The day was too nice to get sucked back into the turmoil that came tumbling out of the long weekend. It is ugly, and the conclusion of “Child 44,” the thriller about times in the Uncle Joe’s Soviet Union made me realize that it might be time to be extremely cautious in dealing with any apparatus of the State. I talked about that with my neighbor, who grew up in Crimea, and was a Young Pioneer as a girl.

She has seen the logical consequences of the increasingly shrill ideas of earnest central planners, and is not interested in seeing it here. “I will not surrender,” she said.

“Me neither,” I agreed, though we may only be able to defend our own little part of it. Our skies were blue, dotted with puffy and innocent white cumulus clouds, the air was less humid than it had been, and life was good enough to ignore the shrill hysterics and the clouds of falsehood that emanated from the capital.

Apparently Washington is having a hard time unraveling the “motivation” behind some of the savagery. They must be a little slow on the up-take, poor dears.

I had stopped by their farm to check in after all the frantic travels of the early summer. The bounty is starting to come in from the truck patch over the fence down at Refuge Farm, and the Russians have outdone themselves this year. My treat this weekend was a bag of summer squash, fresh fro the garden, some amazing cucumbers, and a half-pint jar of honey produced by the industrious bees that live in the hives out in back of the circa-1910 farmhouse.

Driving back up Rt-29, I considered what I might do with them. The cucumbers were easy- slice ‘em and put them in a nice chef salad with some Black Forest ham, shredded lettuce, onions, tomatoes and grated four-cheese Mexican cheese. No thought required.

The squash was terra incognita. I asked Natasha how she did them, but she was vague, and suggested I might try the internet to discover my own approach. “There is everything on internet,” she said, mysteriously, and I agreed on general principle.

The drive back was not that bad, except for the irritating traffic light south of Warrenton that caused traffic to back up for a couple miles, waiting for the light to cycle through the by-pass to the business route. It was so bad that some folks were bailing out and heading back south to take long-cuts around the traffic by taking the County roads. But I-66 was clear sailing all the way in to Arlington, and I was in good spirits when I arrived with plenty of daylight to swim and frolic with the usual suspects.

In fact, after an adult beverage and a plunge in the cool water, a party broke out on my patio and I did not get around to think about summer squash until after we had raised the Willow Umbrella, re-plunged in the pool and darkness settled in over Big Pink.

Ingredients:

“Sumer squash!” I thought, and was happy that I had re-stocked the salted Challenge Butter locker, had plenty of Bertolli Extra Virgin Olive Oil, fresh eggs, corn meal, Adobo seasoning and plenty of vodka, both vanilla-infused and regular high-test.

I turned on all the lights in the kitchen, turned up the classical radio and made preparations to fritter my time away.

Literally. I was not in the mood to settle down and grate that large yellow squash, risen from our own country soil. So I settled for slicing it all into uniform quarter-inch slices.

Directions:

Then I got out the eggs, broke two into the blue artisan bowl, tipped out some corn meal in a small china-blue saucer, and began heating the oil in the Lodge cast iron eight-inch fry pan with a generous dollop of Challenge butter for taste. If you are cooking for more than one, a twelve or fourteen inch Lodge would be about right. I keep my large one in the oven to catch the spatter when I broil in the little guy, setting in like a Russian nesting doll.

I took a sip of my drink, impressed with the progress of infusing the rocket fuel with the sweet vanilla taste of the Madagascar beans in the less-than-a-week they had nestled in the bottom of the cool-looking Rain Vodka bottle.

When the oil was good and hot, I started dipping the squash slices in the beaten egg mixture, and dredged them in the corn meal. Then I arrayed them neatly in the pan, and tapped my toe to the lilt of Rimsky-Korsakov on the classical station that mercifully keeps the news to three minutes on the hour, whether I need it or not.

It did not take long to cycle the squash rounds through the hot oil, browning them neatly on both sides, and then transferring them to a layer of paper towels on a plate next to the fry pan.

I was thinking about what the main course was going to be, and then it occurred to me that a nice Ranch dipping sauce with a shot of Pete’s Red House pepper sauce would jazz things off splendidly, and let the squash take center stage.

I took a plate and my drink out to the patio and sat under the red umbrella that had graced the Willow patio. I noticed last week they had razed that oasis of calm with front-end loaders, and about the last of the old place was gone now.

Oh well. I munched my fritters in the darkness, watching the light play on the underwater lights in the pool.

Notes: These are swell, and were good at breakfast, too, with some easy-over fried eggs. A real fritter would be full-on grated squash, maybe with some Vidalia onion thrown in, but this simple recipe is perfect for a side-dish with slaw and BBQ. Or just some quiet time with dipping sauce amid the chaos.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com