Salad Days

A hot day -- actually hotter than predicted, as the forecast said 104 but it got up to 108.  The plants that I mulched with a shredded bark called gorilla fur were able to handle the oven-like heat much better than those I haven't gotten to yet.  We got a small mountain of the stuff delivered earlier in the spring but I'm still in the process of spreading around the gardens.  Coinciding with this mini-heat wave, a troop of baby toads (or maybe it's froglets) suddenly appeared all over the front yard and carport.  I was so worried about the tiny things that I dragged the hose around and squirted as much dirt down as I could in an attempt to cool things off.  I don't see how they could possibly survive in this heat, but they seemed oblivious.

When it's this hot, it's salad weather.  I'd drooled over a recipe for Lobster and Potato Salad in a recent entry in one of my favorite blogs, Smitten Kitchen.  When Bruce and I went grocery shopping in Angels Camp, there in the ice of the meat case lay two lovely lobster tails.  I do believe that they called my name.  The fact that they were $10 apiece only made me hesitate for an instant...actually, I don't think I hesitated at all.  I didn't have the recipe with me, but was able to look it up on my phone.  The way everything was working out, this was obviously a salad whose time had come.

Yukon Gold potatoes (dug from the garden earlier in the week), lobster, Dijon mustard, capers, green onions, celery, red onion, fresh tarragon and an emulsified vinaigrette.  A perfect meal to enjoy on a hot Saturday night.  We played Scrabble while we ate -- winning this game is always fun, but I discovered that it's even more so when the victory is accompanied with lobster and potato salad.