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.