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Friends, I'm going to take the next few weeks of August off from the blog. I'm not really going fishing but I'm going to try and focus my attention getting organized before school starts and digging in on an exciting new work project and trying to squeeze in as much beach time with my boys as I can. I'll be back sometime during the first week of September.
Cheers!
We spent the weekend up in Michigan at our good friend Jonny's house, which overlooks Lake Michigan. This is a yearly ritual with the same core group of friends (Ted's childhood pals from Hyde Park) coming together to hang out at the beach, catch up on everyone's lives and of course, to gather around meals. And luckily, happily, this is a group that likes to cook and eat. As long as we've been doing this, we've divided up the meals so that each family pretty much prepares one meal or even a snack.
This year we were given Brunch on Sunday. This would be the last meal of the gathering. So I planned to just be super straightforward and do a mess of really excellent bacon from my buddy Crystal and farm fresh eggs, scrambled (Ted's job) and fresh slices of watermelon and a simple tossed green salad. Not complicated or exotic but still satisfying. The night before we had roasted corn on the grill and Jonny had made a ratatouille of sorts with tomatoes and zucchini. In the morning when I was pulling out the bacon and the eggs I saw several uneaten ears of cooked corn, a large uncooked zucchini, a small bag of fresh basil from my window box in Chicago, a bunch of parsely and a half a red bell pepper.
"Corn salad!" I announced to the fridge. It would be just the thing to round out the brunch offerings and really make it feel of the season. I mean, if corn doesn't sing "Summer!" then I don't know what does. Plus, I have this frugal/hyper-practical side and I hate to see things go to waste. So I cut the corn off the cob, diced and quickly steamed the zucchini, I rolled the basil into tiny cigars and sliced the leaves into ribbons, diced the red pepper and chopped up about 1/4 of a cup of parsely. Finally, I tossed in some crumbled Feta to balance the sweetness & crunch of the corn and the peppers with a little creamy saltiness. And there it was, summer in a bowl.
This is so easy to riff on. Had there been asparagus or cucumbers instead of the zucchini, I could have easily used those. Instead of basil I could have added ribbons of kale or spinach or mint. Instead of the peppers, red grape tomatoes would have been lovely. I used a squueze of lime and about a teaspoon of oil to bring it together but a prepared vinaigrette would have been just fine.
We had a really nice brunch. Ted's eggs were soft & fluffy and every piece of the bacon was eaten, the watermelon was juicy & cool, the salad was a nice foil to the bacon's bad-ass-ness. But it was the corn salad that made me happiest. I hope we get the last brunch again next year.
