Easy summer eating

Eastside Road, July 28, 2014—

TOO MANY OTHER things to do these delightful summer days to work every day at dining. Yesterday, for example, we contented ourselves with grilled sandwiches: bacon, lettuce, and tomato on good levain bread. The classic BLT is one of the Hundred Plates, but while relatively easy to assemble it's vulnerable and highly seasonal. You need good bacon, to begin with, and Franco Dunn helps out here. Then you need the right tomato, and around here that's only available from early July on, far as I'm concerned.

On the side, though it's hardly a summertime vegetable, kale, and a couple of cornichons…

Rosé, La Ferme Julien

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THEN TODAY, a grandson visiting for the night, I grilled hamburgers outside over fruitwood coals, a little charcoal added for flavor. Alas we had no hamburger buns, only hot dog buns, so had to form the patties in the shape of hot dogs. This does not make it easier to cook the meat to exactly the right degree, but then that's not something I'm good at under the best of conditions…

Well, good enough. We have the classic hamburger sandwich: the meat (which I'd flavored with a few thyme leaves while cooking), mustard, mayonnaise, raw thin-sliced onion, lettuce, tomato, a thin slice of dill pickle. What the heck: let's elevate the hamburger to the Hundred Plates too.

Green salad afterward, and then vanilla ice cream with fresh wild blackberries and a few of our mulberries.

Mourvèdre, Preston of Dry Creek, 2011: perfectly delicious