Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer
Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer
Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries. Also, Peaches.
I’m not sure about lazy, but the summer of 2024 definitely feels hazy and crazy.
The hit song Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer was released in May, 1963, and was awash in mid-century nostalgia. Recorded by the great Nat King Cole, the lyrics celebrate drive-ins and bikinis and there was also plenty of summertime food and drink to go around.
Roll out those lazy-hazy-crazy days of summer, those days of soda and pretzels and beer…
Just fill your basket full of sandwiches and weenies, Then lock the house up, now you’re set…
The song popped into my head while I was walking around the farmer’s market this week on an especially warm and muggy morning.
I must’ve been in the throes of some temperature-induced music delirium, because a few minutes later I was ogling cherries and humming a different tune, a Depression era song my grandmother loved, first recorded in 1931 by legendary belter Ethel Merman:
Life is just a bowl of cherries, don’t take it serious, it’s too mysterious,
You work, you save, you worry so, but you can’t take your dough when you go, go, go…
This song is no ditty. It’s got a serious message about impermanence and loss, all packaged in a cheerful melody.
The sweet things in life, to you were just loaned,
So how can you lose what you’ve never owned?
Life is just a bowl of cherries
So live and laugh at it all
Ok! I will!
Back home in my kitchen I put together one of the laziest-days-of-summer recipes imaginable: Fruit Fool, using sweet Michigan cherries from the market.
“Sometimes the name of a dish offers a clue to the origin story of a recipe. That may be the case with the creamy fruit dessert known in Great Britain as a ‘fool’ which is made from cooked puréed fruit lightened with whipped cream or cooked custard.
In Old and Middle French, the term “fouler” meant to mash or crush which is exactly what happens to the fruit before it’s folded into the fool mixture.”
— read more about the history of this dessert at TastingTable
In other words, it’s a trifle without the cake.
Just mash up some cherries (pit removed, of course) or whatever fruit you like. I didn’t even cook them, I just macerated about a cup of cherries with a teaspoon of sugar for a half-hour to get everything nice and juicy. Whip some cold heavy cream to stiff peak stage— there’s no need to sweeten it when the fruit is so good—I used about a half-pint.
Lace your fruit and juices through the whipped cream, spoon into pretty glasses and enjoy, lazily. Serves 2.
Next: Irma’s Peach Cake
The peaches this season are spectacular, so I’m sharing again a cake I made a while back from a recipe by my hero, Irma Rombauer. Irma self-published The Joy of Cooking in 1931 after the death of her husband and the loss of her money in the Crash of 1929. She was not a cook and she readily admitted that, but reading her words and wisecracks throughout the original 1931 facsimile copy is a real treat— the recipes work and this cake is scrumptious.
The 1931 facsimile first edition features fantastic cover art by Irma’s daughter, Marion, and depicts St. Martha of Bethany slaying the dragon of kitchen drudgery.
Thank you to Scribner Books, Simon & Schuster and The Official Joy of Cooking for permission to share this original recipe. I used a 9-inch pan. Enjoy!
TTK News
— Everyone is fine!!! You may have heard that one of our beloved Wienermobiles had an accident in Chicago last week. I reached out to Sarah and Stephen who had hosted me a few weeks ago and Sarah let me know that everyone was fine and that it was a different team that was in the accident. Glad everyone is ok. Read about it here: Wienermobile
— More Diners. It was really fun to read about some of your favorite diners last week in the comments — and it turns out that my friend
has been doing a series about them. Definitely jump over to Amie’s newsletter, it’s terrific.—Congratulations! Friend, Author and Coach
who writes Attention Economy here on Substack has just announced that she’s sold her latest novel If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant for You to Ballantine Books, part of the Random House Family. Congratulations, Leigh!— Time Travel Kitchen is THISCLOSE to becoming a Substack Bestseller. It will take just a few more Paid Subscribers to get there, so if you enjoy TTK and can swing it, that would be great and so appreciated — or maybe you’d like to give someone a paid subscription as a gift?
To my dear paid subscribers — it means so much to have your support, it really does. Thank you so very much for everything — including keeping me in ingredients! ❤️
Have a great week, everyone, I’m off to watch the magnificent Celine Dion sing Hymne à l’amour for the umpteenth time since Friday.
Food for the Soul.
See you soon.
Jolene
Love everything here! Feels so celebratory! Cherries and peaches--bring 'em on.
Yes to bestseller-dom--so deserved!
SAVE THE WIENERMOBILE! Glad all's ok. Irma's peach thingy looks irresistible....