Weekend Meditation: Summertime Bolognese

It's mid-July and I've got a pot of all-day Bolognese sauce blurbing away on the stove, steaming up the windows and filling the house with a rich meaty scent. While citizens of the Bay Area will immediately understand this, the rest of you are probably wondering if I've gone crazy. But you see, it's 53 degrees and cloudy in Berkeley right now and even though my internal summertime clock says to slice up the first of the fresh tomatoes and fire up the grill, my body is saying Bolognese. Especially my ice cube toes tucked into their wooly slippers.

The meal tonight is also in honor of a friend who is coming to visit for a long weekend. She's a omnivore who has been living and working in a remote hot springs that has a strict vegetarian policy. A large hunk of meat such as a steak or even a roast chicken might be too big of a leap, so we're starting off nice and simple with the Bolognese. Still, we cannot resist a nod to the season, so we toss together a salad using greens bought that morning from the farmers' market, punctuated with summer flowers and a dressing that uses a lemon from the tree out back.

We can have ideas about what summer should look like and feel like, but then there's the unescapable reality, the bare truth of 53 degrees and cloudy skies and ice cube toes. Life is basically an ever-changing stream of causes and conditions, most of them quite unpredictable and out of our control. (The weather is a classic example of this.) The tricky part is to stand in the middle of it all and respond with grace and composure and presence or even, if possible, to celebrate.

Eventually the sun will return and the winds will shift and Berkeley will warm up a bit. When that happens we will slice up platters of tomatoes and sausages cooked on the grill and slurp up thick slices of watermellon, basking in the warmth and glory of it all. Until then, I'll just enjoy our Bolognese dinner which is really quite good (I used this recipe, more or less), pulling on another layer of woolies and snuggling in for a good long chat.

(Image: Dana Velden)

Comments (10)

Like my life these days Dana. Thanks for helping me settle a bit more. It's hard when our notions about "how it's suppose to be" don't match with "how it is". Harder still to allow "how it is" to be the road you follow. What road will I choose today?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who wishes for chilly, rainy days in the summer! Except I generally use it as an excuse to make soup and bread. I can only take so much cold food before I start to crave something hot and hearty.

I've been in the same situation recently. What I'm struggling with is getting all sorts of delicious summer produce from my CSA and farmer's markets and just wanting to make a thick root vegetable stew. I'll have to work harder about finding ways to make summer vegetables into cold weather dishes.

Us too! We had comfort food for lunch, roast chicken followed by rice pudding today. It's grey and rainy in southern England.

We're warmer down here in Los Angeles than you, but I'm always grateful for our California weather -- and I'd eat that Bolognese anytime!

With a heat index of 115 this week it's been trying to even get up the will to cook. I'm totally jealous.

We also had an urge for comfort food today, and made a vat of chicken curry sopped up with sourdough. Mighty fine.

It poured all weekend in Portland and I've tried to adapt your mindset, Dana—you can't change it, so why let it bother you?

Oh a big I HEAR YA coming at ya from the Pac NW, where it hit a whopping 62 degrees the other day. I'm going to try and be zen about our non-existent summer and try out this recipe!!!

I think most of the middle of the country is sweltering right now with temps in the mid-90s or higher. 63 sounds like heaven, though the weather is always nicer on the other side of the fence, isn't it?