Hello friends! I know that technically summer started a few weeks ago with the solstice, and according to the calendar, and based on the sales at Old Navy. But even though it starts to feel summery by late April around here these days, my summer start was delayed this year by two bouts of illness, multiple (ten!) rainy weekends and so much travel. But, I’m back, baby! For the whole summer until we leave for France (one room left!) in October! And in the spirit of celebrating my summer finally beginning, I am offering a special sweet event for all my paid subscribers and any free reader who upgrades to paid by July 15! I’ll be teaching a couple of FREE online classes in August, dates/times tbd but contingent on when I can get back into my still-under-construction apartment! They’ll be focused on making the most of your summer produce, and it’ll be a one hour, live, interactive Zoom class! I’ll run two different sessions to accommodate multiple time zones, with the same menu.
If you’re a paid subscriber and would like to join, please rsvp to thechefsmartypants@gmail.com (I’ll be checking that you are indeed a paid subscriber!) to get on the guest list. If you’re a free sub, and you upgrade to paid by July 15, you’ll automatically be sent an invite with the Zoom link! What are you waiting for? Don’t let not upgrading ruin your summer! Limited time offer!
So…yet again I am back from travelling, recovering from being sick (again) and finally back on my writing horse. We came home from our Ireland trip a week ago, and just like after returning from Japan in May, I immediately came down with something. Not COVID this time as far as I know, since I didn’t test, just some kind of goopy chest cough, congestion, fatigue and misery. For a full week. I’m still coughing. Is this a pattern? Will I just have to factor in a compulsory, predictable week of illness post-travelling from now until I meet the end? Is this all part of the middle-age, perimenopausal general decline and decrepitude? Please say no. Say it’s a coincidental fluke. Say it’s because I never get enough sleep on our trips and airplanes are germ saunas. Just say something to make me feel better, ok?
Nevertheless, I am persisting, and jumping into summer with both feet first. The last year has been a lot. It was packed with travel starting last September with a trip to Greece, Italy in November, three South American countries in February, South Korea and Japan in May and Ireland in June. That’s a lot, no? I think I got a little overambitious, when the trips began to sell out and I realized that instead of teaching 4-5 classes a week I could take six trips a year and make the same income. I’m not complaining, this amazing opportunity arose for me once my social media audience (you guys!) ballooned, and I am still, every day, mind-boggled at how my life has changed in the last three years. But eight countries in eight months? It takes a lot out of you. There are only three trips scheduled in the upcoming months, France in October 2025, Mexico City in April ‘26 and Southern Italy in May ‘26. We’re discussing doing South Korea again in September of 2026 because we loved it so much. Wanna join any of them? Click my “travel with me” page for the details. And let me know if you’d like to come to South Korea! I’ll start a pre-booking list.
So after all of that, all that travel and sickness and apartment construction and moving chaos and just the general horrifying state of the world right now, I needed a cure, STAT. What I needed, was to make pizza this weekend just to replenish my physical reserves and restore my shaky soul. So I did. I fired up the pizza oven that was gifted to me last summer by Breeo, and cranked out six crispy pies which we shared with our neighbors and friends. You know that pizza will cure you of all ills, corporal and spiritual, right? And is an ancient and highly respected medicine for almost anything, so I had to do it. It was good, very good, and very restorative and I now feel fully cured of my malaise, lassitude and physical diminishment. Pizza having been eaten, bodily balance restored, release the hounds! Start the season! Wind the frog!
And that means it’s really time get summer up and running, before it’s over! Having traveled all year, and been somewhat removed (mercifully) from most of the chaos of the USA, I’ve decided that if I’m here now, for the foreseeable future, I need to be intensively focused on summering this season. Like really squeeze the max juice out of it. Swim, grill, hike, make more pizza, pick berries, get sun (safely of course), eat soft serve, all of it, the whole summery, sweaty shebang. Labor day is eight weeks away, the clock is ticking. Let’s move, people!
I’m summering intensely this year because I’ve been given the gift of a few months of very low obligation. No travel, not much teaching, just content-making and writing and thinking. And having been gone from home so much, I’ve been thinking about how travel is a zooming out, a full removing of yourself from your daily up-close view and a taking in of a place from a visitor’s birdseye. A total reversal of perspective. You can never really experience life somewhere when you’re a tourist, because there’s always a remove, a distance. You’re not experiencing it the way the people who live there do, the same way that no one can experience your life the way you do. Having spent the last eight months at that distance, I’m thinking I’m ready to zoom back in and go deeply macro on summer now. Ignore the obvious, the hellish, the noise, and focus on the pleasure, the joy and the beauty of right now. I have to remind myself that the world is still a beautiful, miraculous place, and to just look a little harder at its miracles.
Like the teenage bunny who visits us every evening up at Tiny Bungalow to nibble the clover from the yard just as we’re sitting down to dinner, and the abundant fireflies (thankfully!) that have returned this year at dusk. The rapidly ripening wineberries that I plan to eat by the fistful this weekend, the long rural evenings and pink city skies at nine pm and beyond. Swimming in the sun. Laying on warm cement in the dappled afternoon light. Remembering that joy is an act of resistance (I saw that on a t-shirt and have tried to made it my motto) and just really trying to live in the moment, not panic, and eat as much watermelon as possible.
So my friends, I urge you, I implore you, to zoom in and appreciate the tiny, the small, the minutiae that bring joy this summer. It’s a fleeting, ephemeral season, and it’ll be over too soon so let’s all summer intensively, and try to forget everything else right now. There’ll be plenty of time to zoom back out in a few months.
I’ll see you later this week for the paid video post! Lots of good stuff on deck so stay tuned!! xxx E.
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