A summer meal

Here's a simple meal full of the flavors of the season. The peppers are stuffed with jasmine rice, sautéed eggplant, roasted red pepper and cilantro. The chicken was slathered in mustard and then given a coating of home-made breadcrumbs (old chiabatta bread, garlic and a bit of thyme ground in the food processor). It was then baked in the gas grill at very high temperature (over 450º F) for about forty minutes, then for another thirty minutes at about 350º F.

The clafouti, shown here with a cigale, was a nod to the trip my niece and her hubby took to Provence last summer.

We ate out on the deck in the gathering dusk; there were few mosquitoes as we listened to the katydids take up where the cicadas left off. The day had been warm and humid, but once the sun went down it was pleasant. Some dark purple petunias nearby began to pour out their vanilla-clove scent as the dark closed in. Time flies very agreeably in our little green bower.

Summer

The lily shows are over, the crepe myrtle and the Franklin tree are blooming, we had blueberry pancakes for breakfast, the cicadas and katydids are calling, the wood thrushes are still tuning up their flutes, the first flushes of rain lilies are withering on their stems, the newly mowed grass has a beguiling sweetness, local tomatoes, corn, peaches and steamed crabs are in our immediate future: it's summer.