Round 23: Back to School

[maggiethecat]

Some poor kids have to go back to school tomorrow, in their baggy cargo shorts and the boring relentless August heat. (There should be a law: School starts after Labor Day and ends after Memorial Day. But I digress.)

Pull out your Sparkle Gel Pen, your cool Trapper Keeper and write the obligatory essay, with a twist. Tell us about What You Ate this Summer. Write long and detailed. Let us sniff the lighter fluid, pick blueberries, skin and bone whitefish. Break my heart with pictures of your heirloom tomatoes --mine plain suck. Smoke butt, grill brats, put up strawberry jam.

Or tell us how you flit from Korean BBQ joints in LA to Per Se in Manhatten. Post pix.

The Smackdown will soon be revamped and rethought, all for the greater glory of you, my dear writers, and eGullet. In honor of the last Smackdown of old times I'm sweetening the purse. Steven has shipped me a huge savoury box of virgin review-copy cookbooks. It gets better.

First Prize: Three books.

Second Prize: Two Books

Third Prize: One book.

And, the glory, of course.

Deadline: September 23rd.

Tell me about your blueberry picking Here

[maggiethecat]

If I entered this Smackdown it would be a rant! My tomatoes still aren't ripe, I haven't eaten enough corn, and my husband refuses to do the grill thing because he doesn't like his grill. Ou sont les etes d'antan?

The peaches have been woody and hard, the berries expensive and mushy, and it took a trip to Alhambra ,California to get ice cream that shivered me timbers. Fosselman's, for you locals.

I did plant some Grand Rapids lettuce early in the season, and it provided a few lovely salads. But I've beeen braising and stewing and frying chicken and mashing potatoes--all worth the effort. But no fish caught from the end of the dock. No watermelon on a hot day. No fresh squeezed lemonade. No trips to DQ.

Thing is: It's all my own damn fault. I could be attending the Sandwich (IL) fair and its All-You-Can-Eat corn event. I could have driven up the eastern shore of Lake Michigan to Traverse City and picked cherries. I could have supported some lame suburban Farmer's Market, and I didn't.

External factors made me forget what's really important about summer and food, and that scares the hell out of me. What if I don't get another summer to pick baby green beans or bitch about too much zucchini? Next year I'll keep my eye on the ball.

Please tell me you did better. I want to lounge on your deck, dangle my toes in your pool, squeeze honeydews with you.

[Timh]

Its now full on fall here, And all I can think of is what I ate and what I had wanted to eat this past summer. As a private chef for a family, I spent my summer in a beachhouse in Cotuit, cape cod, totally awash in the moment ,every moment. Fresh grey Sole, Cod, Nantucket bay scallops, Quahogs, two yellow fins, and bluefish, and what I wanted was Mexican(oaxcan), Vietnamese, and Southern Soul, what I settled for was Deli-dom. I'm Rick James.

Edited October 7, 2004 by Timh (log)