Fab-o summer spread and a thank you

This time of year means good and fresh eating. And I just love it. Despite an incredibly busy day, I was hellbent on making a marvelous dinner tonight, and it was worth the effort (and the come to jesus with the children about how I am not their servant, not least because I'm unpaid; heh; #parentalwinning #seriously) to sit down to this spread.

the best-ever baked beans

These are the best baked beans: Five kinds of beans, bacon, onions, molasses...these are a hot, saucy mess of goodness.

strawberry-rhubarb pie, version 1

All delicious, plenty of leftovers, and seriously, the talk with the kids was very good. 

More on that later, but I want to thank you all -those of you who commented here, elsewhere on social media and directly to me- for your thoughtful responses to and in support of my pieces on the massacre in Charleston. Change will take so many of us, and together our voices are stronger and louder. 

Kids are hysterical, great dinner Southern-style

The kids were in rare form tonight- calm, hilarious, getting along, no beefs about bedtime. Darling! They had this whole story-line going on about someone named Mark whose house was being taken over by a ghost. So, they shot the ghost and cut him in half and put him in the street. Then there was Rue-gaga (a character Oliver made up on our drive home from the beach; apparently Rue-gaga is a baby/young child whose family was was victimized by Haman so Rue-gaga avenged their torture) whose home was invaded by aliens so they took care of them too. You know, if you'd told me a year ago that I could write about violent boy-thoughts with such a laissez-faire attitude, I'd have told you you were nuts. However, it is abundantly clear to me now that this stuff is INNATE. Don't fight it y'all. Boys will make guns out of toast. Just go with it and appreciate their creativity and desire to keep you safe from the bad guys in the world. They will turn out fine if you just set some limits and remind them that normal, functional people do not hurt others and say things like "I'm going to kill you with my SkyBlaster foam gun."

T and I then cooked the most marvelous homage to great Southern cooking. Barbecued chicken and spicy okra on the grill, and a fabbbbbulous Hugh Acheson corn-tomato-basil salad with a thyme-shallot vinaigrette. With it we drank a bottle of Muga Reserva, a divine Spanish Rioja, and for dessert we're taste-testing a food52 recipe up for Your Best Mint: mint-cherry-chocolate rice pudding pops. BTW, peeps, if you have Pandora, make a playlist based on the Supremes. I cannot even handle how great the music we've been listening to is. 50s/60s/Motown is definitely the best era of American music. How could someone as nerd-tastic as Roy Orbison make a song like Pretty Woman and sing it in that meow voice?! Right now, The Archies' Sugar, Sugar...