I had to stop at the supermarket on the way home today because I had to have lemon hummus and fresh mozzarella. (Um, not together; I mean I had to have some in the house.) Is it a coincidence that the heat wave makes me want to eat Mediterranean? I think not.
If I could keep alcohol in this house, I'd be buying myself a nice bottle of rose prosecco, too, but I guess I am stuck with Snapple.
What do you like to eat and drink when it's wicked hot?
xoxo
6 comments:
Not much. ;)
At least until I come in from the heat. And I'm usually not interested in some sort of heavy hot soup or anything like that.
I do tend to go for those same sort of Mediterranean foods: falafel, gyro/shwarma, hummus... cold and salady type foods. But I don't know if they're actually more appetizing in wicked hot weather, or if I associate them with wicked hot weather because that's where I've had them particularly ubiquitously.
And did they evolve in the Mediterranean because they were good in the heat, or were they just the food that was most available and stable in that heat?
Speaking only from my own experience, I have never eaten hummus in Lebanon or caprese salad on the isle of Capri, and neither did I grow up eating those things in the summer (unlike, say, grilled meat and potato salad), so it's not that I am conditioned to want them as soon as the temps hit 90. They just taste particularly good to me when it's wicked hot.
Mediterranean food, yes! My daughter loved it when she found out that you could buy fresh hot felafel in the souks in Israel and munch it on the street...of course you can do that in NYC too. I confess to working my way through a pound of store-bought tuna salad at the moment (the store-bought part seems very corrupt). All of this is better than traditional New England hot-weather food, like crackers n' milk. Yankees don't do warmth, I guess.
Well, for me I know it really is because they bring back sensory memories of being in those sorts of places in that kind of heat... I suddenly start craving those things, but it's because the heat and hunger and being out on the street all combine to bring back those sensations.
I really didn't eat much of that sort of food at all until I'd actually been there... Hummus and falafel and such were completely new to me when I got off the plane at Ben Gurion airport... But they sure hit the spot when I was there, and I know that's what I think of when I'm craving those foods in the heat.
Maybe if I'd have been exposed to them here first, I'd still like them just as much... but there's no way to do that experiment now!
Though on the drinking during a heat wave front I really like those more acidic (I think that's the right word) sodas, like the San Pellegrino Limonatta, unsweetened iced tea (the tannic acid helps), and lighter bodied beers (hefeweisen, pilseners, etc.)
The acidy soda stuff also comes from traveling (since you can barely ever find such things here) but the iced tea and beer preferences are completely home grown.
Dayum! Skipped the drink part. IPAs...made for the heat, y'know, and when I'm not totally prostrated by the heat, home-made lemonade. No boughten kind can match.
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