What To Eat

in *this* economy? (a Dinner Menu for a week of Inbetween Weather!!!!)

Hello, hi, Sunday morning incoming.

The forecast for today is “patchy cloud, 15 degrees”. What are you talking about? It is June! It does not feel like 15 degrees either, especially not by the sea because the wind whips away every scrap of warmth you carry with you.

I am literally writing this under a blanket. Are you reading it under a blanket? Are you remaining, perhaps, in bed? Stay in bed! Stay indoors! I hate to stay indoors, it makes me feel like a kind of choking sensation around the throat. I need to be outside almost all the time, ideally looking at something green, ideally about to swim in a lake. And yet: it’s the morning and I haven’t gone anywhere and the cloud is very grey and I must somehow motivate myself to do the things that make me feel good. These things, I know now, are nice clothes and nice movement and nice food and clean air and cold water. These things are moving and cooking and eating like a person with a body in the world.

But it’s so hard in this weather to know! I mean it’s hard, emotionally speaking, to be motivated when it’s so intermittently grey— flashes, flickers of blue, hours of blue, but kingfisher quick and then gone as if they never were— but it is also so practically hard to know what to wear, first off, and also so hard to know what to eat. It does not feel like “beautiful tomato” weather, does it. It does not feel like “exquisite mouthful”. Not consistently. And yet: nor does it feel like “big bowl of stew”. What can we eat that feels nice and right and seasonal and exciting and also— cuts through the grey? Are you in this pickle too? Do you know what to make for dinner this week?

It’s a difficult and confusing season for food, but don’t worry: I am here. I have been thinking about this for you. I have made you, in fact, a menu. A complete menu of dinners for this week! They will work in blue skies or grey skies, in 20 degrees or 12, and they will make you feel light and summery and cosy and joyous.

Actually, I have made me a menu, but always when I’m writing I’m writing for the version of me that is you and the version of you that is me: people, in other words, just trying to get to the end of the day with maximum joy and minimum oomph. Maximum output, minimum output. I have made us a list. With links! And recipes! Let’s go!