Two-Part Invention

Summer is not the time for heating an oven and stirring at the stove. Cold foods, quick preparation, seasonal bounty abound. So why am I eating pasta?

I spend a large part of the year in efficiency mode subsisting on eggs and broccoli (thanks, Cami), quesadillas (I’ll eat anything in a tortilla), seasonal salad. Both going to the market and cooking is one step too many. I can do one or the other. Something has seized me this summer. I believe it is the power of suggestion. I cannot turn around but I find a recipe that wills me to make a list and run to the store. Today I went expressly for a sweet onion (yes, one sweet onion) to make once more the mint, feta, and watermelon salad. While compiling the salad, I peeled, chopped, and cooked together summer fruits to send peach-raspberry-lavender jam home with my guests who agreed to consume the watermelon salad (it doesn’t keep). By my calculation, the jam will be sufficiently chilled to eat in half an hour. Maria donated her edible dried lavender.

One weekend in recent history found me cooking numerous onions for rigatoni with five lilies and ricotta salata. I searched three stores for ricotta salata that I finally spied at Whole Foods. The five lilies cooked down to a colorful mélange of roasted sweetness, wintry and warm.

The next weekend, bent on concocting pappardelle with zucchini blossom sauce, I bought zucchini squash blossoms (14 blossoms for $1 . . . was there something wrong with the scale?) at the DM Farmer’s Market. The pappardelle was no picnic either. I went the same three places for that, refusing to pay over $6 for 8 ounces of dried pasta. I broke down after futile attempts and called it a wash. On a tip-off, I found it at Trader Joe’s for under $2. Incredible, no?

This is what I’ve been eating this summer. How ‘bout you?