Why is the Classic Daiquiri so Hard to Find?

My mother always told me the daiquiri was the classic ladylike drink for summer.

I took that to heart, and for years the daiquiri was my favorite summer drink. It fell out of fashion for a year or so when I favored rum and coke and receded some years later when I discovered sangria.

But like an old friend, the daiquiri keeps coming back and no birthday is complete for me without a daiquiri.

Only I've found the classic daiquiri is getting hard to find. These days when you order one, you are generally asked what flavor.

Classic, please, I respond. The bartender stares at me.

"I want a plain daiquiri. You know, one made with lime," I say.

The bartender consults with a coworker and eventually I get something approximating a classic daiquiri. Often it misses the mark.

The Purist's Daiquiri

• 1 1/2 oz light rum
• Juice of 1/2 lime
• 1 tsp powdered sugar

Pour ingredients into a shaker filled with ice. Shake. Strain. Pour.

It doesn't get any easier.

Yeas ago, a boyfriend asked me if I wanted a banana daiquiri. No thanks, I said. I tried a strawberry daiquiri once. Never again.

Thank goodness I married a purist.

A Simple Stir Fry of Broccoli, Red Pepper and Shrimp

Grandma Annie is one of the reasons I love the simple things in life. Her supper table in the summer time was usually laden with fresh tomatoes and celery, sliced chicken or ham and fresh bread. On cooler days, there would be soup. And after supper, tea.

I like simple suppers these days because my days are often event filled, and when I come home I have little time or inclination for complicated meals. The stir fry pictured above is about as ambitious as it gets for me on a weeknight.

Wash and chop broccoli, green onions and red pepper. Sauté a clove or two of minced garlic in extra virgin olive oil. Add the broccoli, followed by the peppers and then the green onions. Drizzle with lemon juice. Toss in some [re-cooked shrimp and add a dash of pepper and sea salt. All the flavors shine through with purity and definition. No competing for your palate's attention. I like that.

Tonight, too tired to stand and chop, we found a simple meal at a family restaurant. Pot roast and vegetables and baking powder biscuits. We drove north to a park that is filled with wildflowers and shoreline. Then we looped around through Frenchtown to watch the progress on Grandma Annie's house, which we sold to a young family five years ago. Now, for the first time in 125 years, it is in new hands. But the couple who bought it are taking their time bringing the old place into the 21st century.

"They're doing it right," my husband said. "It looks fantastic."

Still, I said, "My heart tightens when I pass the house." He wondered why.

"The neighborhood," I said. "It used to be so vital and alive. Now it's so quiet. We've lost so much of our neighborhoods."

He agreed, and we began to list the reasons for the neighborhood's vitality. There was the boiler works, the lumber yard, the meat packing plant, two mom-and-pop grocery stores, an appliance store, several taverns and a neighborhood school. There was a railroad spur, and the neighborhood was within the shadow of a small airport.

There were noises: the murmur of low flying planes, the clang of a forge, the whistle of a train as it rumbles down the tracks. There were smells: On warm days the packing plant smelled awful, on hot nights, there was that scorchy foundry smell.

This was a neighborhood that worked. You could walk to your job, and you worked side by side with your neighbors. You could shop for food without leaving the neighborhood.

I miss it. Terribly.

Memories of Grandpa Harry's Garden

While Grandma Annie traded garden-grown vegetables with her neighbors in Frenchtown and waited for the egg man to visit each week, Grandpa Harry tended to his garden in the old cattle traders' neighborhood across town.

My father's parents lived in the shadow of downtown, in a gable-and-wing shingled house with a tidy backyard and a full-fledged carriage house, instead of an old weathered shed. Once Harry retired from the railroad, he planted a garden of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, carrots and peppers. A sidewalk from the house to the alley ran down the middle, making it easy for Harry to nurture his vegetables. There he was every morning, wearing the denim overalls he wore while working for the Chicago-North Western Railroad.

Harry was not a particularly tall man, maybe five-foot-ten or eleven, but there was a bigness to him, and a hale and blustery manner. His family was Belgian, Walloons, whose family names were typical of those given to short people, I learned in college.

He was industrious in his gardening habits and we always had fresh vegetables in the summertime.

I don't see much of Harry in myself, and my father was much more like his mother, Grandma Laura. But I will always associate Harry with fresh vegetables.

Today, I buy my vegetables from farm markets or the farm stands that are now open along the highway and at busy intersections. I'm buying tomatoes from local growers, and fresh onions, which beat anything I can find in a grocery store.

I'm growing my own cherry tomatoes and I've noticed they are especially healthy this year.

What's in your garden? Or your farm market basket?

Scenes from the Bastille

On my first trip to Paris, it was this scene that finally triggered the "Yes, we are in Paris" reaction from me. I knew then exactly where we were and that we were approaching our hotel.

Once we narrowly missed witnessing a manif here. Another time I was so tired from all the eternal walking we do in Paris that it loomed as big as the Sahara Desert and I whined and dragged my feet as we crossed it.

Very soon, we will cross it again a time or two. Not long to wait now. I will take full advantage of this trip, because who knows when we will go back again.

When I was a teenager yearning to visit Paris, I imagined how she would teem with life in the morning when delivery trucks made their rounds. Intrigued as I am with French grocery stores, I had to shoot this FranPrix truck. It was a dull and overcast Monday morning. Paris was indeed a gray lady on our last trip.

This photo hardly needs a comment. This dessert looks wonderful, and I was dying to buy it. But as you can see, it is a bit pricey. To my dismay, I have found that often, Paris desserts look better than they taste. Too rich, too sweet.

When we returned from Paris, my husband began taking his bike to work. It's no easy feat, because the trip requires that he climb two hills at 4 p.m., often the hottest hour of the day here. This year, our summer has been cooler so far, and he is driving. Go figure!

We've been taking advantage of the cooler weather to work outside, rebuilding a porch and clearing out our little forest of cedar trees between the house and the horse barn. Now I can see my little overgrown garden from the kitchen window again!

High Summer, Images of July and a Vegetable Salad with Goat Cheese and Roasted Walnuts

Being my birthday month, July has always seemed like the best time of the year to me. It has a scent and a sound and colors that suit me. Red, white and blue of course, because those are the colors of the countries of my birth and of my heart. And, of course, the deep rich green of high summer foliage and vegetables.

But it has a sound, too, of pipes and drums and pyrotechnics and waves lapping the shore and birds and oh, so many things that I like.

When I was a teenager enamored with poetry, I wrote that "July was a sultry harlot, doing her dance on the summer lawn."

I still believe those words suit July to a T. When it's hot and dry, her dance ruins summer lawns.

July has a scent, too, of cottages aired for the first time, a smell of the sea, the wine-rich smell of old wood and old jugs and crocks from the back room. On cool days a hint of fresh water and juniper. On hot days, cooked pavement.

July reminds me of the tar wagons that painted Main Street every summer. The hot, scorchy black smell, a little acrid, a little sweet.

I have so many wonderful, colorful memories of Fourths of July going far back: Three years old at the cottage, the wonder of a Roman candle farther down the beach. Seven years old, watching fireworks from an island where someone kept horses. So many relatives, friends and neighbors gathering on the porch of the big white house on Main Street to watch the parade pass by.

Later, stuck in a hot city with no parade, only humidity. Still later, driving up in the hills above Ephraim in Door County, where the air smells like woodsmoke all year long. We drove past a farm where a family had gathered for a picnic supper in the foundations of an old homestead. That, I thought, was a perfect way to mark the holiday, with family and a family home, steeped in history and the wine of summer nights.

Another holiday, cooking steaks on a hibachi and downing martinis on the balcony. That apartment was on a hill and felt like a crow's nest. We could see the fireworks of two cities from that perch.

This year we are rebuilding the front porch of our 112-year-old Victorian house, also on a hill. It's a lot of work, and frankly, so is this salad from Coastal Living. It's made with spinach, beets, green beans, corn, peas, shallots, goat cheese, and roasted walnuts.

But it has a sweet, earthy flavor that complemented our grilled steak and shrimp. We washed it down with a pink wine from the Midi.

While I was on the road last month, this blog's second anniversary quietly came and went. Thank you to all of you who have stayed the course here.