Mediterranean Vegetable Soup with Lentils

Puttering around in the kitchen listening to crickets and cicadas while I cut, chop, baste and stir is heavenly for me. This time of year brings me a deep satisfaction somehow, as the pace of life begins to quicken again. I have this sense of something about to happen.

It also saddens me, because another summer (so precious to us northerners!) is on the wane.

When I was a teenager, my mother and I often took walks together after dark this time of year. It was a chance for me to share my hopes for the school year ahead and my dreams for a time beyond school. We'd often choose a neighborhood to the northeast of Frenchtown, where the houses, built after 1915, were mostly shingled bungalows or 1920's-style cottages. Catching a glimpse of someone else's evening through an unshuttered window captured my imagination, and it is an image that has stayed with me for many years.

These days I sit on my side porch, or my newly-built (but yet unpainted) front porch and watch the street lights create pools of light in the evening. Occasionally, I will see a dog walker or jogger. My house is more than 110 years old now, and I often wonder about others who have sat on that porch watching night fall in years past. Did they feel the mix of contentment and sadness I feel this time of year?

Sunday was a day for sunshine and crickets, nightfall and porch sitting.

Our dinner of chicken, tomatoes and peppers was simple but comforting. The best part was the juice from the bottom of the roasting pan. I knew when I caught its aroma (and sneaked a spoonful) that I would be making soup Sunday night.

Easy Mediterranean Vegetable Soup

2 cups chicken stock
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1/3 cup lentils
2 cups water
1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes, Italian style
3 medium carrots, chopped
1 medium zucchini, chopped
dash freshly-ground pepper
dash fleur de sel

Place olive oil, butter and onion in skillet; brown slightly. Add chicken stock, water and lentils. Bring to a boil and lower heat, simmering for about 30 minutes. Add tomatoes and carrots. Cover and simmer for about 20-30 minutes, adding zucchini as carrots begin to soften. Simmer at least 20 minutes longer, adding salt and pepper.

I expect to get at least four meals out of this. My husband is not a vegetable soup fan, but even he admitted this smelled heavenly while simmering.

I used Lentils de Puy, purchased last year in Paris. Wonderful! I'll have to pick up another bag next month at Carrefour or Leclerc.

The soup lasted all week. I paired it with goat cheese and roasted pepper on crusty rolls.

Warm Days, Cool Nights: Hints of a New Season

From time to time my job takes me into the heart of rural Wisconsin. These trips are especially lovely in late summer, with its promise of autumn on the rise.

The leaves, deep and rich green only six weeks ago, are hanging heavier now, dusty, golden at the edges. Here and there are signs of early scarlett and amber. The corn is high in the fields and the hay is baled. I saw a trio of sandhill cranes in one field, two dozen baby goats in another. Wild turkeys abound. Red barns sleep in the angled sun.

Autumn creeps in slowly once July has run its sultry course. The first hint is the chorus of cicadas and crickets. Next the starlings begin to flock on the high wires that run along portions of Riderman Road, the winding thoroughfare that connects my neighborhood to the highway.

It grows dark at 8 p.m. now, and we've taken the quilts out of the cedar chest already.

Did I mention how busy the farm stands are? Lucky for me there is one at each end of Riderman Road, and a third along the highway. I have daily access to fresh vegetables from the three big area farm families who are all interrelated.

Late summer is a bittersweet time of year for me and it always has been. I look forward to the beauty and bounty of autumn, but I know I will miss the sweetness of summer and I often try to cram as much of it in as I can before Labor Day Weekend.

Since July my husband and I have been talking about a picnic along the shore, and at 5 p.m. last Sunday, after a day of work on the front porch, we packed a chest of ice and wine and paper plates and tossed it in the minivan. We stopped at a local deli for hard rolls, Black Forest Ham and a mustard-y potato salad and found a table along the bay. It was fun unpacking and assembling it all and more fun to eat it and talk, without distractions from TV, iPod or Internet. The fare was simple, but delicious because we had taken time to enjoy it, away from our usual environment, surrounded by fresh air.

When we left the park, the sun sky was salmon and pink and deep azure and we were content to drive home.

We fell asleep quickly that night, snuggled under the quilt.

Yes, life is good.

Plucked From the Vine: Cherry Tomato Salad

The sweetest treat of summer is a cherry tomato, plucked from the vine on my deck.

Each year, we ooh and ah over these little red morsels. And each year I look for new yet simple ways to enjoy them.

This summer, my husband had been hard at work rebuilding our little front porch. Our gable-and-wing Victorian with its Queen Anne touches once sported a larger porch, but several owners ago it was unceremoniously ripped off (so our late neighbor, Jim, once told me) and in its place a smaller porch was built. My husband and I would have both loved a larger porch, purists that we are when it comes to architecture, but we are also practical and the costs of building such a porch lost out to the costs of traveling somewhere (France, 32 days and counting).

My husband paces himself, so the porch was started on July 4 and is now nearly complete, save for a few minor touches and some paint. The colors? Tomato red and cream, the very colors of last night's salad.

Here's the recipe:

As many cherry tomatoes as you can harvest
3 green onions, sliced
1/2 cup sliced black olives
2 tablespoons roasted pine nuts
1 tablespoon fresh basil, chopped
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/3 tablespoon red wine vinegar
scant pinch of sugar
dash freshly ground pepper
dash fleur de sel

I roasted salmon with ratatouille vegetables and served the salad as a side dish. We paired it with a white table wine from Michigan, ran out of that, and substituted Yellowtail rosé, which was a bit too sweet but nobody cared at that point.

My Personal Wine History and a Visit to Sonoma County

About nine years ago, my husband suggested we create a wine tasting data base to record our adventures and our preferences. It seemed like a good idea, as many of my favorite magazines were starting to publish wine columns and our "want to try" list was getting longer and longer.

We never had the time - or never took the time - and we never purchased a wine program or did anything formal about it. But it was the start of something. An awareness perhaps. And we've had fun ever since.

My own adventures with wine started as a toddler. Yes. That's what I said. While the grownups enjoyed wine with their meals, I was given a wine glass filled with water and enough wine to add flavor - and pique my interest. I don't think it did any harm; in fact, it was probably useful. Early on, I saw wine as a meal accompaniment and not something to be consumed in large quantities in order to achieve an altered state.

But I've been here, too.

These days, my husband and I often drink a glass or two before and during dinner. We enjoy the complexity of wine, and we like to experiment with pairings and we talk about building a wine cave like the one my brother built. We've got the perfect place for it, but we've got a lot of other priorities, too.

We're not especially educated and we've not snobbish. In the last month or two, we've tasted Two Buck Chuck (now three bucks) as well as some pricier wines. As for bubbly, we like everything from the occasional supermarket offering to the bottle of Dom Perignon that is awaiting just the right celebratory event.

Recently at dinner we ordered a meritage blend from California's Central Coast that was layered and rich, with a plummy introduction and a cherry-vanilla finish. Next month, we'll enjoy the black wine of Cahors as we look out over our own (for two weeks, anyway) private vineyard.

I recently spend several days in Sonoma County, tasting, learning and observing. The variety before me was awesome, as they say, but in the true sense of the word. Thanks to A for her wine tour and to E, F and M for their companionship.

I'll be back, Sonoma...

What's your wine story?