staying hot

As a kid, here’s what I was told: if it’s hot outside, you eat hot soup. And wear dark clothes. Ever see older women in Sicilian households? There’s a reason they’re not feeling faint in the heat of the scorching sun. They’re not sipping iced lattes and eating delicate salads. They’re wearing black and downing heaping bowls of pasta in bubbling tomato sauce.

I think that some person in an authoritative position was just trying to get me to eat a bowl of soup, but I have sort of bought into the mindset of not fighting the heat.

So that when the heat index yet again spiked into the 100 degree range, I’m thinking -- it’s time to make Tuscan beans in a summery tomato ragu.

And, for an afternoon break from reading cases, I bike over for a good, hot coffee. (I draw the line on black clothing. The world is too full of women in black. I want my sundresses to get their brief airing.) The café is quiet – a few souls lost behind computer screens, a pair sipping an afternoon glass of wine, a handful of coffee lovers, a scattering of empty tables.





I catch up with a friend who has been away even more than I have, and I get back on my bike. A few more stirs to the ragu. It needs a baking period still. Into the oven it goes.





We sit down to eat. I fill a tumbler with wine and glance over at the thermometer outside – 93. Not too bad.


Could it be that, somewhere along the way, I picked up a drop of Sicilian blood? It would explain so much.