Summer Sojourn

slowly sliding into stew season

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (September, 2003)

I am having a Sunday, reclined on a chaise on the deck. Tomorrow is Labor Day, a Labor Day too early to be the traditional end of summer. I’m looking back on past summers, riding a wave of nostalgia. Nothing I’m remembering ever happened to me.

It’s all a fiction I make up as I go along. I’m inspired by journalists who keep writing articles about the eleven-bedroom “cottages” of their youthful summers on Cape Cod, in the Hamptons, in Maine. I love those people and their special places. I can practically remember their rituals as if they are mine: picking blueberries along the path to the dock, playing tennis with my siblings on my fabled family’s own court. The sleeping porch is my favorite borrowed memory. I loved those cool August nights when we would pile all the blankets we could muster from the eleven-bedroom closets. And dressing for dinner: A clean blouse or chinos was usually enough to satisfy my fictitious parents, those people who called the place “just a little camp.”

As I said, these are confiscated recollections. The sociology of other people’s ritualized vacations, recorded in stories in travel sections of the newspaper, intrigues me. It’s as if I know exactly how it feels to come to the end of a summer sojourn at the four-story, gabled, stabled, bay-windowed cottage my family has owned for at least four generations. As if I know how sad it is to bid farewell to the local people who have mowed our lawn all summer, kept our gardens groomed, and cleaned our eleven bedrooms at least once a week.

Again (just to remind you), this is nothing but fantasy, and harmless enough. But the charm of filched recollections is beginning to dim. This Sunday afternoon on the deck is real life in a place I love. This is now, and it’s nonfiction. My violet-painted toenails wink back at me from the other end of the chaise. They remind me that very soon, when sock season returns, bare feet will be just a memory, but a memory of my own.

I look up and over the railing to see a monarch butterfly coasting low over the grass and stopping at nearly every late-season dandelion on the flight path. I can trace its flapping wings, brilliant orange in the sun, for quite a distance. Now the elegant creature dips under the broad yellow awning above my head and makes a pass at my sweatshirt, which is dotted with multicolor pompoms.

By the time I return to the deck, it is now the magenta blossoms of the tall Scottish thistles that entice the butterflies and the monarch has hitched up with a mate. A praying mantis is clinging to the screen door in the pose that gives the handsome creature its name. Says Bob, wryly, “Well, of course. It’s Sunday.”

As many Septembers as we have chalked up, we never can believe it’s September when it comes. How does it happen that the tourists have fled and the youths have shed summer jobs to return to college—so fast?

And so we ease our own way into position in front of the stove, crockpot, microwave, toaster oven, whatever turns raw things into cooked. Fondly remembering a summer of salads, we look forward once move to a season of stews.

Karyl’s Headnotes

“This is what I call one good soup,” Bob says, each time we have this for supper, even in the hottest weather. It’s a meatless recipe, but for those so inclined, sautéed chicken strips or browned ground beef can be added.

TORTILLA REFRIED SOUP (VEGETARIAN)

Makes 8 servings

• 1 medium onion, sliced

• 1 clove garlic, minced

• 1 t. each cumin and crushed red pepper

• 2 t. each dried thyme and oregano

• 1 T. olive oil

• 16-oz. can refried beans

• 14.5-oz. can black beans, rinsed & drained

• 14.5-oz can plain diced tomatoes, unseasoned

• Half a 6-oz. can of tomato paste

• 5 c. vegetable broth

• A bag of corn tortilla chips

For garnish:

• Shredded Pepper Jack cheese

• Chopped cilantro

• Sour cream or plain Greek yogurt

Sauté onion, garlic, spices and herbs in olive oil.

To crock pot, add sauteed vegetables, beans, broth, diced tomatoes and paste. Mix well and cook on high for an hour. Reduce heat to low until ready to serve.

Put ½ c. tortilla chips in each of the bowls. Ladle soup over the chips (they’ll get soft and tortilla-like) and garnish with cheese, cilantro and a dollop of sour cream or yogurt.

The island kitchen: my mom’s vintage crockpot and my recipe development notes

Amie’s Endnotes

Time: on the island, we lose track of it. We measure the passage of moments by the level of the tide, the slant of sunbeams, degree of birdsong, the quality of light. The feel of dew beneath our feet, the shift of the wind.

With a wistful pang, I packed up my island summer last month. One rainy afternoon before I left, I tried out this vintage recipe. As with most recipes I test, a lot of tinkering occurred. It helped that I was hell-bent on emptying the pantry and fridge before my departure to the desert.

After the first couple of bowls, I threw in a fist’s worth of Cavatappi pasta leftover from the BLT pasta salad I demo’ed earlier this summer, during the week my family spent together at our lake cabin. I cranked the aging crock pot to high for about 15 minutes, and voilà! Leftovers with a twist, frozen and awaiting my fall return to the island.

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In the mood for more? Here’s a bonus cinchy vegetarian dish. ¡Olé!