  Her instruc­tor was due to have a baby last week, but was teach­ing the morn­ing she was sched­uled to be induced!  Now that’s ded­i­ca­tion.  She finally had to be dragged kick­ing and scream­ing away from the horses, hav­ing left them in the capa­ble hands of a school friend of hers, who comes to the lessons com­plete with Hud­son, a mas­sive golden retriever.

“He is gor­geous!” I say, stroking him, I who nor­mally does not grav­i­tate to dogs.  “He smells so good!”

“Yep, sham­pooed him just last night, he needed it, I can tell you, after swim­ming in the pond.”

“That pond, the one cov­ered in algae?” I ask, pointing.

“That’s the one.  Loves it.  Can’t get enough of it, gives him a break from the heat.”

And as we watched, the super clean dog trot­ted out of our sight, up a hillocky path and down again, and we heard a splash, saw him go under the scummy sur­face.  Where­upon he emerged, ran back to the sta­ble, dug a hole in the horsey sand sur­face of the rid­ing ring, and lay in it.

“Guess we’ll be back to the sham­poo tub tonight,” Lynne said resignedly.

Avery’s been hav­ing such fun jump­ing!  Even drip­ping with sweat!  Hon­estly, it’s been nearly a hun­dred for days and days.  Then there are mas­sive thun­der and light­ning storms, alleged to break the heat, but it’s back in pun­ish­ing inten­sity within hours.  Today, how­ever, the sky has been threat­en­ing all the late after­noon, a dark­en­ing pur­ple men­ace in the stul­ti­fy­ing heat, but no rain has devel­oped so far.  If only it holds off long enough for us to head up the road to Rich’s Ice Cream with Anne, David and Katie from across the road.  Katie has been a mir­a­cle with the kit­tens: quiet as a mouse, her eyes big with their Vic­to­rian charm, gen­tle hands, a delighted smile on her upturned face.  There is noth­ing like a baby ani­mal, unless it’s a baby per­son, and the sight of both together is quite impos­si­bly touching.

Kate, Jane and Molly

The heat has not kept us from our mam­moth ten­nis games, try­ing to strate­gize our arrival at the courts to get one in the shade,  hold­ing our arms out in the instant of a breeze, shield­ing our eyes from the glare, decid­ing “one bounce, or two bounces?”  Some­times it’s just bet­ter to let the ball bounce twice than to race heed­lessly into the sun to get it in one.  I shud­der to think what would hap­pen to my weight if we stopped play­ing, because I’ve been cook­ing like mad!  Of course the lus­cious fried shrimp, pro­duced today for Anne, David, Katie and also Joel and his two angelic girls, Jane and Molly.  And a super-light cole slaw of red and white cab­bages and fen­nel, with a dress­ing of the oil from a jar of mar­i­nated arti­choke hearts, plus lemon juice, bal­samic vine­gar, a goodly dol­lop of may­on­naise and a ton of fresh black pep­per.  And potato salad, lit­tle red guys still warm from the steamer, piled with cel­ery and a dress­ing of chives sus­pended in yet more mayo!

Have you been enjoy­ing the recipe index?  And the ran­dom recipe?  I find that so inspir­ing, that ran­dom recipe.  Why can’t I get moti­vated on my own, with­out that lit­tle push?  After all, I wrote the recipes myself!  But it takes that lit­tle reminder, not nec­es­sar­ily to MAKE what pops up, but to think out of the fridge, out of the rut.  How about a hot , dark-green pablano pep­per stuffed with goat cheese?  Sea­son that goat cheese with my all-time best sea­son­ing friend, Fox Point from Pen­zeys, and grill them for 15 min­utes or so… runny hot cheese, a crisp lit­tle spicy bite of pep­per, that’s a win­ner.  Wouldn’t you like to see a photo of it?  I know I would…

Grilled Stuffed Peppers

(serves 4)

4 pep­pers, as hot as you like (my brother in law assures me, “the smaller, the hotter”)

1 long log goat cheese

4 tsps Pen­zeys Fox Point Seasoning

sprin­kle olive oil

Sim­ply cut the stem out of each pep­per, as you would a Hal­loween pump­kin.  Reach inside the pep­per gen­tly, tak­ing care not to rip it, and pull out the white mem­brane and shake the pep­per upside down to get the seeds out.  Place a good big dol­lop of goat cheese into the pep­per and sprin­kle in a tea­spoon of Fox Point.  Cover the sea­son­ing with another good slug of goat cheese.  Pour a lit­tle olive oil into your hand and rub it all over the pep­per.  Grill over medium heat for about 15 min­utes.  A pep­per per person!

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We’ve indulged in an orgy of house-cleaning, believe it or not, unwill­ing to pay the lovely Maids who come just before we do at the begin­ning of the sum­mer, for a repeat visit.  And yet, if you had seen John’s t-shirt when he fin­ished vac­u­um­ing the entire house… he looked like he’d taken it straight from the wash­ing machine with­out ben­e­fit of dryer, poor man!  The three of us decided, after a few hours of back­break­ing labor and with the lin­ger­ing smells of bleach and Old Eng­lish pol­ish in the air, that we’d rather not be pro­fes­sional house­clean­ers.  But the house looked great, for a few hours, until daily life took its toll almost immediately.

I may have to roll up my sleeves one more time, before the big party in August to cel­e­brate the 200th birth­day of the house!

my pre­cious sign, hand­made by my dar­ling dad

Can you believe it?  For some rea­son, my blog allowed me to post this ONE photo!  But not any oth­ers so far.  We’ll keep work­ing on it.  Every sum­mer, when we first arrive, one of the first things we do is to run inside, get the sign from the shelf where it lives while we’re away, and hang it on the fence.  It’s our sig­nal to our lit­tle stretch of Amer­ica that we’ve arrived.

For the party, we’re invit­ing all the mem­bers of the South­bury Land Trust who saved our land and the house from being cut up and sold to devel­op­ers.  And all our friends and neigh­bors who’ve been din­ner guests and lunch guests.  We are inves­ti­gat­ing rent­ing a mar­quee, which an extremely sober fel­low at the hard­ware store informed me is called a “tent” in this coun­try.  OK.  It’s hard to be flu­ent in both Eng­lish and Amer­i­can.  I’m madly think­ing what to cook for maybe 30 peo­ple.  Stuffed grilled pep­pers!  Peaches and cream!  Sticky chicken wings with home­made peanut sauce, my brother-in-law’s lus­cious orzo salad with salami, Parme­san, peas and roasted red pep­pers.  And, if it won’t give him too swelled a head, his amaz­ing hot arti­choke dip with may­on­naise and Parme­san.  Spread on a bit of toasted baguette, you’ve died and gone to heaven.  Recipe in the index of course!

It’s back to fondling a fluffy kit­ten for me.  And here’s hop­ing for pho­tographs of them soon, if all the blog­ging wiz­ards can give me a hand…