No-Cook Summer Meals
what I've been eating + who's inspiring my cooking
Hi there! Come on in. Welcome to my lazy mid-summer newsletter. Make yourself comfy! Grab a cool drink. Let's catch up!
Sometimes it feels like it's my job to regularly post on social media and, just in time for the holidays, I admittedly have not been super active on Instagram this month. Instead, I've been delightfully busy preparing for, recovering from, and very much savouring every single second of a 9-day visit from my family, whom I had not previously seen for 924 days (that's way too long!!). I miss them very much already, and I hope you too have had a chance to spend some of your July away from your work and/or phone and glued to your loved ones instead.
Playing host as well as tour guide meant little time left over to play chef, so I have not been cooking as much as I usually do lately... On top of that, I managed to finally catch COVID (or did it finally manage to catch me?) and hence haven't been able to visit my local farm shop in over a week. As you know, good cooking starts with good ingredients, so I am very much itching to get my hands on their wonderfully fresh produce as soon as I possibly can.
July is the month for summer vacations in Norway, and if you think Norwegian stores being closed on Sundays is annoying, wait 'til you find out that a bunch of businesses here like to shut down for the whole month. How un-North American! I love it.
Everyone deserves a holiday, and that includes you and me. That's why I'm taking it easy in this newsletter, not sharing any properly written "recipes" but simply rather some photos of food — made by me, and also by others I look up to and admire — as inspiration for things to eat.
It's also why I hope you're making the most of these summer days* to rest and take part in some restorative and relaxing activities — be it packing a picnic and heading out to a local park, mountain or beach; going for a walk, a bike ride, a hike, or a swim; catching up with friends, family, a good book or a good pet; or perhaps engaging in some magical combination of the above.
*:or winter days — hello Southern Hemisphere!
If you'd like to find out what I've been consuming lately (food-wise and media-wise), as well as what I would like to be eating shortly, then I cordially invite you to read on. I hope you'll be able to find some inspiration in what you see.
That being said, here's wishing you a fantastic month of August ahead!
Stay cool and keep hydrated,
👋simone
what I've been eating
🍅
If you go back to last month's newsletter, you'll find a segment on what I had been happily eating on repeat throughout the month of June (namely, thickly sliced tomatoes on untoasted sourdough bread, a peach mozzarella salad with pickled shallots and shallot vinegar, and a seemingly never-ending selection of raw fruit and veg). The same holds true for July, with the addition of a few new fresh faces:
Watermelon feta salads
Nothing revolutionary here, watermelon and feta are a well-known match made in heaven. Though if feta and other cheeses aren't your jam, other ingredients well-suited to a watermelon salad include: lime juice, red onion (raw or pickled), black olives, chili flakes, mint, basil, red wine vinegar, and cucumber.
Fresh pea salads
I know it's easy to think of peas as more of a spring than a summer ingredient but, at least in temperate climates, they really do shine well into middle of July. After that, runner beans are what I like to toss into salads instead. Use them in their pods to give any salad an extra fresh crisp or crunch!
Raspberries, blueberries & other foraged finds
Last month my neighbourhood was bursting with wild strawberries and I couldn't believe my luck. This month, not only is it exploding with raspberry bushes and blueberry shrubs, but I also came across some redcurrants in the forest this morning (!!). Needless to say, I munched a bunch on the spot and plan to return as soon as I can, foraging basket in hand.
Pa amb tomàquet (pan con tomate)
Forgive me for potentially doing this the wrong way, but I tried the "lightly rub tomato on crusty garlicky bread" method as well as the "grate a whole tomato and pile its juicy flesh high onto delicately toasted garlicky bread" method and have found that I enjoy the latter far more than the seemingly-more-authentic(-and-modest) former.
To recreate, toast some bread until all surfaces are crusty but before the middle goes crisp. Rub half a garlic clove into the bread, until the garlic is no more. Drizzle on some extra virgin olive oil. Top with grated tomato flesh (the skin makes a nice snack, plain or with olive oil and salt on it), and season generously with flaky sea salt*. Enjoy, repeat, and enjoy again.
*alternatively, add the olive oil after topping the bread with the grated tomato — do what you like best!
Iced coffee
Not a food, but I've been drinking what I consider to be an obscene amount of decaf iced coffees (1 to 2 a day — shocking, I know) this month so figured I'd include the beverage in the list. Just a tall glass full of ice, filled nearly to the top with coffee, and enough whole milk to make one question whether or not the drink will overflow. Fun fact: decaffeinated coffee is pretty unpopular in Norway and rather difficult to find in coffee shops and grocery stores alike (seems like very few of us out here like to sometimes drink it for the taste and not the buzz...).
what I want to be eating
💥
Instagram is a place for sharing, connecting, and also for inspiring, and boy do I feel inspired by what others post on there. A few accounts stand out to me especially and, if you haven't heard of them yet, I really think you should check them out — I've been wanting to eat every single thing they've been sharing lately.
Malin AKA @lakompott
Everything Malin shares looks so enticingly seasonal, sophisticated and fresh that it makes you (or, at the very least, me) wish you could just snap your fingers and instantaneously join her at home in her Parisian kitchen.
Lucy Timm AKA @lucy_timm
The food Lucy creates just makes sense. It also just makes you hungry. Beautiful, complex, not-quite-so-simple that you could come up with it yourself yet not-so-unfamiliar that it seems daunting or unapproachable. Her work is artistry and craftsmanship all at once, and if you happen to be in London you can taste some of it @26grains and @stoneystreet26.
AKA @anchovytrove
Trevor calls himself a home cook, but he might as well be a chef-on-his-day-off and a photographer rolled into one. His posts often make me wish I lived next to a NYC greenmarket, and his lovely newsletters offer insights on just how to replicate some of his most enticing dishes.
Xanthe Gladstone AKA @xanthegladstone
If you get as excited by growing vegetables as you do cooking them, this may very well be an account to follow. Combine a zest for colourful, flavourful dishes with a passion for fashion and you've got yourself a seemingly endless stream of inspiration in the form of Xanthe's creative feed.
what else I've been consuming
🧠
Before I let you go, I thought I'd leave you with 3 non-edible things I've been devouring lately (and that you might just enjoy tucking into too):
📖 Market Cooking: Recipes and Revelations, Ingredient by Ingredient by David Tanis
Not a new book by any account, but it is new to me and I've really been loving how each section makes me want to run to a market and get cooking.
📺 A Taste of the Country on Channel 5 (if you're in the UK or have access to a VPN)
Watching this show is like getting a long-form version of Julius Roberts' old Instagram stories where he would take you step-by-step through a recipe. If you can't access the show, watching old episodes of Nigella Lawson's and Laura Calder's shows on YouTube is just as satisfying (if not pleasantly nostalgia-inducing).
🎧 How Ultraprocessed Foods Work from Stuff You Should Know
I will listen to anything and everything on ultra-processed foods. It's a topic I think everyone should know about, and feel passionate about, because of how profoundly it affects both people and planet. The recent podcast episode above is a bit like a For Dummies intro to the topic, but if you want to hear more about it I also highly recommend this BBC Food Chain episode that came out last year.
That's all from me this month!
Happy cooking & happy eating 💛
This was a Substack edit of an archived newsletter. To read the newsletter in its original format, click here.