The Slowest Week of August

It looks as though we’re in for one of those deliciously slow August weeks.

There will be writing for this little Substack, naturally. There will be more renovation scheming, meetings with our architect and contractors, and Angie, our nanny, is away on holiday.

So yes, it’s the usual household juggling act—but I’m trying very hard to do it at half speed.

Half speed, it turns out, means you fall behind on your newsletters.

The upstairs renovation tour is coming tomorrow, complete with the video I optimistically thought I’d finish filming yesterday. After that, I’m suddenly seized with the urge for a systems post as I begin thinking ahead to the school year.

I’ve been quietly adding a few surprisingly effective habits to my days this summer, and they’ve made life feel noticeably calmer. So I’m thinking of writing The Invisible Work of Making Life Feel Easy—in the spirit of 52 Things That Make a House Run Better. This is the sort of practical list I immediately click on myself, hoping someone else has already solved all my problems.

Here’s that post in case you missed it.

52 Things That Make a House Run Better

Now then, to the infinitely more pressing matter of meal planning.

Yesterday brought one of those soft summer rainstorms that make you want to become the sort of person who permanently lives by candlelight and bakes things involving berries.

I sat at the kitchen table with a little oil lamp that arrived in the mail (coastal coziness levels at and all-time high), a beautiful tea set Ralph Lauren kindly sent me, and a stack of cookbooks—Batch by Joel MacCharles and Dana Harrison, Sea & Shore, Recipes from a Kitchen in Cornwall by Emily Scott, plus a pile of old Cook’s Magazines that I collect.

Outside, the rain. Inside, tea, recipes, my renovation newsletter, meals & moods, and complete confidence that this week I would become an extraordinarily organized person.

The garden, meanwhile, has entered its annual phase of producing enough zucchini to feed a small Italian village. So there will be zucchini fritters, zucchini bread, and probably zucchini in places zucchini has no business appearing. The blackberries are finally ripe too, which means blackberry jam and crumbles are inevitable.

Meals & Moods

Monday — Sweet Summer Rain
Mood: I’m an autumn

• Roast chicken with crispy potatoes

• Pole beans from the garden

• Tomato, corn, red onion & feta salad

• Chocolate chip miso cookies from Carissa’s Bakery—did you know they sell cookie dough?

Tuesday — Sag Harbor Fireman’s Carnival
Mood: Slightly sticky, chaotic Americana.

• Hot dogs for the children

• Pasta checca (Roman pasta with raw tomato sauce) for the grownups

• Corn on the cob

• Green salad

Wednesday — Mother-Daughter Day in the City
Mood: Fairfield Porter Painting (We’re catching the show at the Art Student’s League which ends August 18)

• Home to grilled swordfish

• Zucchini fritters

• Tomato salad

• Corn on the cob

Thursday — Beach Picnic
Mood: Everything tastes better eaten on a quilt.

• Tomato tart

• Shrimp salad rolls

• Ottolenghi Halvah brownies

Friday — Friends for Dinner
Mood: Light the candles and pretend this menu wasn’t finalized twenty minutes ago.

• Grilled bluefish

• Stuffed squash blossoms

• Roasted potatoes

• Tomato, corn & feta salad

• Peach and blackberry crumble

Saturday — Montauk Beach Day
Mood: Nobody cooks.

Dinner at Rita Cantina.

Sunday — Lunch with Friends
Mood: End summer exactly as intended—outside, lingering, no one looking at the time.

Pizza from Fini.

And somewhere in amongst all that, I’ll finally bake the zucchini bread before the zucchini become the size of lap dogs.

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