Chili

Fred has an injury in his suspensory ligament. This is decidedly not a good thing. But here he is smiling at the camera and trying to look noble and brave.

Meanwhile, I've been cooking turkey chili with white beans and fresh jalapenos, cinnamon & cocoa & cumin. It's so good that I keep shovelling teaspoon after teaspoon in my mouth and burning my tongue. The summer succotash from Lucques is so ridculously good that I shall make that too tomorrow night, along with some yellow tomato gazpacho. Bristol Farms had the most ostentatious display of heirloom tomatoes, yellow and white and red and brown and green and black - all fat and delicious - so I bought a large back of them, mostly all yellow, and some burrata and now I'm fantasizing about supper when Jumby gets off the plane from Baltimore.

Thank God for the rain. Today it actually rained on Ventura Blvd and Minks and I lifted our hands to the sky as if we were aborigines in the deserts of Western Australia. What bliss to see rain after so much dry heat. That's what we get of the hurricane - no rooves flying off or cows being transported from one state to another in the clouds, just about three minutes of delicate, lacy rain.

Without the television or the radio or the music that is usually blaring in this house, I can hear the wind in the trees, the cars on Laurel Canyon and the music of the crickets. A dog is barking in the distance, but my dogs are showing no signs of alarm, no signs of anything much at all really, as they're both passed out in there beds after a late supper.

I think I've made enough chili for a whole platoon, even though I only have twenty people for supper tomorrow. Let's hope it's not 108 degrees and everyone wants lettuce leaves, cucumber wedges and green goddess dressing while reclining into an overheated swoon.

I like the sound of crickets. It's like the pulse of the earth.