Chilled Apricot Soup

I'm about to start a war. Ready?

I put on a sweater yesterday.

I realize these are incendiary words since half of the United States is sweltering in August heat. But not here in New England. It's freezing this morning, rainy and blustery. The maples are tipping orange at their tops. And the garden is certainly the worse for wear. I was just thinking yesterday evening--in my sweater--that I'll soon need to chop out the hostas for the year.

So. I'm all about grabbing the last bits of summer. And nothing's better than a chilled fruit soup to do just that.

In case you haven't checked it out, there's a whole science/art break-down of these lovely summer favorites in COOKING KNOW-HOW, available here. And one of the very first recipes in our book about getting off processed food, REAL FOOD HAS CURVES (available here) is a chilled peach soup. But since apricots are quickly disappearing from the farm stands around us, I thought it best to give them one last go. Here's how:

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Cucumber Gazpacho

Relationships have to be balanced, right? There has to be give and take, yin and yang. Or else the only option is a full-on break-up, messy and tangled.

Which I had with gazpacho a few years ago. I wanted to like it. I tried so hard. I was open and stable. (Well, stable for me.)

But it didn't like me back. Good grief, no relationship is worth a stomach ache. If you remember back to your college days, I'm sure you know what I mean.

Frankly, it's the onions. Raw onions and I don't get along. A little? Fine. But too much? Ugh.

You'd think, being from the American South, I'd be a fan. Every one of my kin eats a big slice of raw onion on a hamburger. For heaven's sake, my paternal grandmother used to go out to the garden, dig up an onion, wash it off with the hose, and eat it like an apple while she weeded and tended the other plants. No lie.

As is so often the case in my life, Bruce to the rescue. He has morphed gazpacho so it and I can have a lovely relationship again. (Does this mean Bruce and I have some sort of open relationship? Um, no. Gazpacho and I have our limits.)

He's made the classic soup with way more cucumbers than normal. Which suits me just fine. I got no beef with cucumbers.

One warning: if you look at that top picture, you'll see this gazpacho is a little soupier than some versions. That's because of the extra cucumbers. Which is fine by me. I like a little soup so that my hunk of crunchy whole-grain bread can "accidentally" fall into the bowl.

So let's get on with it. You'll end up with a lot, about 10 to 12 servings, enough for several meals in the days ahead. (Have lots of crunchy bread on hand, too. Smeared with a little soft goat cheese, it's even better.)

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Chilled Arugula Soup With Preserved Lemon

I made this one up on the fly. Well, Bruce and I make up all our recipes. No copying in this house. But I made it up and served it to people without first testing it. So I was nervous. Listen, I love chilled soups. Like the plum version in the post below. But a chilled arugula soup? I thought it would be perfect between the courses, a real palate cleanser. But maybe. . . .

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Cold Carrot Ginger Soup

When I met Bruce, I, the Texan, was the world traveler. I couldn't wait to crush myself into an airline seat, fly anywhere, and run up my credit cards, all to travel, tromp--and mostly eat. I just couldn't get enough.

Bruce? Not so much. He believed the world ran on an axis of Manhattan and the Hamptons with an unfortunate stretch of interstate between.

Naturally, I construed myself the well-heeled food sophisticate. With a few telling lapses. Like cold soup. I just couldn't do it. It violated the Texas prairie boy in me. Soup is hot. Period. If it's cold, it means you didn't get your butt to the table fast enough.

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