SUMMERTIME

​It is officially travel season. While Master/Master and Sweet Soprano explore London and Austria (check out this week’s Pies About Town), Sibling Sister and family are settling into their Toronto digs. The former Seattle-ites arrived just in time to witness  their newly adopted home’s 150th Canada Day celebration. As one anchored in the Garden State, my Independence holiday-ing was celebrated beneath a beach umbrella. My culinary adventures were no more daring than a twist of chocolate and vanilla frozen custard dipped in chocolate, but I’m not complaining. Frantically commandeering a soft serve ice cream from its perch high atop a sugar cone is my July rite of passage. Few things capture summer better than the combination of dripping chocolate, flimsy paper napkin and sun-screen tainted fingers.
 
A seasonal maiden voyage into the sunshine requires serious SPF preparedness. Folks who toil in kitchens experience plenty of burns; on forearms, between thumbs and index fingers, occasionally on necks from a splash of butter or bubble of scalding hot pie juice. We are the palest people on the beach, easy to spot amongst the honey skinned sun worshippers who have season (not day) passes, wrapped casually around their wrists or pinned to their striped umbrellas. Exposure to sun, salt water and cobalt skies sends me into a mild state of euphoric despair. I love being there, I loathe leaving.
 
2017  summer travel plans are sketchy at best; at the top of the list is a quick jaunt to Toronto to visit the newly ensconced Canadians. A bakery crawl in search of the glorious Portuguese custard tarts known as Pasteis de Nata is mandatory. And as I recall from my last tour of that fine city, Toronto does ice cream very well, specifically at a shoe-box sized retailer on Ossington Avenue called Bang Bang Ice Cream.
 
The culinary (and music) dream of a summer is being played out in Graz, Austria by Master/Master and Sweet Soprano. As of our last correspondence, we’ve touched on savory pies,  kaffee, und küchen. Their summer is young and ripe with adventure. My summer is young, my day-to-day adventures feature cases of ripe fruit. Determined to put down the paring knife and see what’s outside the bakery, I am cautiously optimistic. Conjuring the line of people waiting on the narrow sidewalk, I can almost taste the hand-rolled waffle cone overfilled with Bang Bang ice cream.