beating the heat

 100 degrees and 100+% humidity.  What's a girl to do?  Gazpacho for lunch!  I had taken a container of frozen tomatoes out to defrost last night and since they were still icy, I thought it would be good to throw them into my trusty Cuisinart.  I threw in a cucumber, a green pepper, some cumin, a little olive oil, some vinegar, plenty of salt, scallions, cilantro and whirred it all together for about 30 seconds. It needed some heat so I added a pinch of hot pepper and it was soup! (well, really, a drinkable salad). No matter, it was icy cold!

Here's my lunch in all its glory.  I added a green salad and that was it.  What, you may ask, is that green blob in the middle of the soup?  You may ask. Normally, I would add a slice of avocado.  But I used the avocados up earlier in the week when I made avocado ice cream.  One of the ice cream books recommended putting a scoop of it in a bowl of gazpacho, so I did.  It was a little strange at first, but
it grew on me.  Pretty, isn't it?

 

I stayed in all day because it was just insane to leave the house.  i didn't even walk up to the mailbox.  But I did go out to dinner tonight with a friend.  We had a lovely dinner, drank wine, and it was a pleasure to have an intelligent conversation.  Afterwards, I dropped into the clubhouse at the condo to kibitz with the bridge players. 

I played college bridge (that and knitting got me through. You could knit in class, but bridge was confined to after dinner on the livingroom floor) and when my kids were little, my friends and I used to have group therapy and wine with the bridge game every Tuesday night. Never serious players, we nevertheless did pretty well. But the game has changed (new bidding rules) and I couldn't play today without going to a refresher course.

Tomorrow, I pay attention to my hair.  By the way, strangers stopped me to tell me they love my green nail polish. LOL.