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| First day of Summer and yet more raindrops decorate my window. |
At this point I look at the rain gauge, dump it out, share my reading with the other gauge-keepers on our corner, and try to put the amounts out of my mind. 3.3 --- 2.1 --- 2 --- .7 (wa-hoo under an inch!) and 2. All in the past week. One good thing, the Lake is going into the season very full!
We've been more fortunate than many. Farm fields and basements have been flooded out. Here the ground is soggy. Large mushrooms are popping up, but they're not morels so I'm ignoring them. The grass grows to beat the band when the sun does shine. And parts of the vegetable garden is thriving. Tomatoes and cucumbers are setting fruit. Green beans are blooming. Pole beans are climbing. The squash is still a bit slow. Then there are the peas and spinach. More about them in a bit.
It has been a wet and very strange year. After a relatively dry winter we had 30 inches of snow in late March and APRIL! The product of three blizzards with sustained 30 mph winds and even stronger gusts. I swear I shoveled out the same 4-foot drift a dozen times... maybe even a baker's dozen times. The extraordinarily late spring has delayed a great deal around the lake.
The dock installers were working 7-day weeks with very long hours to get docks set up before the Memorial Day start of the season. Unusually high temperatures in mid-May and into June with heat indexes in the 100s came next. And just as the dock crews were almost finished with just a few to go, the wall cloud rolled over the lake tearing out docks and shredding boat lift covers, upending some boats, and off the lake uprooting trees in city Park and along the north shore. Today on the first day of summer the weather seems like fall. We have a chilly mist, driving wind, white caps for a generally dreary day where no one can do any outdoor work.
So now the peas and spinach
Back to the snowy spring. The garden was too cold and wet to put peas and spinach in the ground. In fact it was under feet of snow when I usually plant. So I decided to plant some in pots in the garden. They came up fairly well. The crop was small. Last week. when the heat index was 103 I decided it was too hot to cook. So I thawed out some grilled chicken, harvested the entire pea crop -- about 1/4 cup and entire spinach crop -- about 1 cup -- and tossed together a light supper.
It was just the meal we needed to dream of normal summer days. Temperatures in the 80s. Low humidity. Light rain showers ONLY overnight.
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| On the plate: Chicken Salad with fresh peas, spinach and cucumbers drizzled with balsamic dressing, deviled eggs, and French bread with what I'm calling "So-So Fruit" Compote |
2 cups diced cooked chicken
1/2 cup diced celery
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup pecan halves
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 cup (more or less) light mayonnaise
Combine all ingredients. Chill for at least half an hour before serving. Will keep in the fridge for two days.
Just like this season's weather sometimes the peaches and pineapple are not what you think they are when you get them home... So here's the recipe for:
"So-So Fruit" Compote
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 2-inch sprig fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon cilantro leaves
one peach, peeled, stoned and cut into roughly 1/8 pieces
1/2 - 3/4 cup fresh pineapple chunks
1/4 - 1/2 cup pitted fresh cherries
Make a syrup combining the sugar and water in a medium saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add the rosemary and cilantro. Continue cooking for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cover. Set aside to cool. When ready to make the compote, remove the rosemary and cilantro leaves. Add fruit to syrup and pulse with an immersion blender until the fruit is in very small pieces, but stop before you have a puree. Pour mixture into a skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until the compote is thickened. Will keep in the fridge for up to two weeks. Good on bread, or ice cream.
