Hi none,
Back in the spring, I wrote to you about the return of the light, about the way it comes back to us almost imperceptibly at first and then all at once. I have been thinking about the other side of that lately, the part of August where the heat and light collide to create the sense of an endless summer. I’m forgetting what chilly or cold can even mean.
So, I have been greedy about making the most of the moment. My late summer highlights have included:
An outdoor movie night to watch Father of The Bride (seen in 10+ times and not sick of it yet)
Going to a Corinne Bailey Rae concert. I’ve loved her music for 20+ years but had never seen her before!
Taking my new dog on long evening walks
I am reading two seemingly opposed books at once right now: Unreasonable Hospitality, which has me thinking about the difference between service and generosity, and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Together they feel like the same lesson arriving from two directions: practice intention, and then practice more intention.
My cooking, meanwhile, has gotten wonderfully lazy, all pasta salads made with whatever is in the fridge, no recipe, barely a plan. This is the season for that, for letting good ingredients do the work while you sit outside a little longer.
Which brings me to Ember, our first chili vinegar, made from California ancho, habanero, and bell peppers, double fermented in small batches on a family-run organic farm on the Central Coast. It is smoky and tangy with a heat that builds slowly rather than announcing itself, and I expected to love it on grilled vegetables and on those pasta salads, which I do. What I did not expect was this: I put it on takeout Thai noodles and it was magical, then I put it on a Chipotle bowl and that was magical too!
We are calling this whole moment Endless Summer, which is partly a wish and partly an instruction. The season does not have to end just because the calendar says so. A bottle of Ember in September, on soup, on eggs, on roasted squash, is one way of keeping the heat and the light around a little while longer.
So tell me how you are spending the last of it, what you are cooking without a recipe, what you are refusing to let go of yet. I am always trying to learn how other people hold onto summer, and it means so much to hear it from this community.
With warmth,
Aishwarya
Founder and CEO, Brightland