Octopus' Garden

Friday, July 29, 2005

GUBZILLION DEGREES

I am recovering from a spell of late-afternoon heatstroke, as it was a gubzillion degrees out today and I had a massive round of grocery shopping to do in order to prepare for a little dinner party that I'm having for friends tomorrow night. Although sometimes, in my head, I secretly envision myself jauntily tramping through tropical rain forests on a thrilling Insect Safari, the sad truth of the matter is that I have a very low tolerance for heat and humidity. Okay . . . I have practically no tolerance for heat and humidity. First I get irrational and cranky. And then I just get plain mean. Mean, mean, mean.

The menu for my dinner party tomorrow night is, I'm afraid, schizophrenically eclectic. I'm not exactly sure what happened here. I mean, I do actually know how to assemble a menu that actually goes together . . . I'm not total moron, but something just ran amok along the way. I'm going to choose to blame it on late afternoon heatstroke brought on by the aforementioned gubzillion-degree weather. So, the upshot is that I will be serving a salad with fresh spring greens, honey-glazed almonds, and a balsamic vinaigrette; a Greek barley salad with red and yellow peppers, olives, cucumbers, and Feta cheese; a multicolor pasta thingy tossed with diced tomatoes, onions, garlic, peas, thin slivers of prosciutto ham and sprinkled with grated Romano cheese; salmon marinated in an orange ginger glaze; and a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake for dessert.

So, okay . . . a schizophrenically eclectic menu, but the fun part will be getting to use my delightfully retro, most definitively mid-century modern Russel Wright dinnerware.

I had the amazing luck to have a poem accepted by BLOOM Magazine today, and I'm over the moon with joy as I have been secretly yearning to be in BLOOM since it first came out!
posted by Artichoke Heart at 11:41 PM

4 Comments:

Just made the herbed barley salad today and it is delicious! Thanks so much for linking to the recipe! It will become a summer staple in my household. Hope your dinner went swimmingly!

- Shannon from Seattle
Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:33 PM  
Shannon, I'm so pleased to hear that you are a Barley Salad Convert, and JadedJu, should you be moved to visit my neck of the woods I will gladly replicate said menu verbatim in your honor!
Blogger Artichoke Heart, at 1:03 AM  
Bloom is a great magazine. I have a poem forthcoming with them, too. I will keep an eye out for yours.
Blogger C. Dale, at 8:18 PM  
That's marvelous, C. Dale . . . I'll definitely look for your poem too! I love Bloom!
Blogger Artichoke Heart, at 12:07 AM  

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