Late August is a strange stretch. The garden has given up on optimism, the mornings are cooler than you expect, and the evenings still insist it’s summer for another hour. I cook more than I mean to in these weeks. The kitchen is the one room that doesn’t know the season is turning.
Eight dinners. Two salmon bowls, two things with noodles, a run of rice bowls that got increasingly Asian-leaning as the week went on, one very proud pork tenderloin. I’m not going to walk through all of them - but a few notes:
The thin pork chops on Monday came out a lighter brown than I wanted. I should have gotten the pan hotter. I got distracted by the potatoes, which came out beautiful - gold and purple and red from the farmer’s market bag, crisped on the pan in a lot of olive oil.
Wednesday’s bulgogi-over-rice was the plate I’d make again tomorrow. Ground beef, a dark sauce, broccoli I scorched on purpose, scallions. Some nights I want a dinner that hits the table in twenty minutes without losing any seriousness, and that was the dinner.
Thursday was what I think of as my husband’s Thursday plate - chicken tenders with a cornflake crust and a pan of summer veg with zucchini and red potatoes. He ate it fast and said almost nothing, which is what he does when he’s happy.
Friday was a rice bowl with ground pork and a fried egg and the last of a jar of black garlic sauce I’d been rationing. Chopsticks. A small tablecloth-free kind of dinner. Loved it.
And the two salmons on the weekend, like bookends - one over a cucumber- avocado salad, the other with bok choy and asparagus. I’m going to miss good cucumbers when this month ends.
