Heat Waves, Past and Present

Gainesville

You guys win on the Misery Index-- I've lived in Lovely Wisconsin, and know what it's like to endure a heat wave there-- the houses are built with the opposite extreme in mind, and even with the best AC are stifling. I never had AC when I lived there-- my upstairs flat pumped up cool air from the basement in summer, but that was it. Still, I survived there. I was once actually driven out of my west-facing-bay-windowed flat in Baltimore to a nearby Holiday Inn after several sleepless sweaty nights, just so I could draw a few breaths of cool air. We do handle extreme heat better down here in the semi-tropics.

And in Publix today, as usual, it was good I'd brought along a corduroy jacket. Most of my shopping happens around the edges of the store, where the fresh stuff lives, and they keep it icy-cold throughout. Quite a shock to the system to between.

I did the Grape Salsa thing with turkey cutlets, thinking it would be a change, and I wouldn't have to pound them. Probably a mistake, as they were quite thick, and I was doing them on a grill pan instead of a real grill. Took forever, the outsides were tough and the insides a bit pinker than I like for poultry. Good flavors, though, and we loved the grape stuff.

Was going to have turnip fries with this, but the turnips turned out to be way past it-- one brownish in spots, the other filled with unpleasant holes. I dumped them and just sliced up a couple of tomatoes instead. Corn on the cob was a last minute addition-- this is the weekend of the annual Corn Festival, so of course there is excellent, fresh local corn in abundance. Too bad it required a big pot of boiling water to add to the grill pan's heat.

I remember how you loved the occasional hot weather we got in Los Altos, Mom. It didn't happen often enough to be onorous, the humidity was always low, and it always cooled off at night. Quite a different beast than what we all deal with now.

Does anyone remember a book or record with a story called "One String Fiddle?" Google tells me such a thing exists, but haven't been able to track down anything about it. Just one of those idle threads that popped out of an after-dinner conversation that has stuck in my memory.

Will be interested to hear if the Martys braved the heat to sleep in their tent in the back yard. One of the fun things about that Diry of mine was noting how many times we kids slept outside, and how much we enjoyed it. I hope Ben gets to have lots of that kind of fun.