It's too hot for soup. I know that. Everyone knows that. And yet here I am, standing in a kitchen where the evening light pours in sideways and the air is thick enough to wear, thinking about the first soup of the season like it's someone I miss.
The thing about summer
Summer makes me restless in the kitchen. Not in a bad way, exactly. More like the feeling of having too many daylight hours and not enough appetite to fill them. We eat later now, because the sun won't quit, and by the time dinner rolls around nobody wants anything heavy. Cold noodles. Sliced cucumbers with salt. Grilled chicken that I season with whatever's left in the chaos drawer and hope for the best.
It's good food. It's fine food. But it doesn't hug you.
That's what I'm missing right now. The hug. The slow warmth of something simmered, something that fills the house with a smell that says "stay inside, it's okay, I've got you." Soup does that. Nothing else does it quite the same way.
Craving out of season
My husband thinks I'm ridiculous. He's perfectly content with cold leftovers eaten standing at the counter, the back door open to let in whatever breeze exists. My daughter is in a watermelon phase that shows no sign of slowing down. She'd eat it for every meal if I let her. Some nights I almost do.
But there's this ache that shows up in the longest days. Not for cold weather itself. For the permission cold weather gives you. Permission to be inside. To cook something for two hours without feeling like you're wasting the light. To stand over a pot and stir, with nowhere else to be.
Summer cooking is fast. It's efficient. It's "get in, get out, go sit on the porch." I love that too. I'm not ungrateful. I just think there's something worth naming about the way we crave what we can't have, even in food. Especially in food.
What I'm really saying
Cooking is seasonal, sure. Everyone talks about that. Eat what's ripe, eat what's local, follow the calendar. Fine. Good advice. But feelings are seasonal too, and nobody talks about that part. The way autumn makes you want to nest. The way summer makes you want to be careless and easy. The way those moods shape what you reach for in the pantry before your brain even catches up.
Right now I reach for things that require no heat, no effort, no standing near a flame. That's what the season asks of me. So I do it.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm already composing. A broth with turmeric and ginger. Rice that dissolves at the edges. Chicken pulled from the bone. The Dutch oven on the stove, lid slightly off, steam curling toward the ceiling while the windows fog up and the world outside goes dark at five o'clock.
Months away. All of it, months away.
You ever miss a meal you haven't made yet? A dinner that belongs to a version of you that doesn't exist until October? I think about her sometimes, that future me, stirring something slow while the house smells like home. She doesn't know how lucky she is. She probably misses summer.