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How to eat in the heat.

What do you eat when it's hot? I like barbecue and salads. Easy grills with flavours appealing enough to raise an appetite when all you really want to do is sip a cold drink.

Lemon meatballs.

Serve these with yogurt and a simple Greek salad. And cold beer.

Place 750 grams of combined veal and pork mince into a large mixing bowl and add an egg, 100 grams of grated parmesan cheese, three chopped garlic cloves, half a chopped red onion and three tablespoons of chopped parsley.

Combine, with your hands.

Now add the grated zest - ah, my new zester! - and the juice of one large lemon. Add salt and pepper and divide mixture into balls about the size of a rising full moon to the naked eye. Alright, a round egg, then. Flatten them slightly so that they resemble flying saucers.

Grill between two lemon leaves, ten minutes or to your liking. You're not supposed to undercook mince, but I do, for two reasons. One, I trust my butcher; and two, I don't like burnt meat.

We had these for a late dinner when the boys were in bed - asleep! - a few nights ago. We ate on the little balcony with ti-tree towering overhead and birds flitting here and there. The sun was low in the sky but still radiating furiously.

It's been over 35 for several days in a row, and it was 39 both days last weekend. We spent much of the weekend on the beach, early morning and later in the afternoon. William taught himself a new game: running away from his shadow. Right there on the big sand flats that slip down to the roaring waves at the ocean beach, he turned, ran, stopped - all the while looking at his shadow and squealing - turned the other way, ran. Still the shadow followed him. Little pink sandy toes, nimble though they are, couldn't carry him away from his shadow. He stopped after a while and we went into the water.

Comments

  1. Aaaaaahhh did you get a microplane perhaps? I adore mine.
    Thosse do sound lovely, of course we could never find lemon leaves here in the Norht East, maybe you could in Florida or California perhaps, but not here.
    I patiently read every day hoping to see the inevitable cooling in your weather so i can look forward to the evtual warming in mine. I'm not good with Ch conversions from F, but we are currently running at around 10 degrees F. Brrrrrrr

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  2. My tip for eating in the heat? Go inside and turn the air-con on really high LOL. It's too hot and humid to even consider eating outside here. We have been having lots of BBQ's and salads.

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  3. from Steevil

    It's nice and warm here in the greater Baltimore-Washington area too--over 40.

    (Fahrenheit)

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  4. These sound so good! There's no way I'd ever be able to get my hands on lemon leaves though. It's nowhere near that warm here - we have been between 0 and 5 lately, but Saturday we're taking off for warmer climes!

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  5. Yep, I reckon salads and lemon are the way to go: our meatless equivalent has been chunks of haloumi in a hot pan, then drowned in lemon juice and choked with black pepper. Mountains of greens, cucumber, and the ripest tomatoes I can find.

    Those Cypriots sure knew what to serve on a summer night.

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  6. Yes, Jo, the microplane. Amazingly enough, I still 'think' in Fahrenheit even though we've been Celsius (initially Centigrade) since I was fourteen.

    RDM, we don't have aircon, which is possibly why I bang on about the weather so much!

    You can take the coat and hat off, Steevil.

    Sara, I might have to open an online lemon leaf ordering service, the amazon of lemon leaves. Enjoy the warmer climes.

    Cindy, the cheese sounds great. We've been cooking a lot with paneer.

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