Oh lordy, it is 100F outside and close to 90F indoors—way too hot to think about cooking! But the house has been cleaned up and the baby is still asleep, so I’ve got time to revisit an old post I meant to write way back in early June, when the weather was still mild and reasonable—seems like ages ago. My mom came for a visit the second week of June, to keep Nolan and me company while Jeremy was away at a training for work. While she was here, we were incredibly busy remodeling our back room to make it fit for a home theater room (our previous HT room was a bedroom that had to be sacrificed for Nolan’s nursery; both are still works in progress at this point). Over the course of five days, we emptied, cleaned and repainted the room, purchased Roman shades and an area rug, and started putting together a new TV stand. We also had a drawing of Jeremy’s framed, got the dog’s toenails clipped, and—the point of this post—visited the Salem Wednesday farmer’s market.

Among other things, we came home from the market with Hood strawberries for ice cream, a bouquet of curly garlic scapes, and a huge bagful of fava beans. While Nolan napped after all the excitement and my mom worked on painting the baseboards, I macerated berries, buzzed up an easy recipe for garlic scape pesto, and got the favas shelled, blanched and peeled. When dinnertime rolled around, all I had to do was cook pasta and toss it together with the favas—quickly sauteed in olive oil—the pesto, and a splash of cream. The pesto turned out to have an intense garlicky heat, much more powerful than I had anticipated. A little went a very long way, so we had lots left over. (I mixed some of it into scrambled eggs, which helped tame the flavor but produced some awfully unphotogenic beige eggs, a disappointment since the pesto itself was such a sprightly spring green.)

As for the room, I keep trying to take photos that actually show what it looks like now. (You can see, a bit, its previous state in this photo, which was taken from nearly the same stance.) Alas, the problem is that I can’t back up enough with our camera’s lens to capture more than a corner of the room at one time. But this should at least give you the gist of it, complete with ugly purple couch and pretty German shepherd pup. What you can’t quite see to the left is the TV, and to the right is a built-in bookshelf, the stairs to the basement, another big window, and three hanging pots containing herbs that keep dying (I think it is just too hot back there now—currently wilting are sage, lemon thyme and basil plants). We still need to get some speakers and other equipment set up, and take care of a few finishing touches like more artwork, but I’m pretty happy with the result, considering our limited options.

My laptop is about to fuse to my knees, so I’m going to give it a chance to cool off. Man, that strawberry ice cream sounds really good about now… time to make a fresh batch of something cool and refreshing, I dare say.