Panzanella-my new summer comfort food

You know it isn't going to be a good day, when it starts with metro offloading your car in the morning commute because the train is too hot, forcing everyone to cram into the next car, making you late for work. I try to count my blessings, which I have so many of and am reminded of as I pass homeless men in tatters. But sometimes you just feel knocked down.


My beloved cat Kasmir broke my heart while he had a grand adventure missing for two months in Georgia and healed it when he miraculously returned full of snuggles. Today I took him to the vet because he, who loves food as much or maybe more than I do, stopped eating. $400 later his only solid diagnosis is a fever. Feline Leukimia and Feline HIV test came back negative but the vet kept putting forward cancer as a possibility. A word, illness, prognosis I can hardly stomach. In meditation we try to open ourselves up to the fact that we all get sick, we all die, and nothing including everything we hold dear is permanent. But to have the big C or even just the possibility of it keep attacking your loved ones is very painful.

So as usual I retreat to find comfort in a phone call to my mom and food. When it is too hot to ride metro much less cook, panzanella is perfection. And when you get hit hard with unexpected vet bills it is even better. A salad invented to use old bread, it is inexpensive to make. I toasted slices of a mini whole grain loaf, brushed with olive oil and garlic. Cube the toasted bread and toss with the freshest of summer tomatoes bursting with ripeness and acidic juices. I was lucky to get a bag full for a $1 a pound at Sunday's market closing time. The vendors calling out,  "it's you or the hogs." I guess the city gleaners haven't made it to Eastern Market yet.

Toss this in a bowl with herbs, basil, chives, parsley, plucked fresh from the soil and the sun; olive oil;  vinegar- red wine is preferable but other kinds from rice wine to balsamic seem to work just fine; salt and capers or crushed anchovies if you have them. And just like that supper is done, summer flavors bursting with brightness rounded out by the comfort of toasted bread commingling into something that is the opposite of the soggy mess you might think it would become.

Freeing you up to tend to summer evening pleasures or coaxing kitty to please eat a bite of kitty food.

Reasons I love DC # 2 My morning commute

My morning commute: Coffee and paper in hand I am greeted with smiles and “Have a nice Day” by metro workers and the people who hand out the free Express paper. The office workers like me provide a fashion show of style choices. There are women in sparkling saris, girls in expensive dresses and flip-flops, colorful hijab. There are babies laughing, babies crying, people getting in that last snooze button rest, lost tourists counting the number of stops again and again searching for the Smithsonian exit staring in wonderment and clogging the escalators. There are chefs and Hill staffers, security guards, baby mamas with hair styles like art braids twisted into an array of sculpture. 

I exit up out of the tunnel into the bright day and am pushed forward by the energy of the pulse of the city. People in cars and honking taxis, buses offloading commuters from other states, cyclists speeding by and homeless people waking up a with a stretch that reminds me to let go of my pre-coffee grumpiness. I pause in admiration at the girls who can bike among traffic in skirts and heels, a talent I have not yet mastered.

Tonight I dined on beet green risotto with bacon

Tonight I dined on beet green risotto with bacon, not a traditional risotto that I am aware, but an honorable way to use the last of spring’s produce as the lettuce bolts from the rising temperatures. A day that begins with news of a women shouting that the metro train of morning commuters is going to blow-up, the transit system I take to and from work; a day filled with answering the same questions on how to fill out government forms, and disgruntled emails and phone calls; a day with the news that private funds which could have saved the program that employs me, saves our shared history and unique character of American towns, creates jobs and local pride was turned down..or at least that’s the rumor.  A day in which, I mistakenly picked up a paper for the ride home with incoherent articles slamming environmental protection for killing jobs.  And while I was greeted by the greatest cat in the world I was also greeted with continued atrocities in Sudan, cholera outbreaks, mudslides, wildfires, our own local political corruption on the evening news. 

This day needs crispy bacon, and rice cooked so slowly that it submits to the creaminess that is its destiny, coaxed out with a touch of vermouth and butter, enriched with freshly grated cheese and home grown beets, sprinkled with just a touch of basil plucked in the twilight just for the sole purpose of ending this day.

It may not solve the world’s problems but it does make facing tomorrow easier.