Home, Sweet Second Home

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: This is going to sound strange coming from someone who is going to be paying college tuition through 2022 (!) but lately I've been thinking about second homes. It might have been prompted by my next-door neighbors, who have relocated to a beautiful modern condo with  fabulous view of the Rockies, but who still own their historic country house in Maine - a future summer home. 

Maybe it was seeing pictures of Marcia Talley's new beachfront  Bahamas cottage. Or it could have started last November, when I fled Maine's gloomy, chill weather during my book tour and landed in Scottsdale, having dinner poolside with Rhys and totally envying her for being able to relocate there every fall. I have a Maine friend who's just purchased a house on the Big Island of Hawaii and a Florida cousin considering a place in Vermont. If I could afford it, I would definitely jump on the bandwagon. My grandmother used to say land was the only thing worth investing in - they weren't making any more of it. (Of course, she was a farmer's daughter, and didn't live to see the crash of '08. She might advise differently now.) The big question would be: where? How to decide?

Living in a cold climate, someplace warm - Hawaii, Arizona, Florida - sounds very tempting. On the other hand, maybe a place with four seasons would be more fun. I've long thought a four-season lakefront cottage in Maine's Lake region, with swimming and skiing all within easy reach, would be ideal.

Someplace isolated, where I could be alone with my thoughts and writing, like a rustic Adirondack lodge? Or plunge into the social and intellectual life of New York City in a pied a terre? Near my family in northern Virginia in a Wisconsin Avenue, D.C. apartment? Or near my family in Alabama, in a waterfront home in artsy Fairhope? Or maybe Ross and I could have a traveling home - a restored Airstream trailer or a forty-foot sailboat. So many choices!

How about you, Reds? If money and travel time were no object, what would be your dream second home? If you already have one, like Rhys, is it as sweet as it appears? Do you have another place you'd consider going?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Paris.




JULIA: A woman who knows her own mind. Rhys?


RHYS BOWEN: I really enjoy escaping from the brutal California winters to Arizona, Julia. We love being out in the desert and the fabulous sunsets and the fun life in Scottsdale (having Barbara and Poisoned Pen close by is a huge plus). But a third place? It's complicated enough remembering which items we left where right now, although we have pretty much equipped both places to be self sustaining. What I love about the condo is it's light, modern, 16 foot ceiling,uncluttered,  lovely landscaped grounds (that someone else takes care of), pools and spas. It's like an extended vacation for me. 

But I do secretly hanker after a little cottage in an English village, so that I can put my basket over my arm and go to buy eggs from the farmer. Or maybe a house in the  South of France, overlooking the Med. I do love beaches.... but not Hawaii or Mexico. Maybe a Greek Island? All to myself? Next to Onasis's one? I'd better write harder and faster.....

JULIA: I Mentioned to my daughter that you had a place in Arizona. She said, "Wait - doesn't Ms. Bowen live in California?" I pointed out it does get foggy and damp. Reared in Maine, she was extremely dubious.

LUCY BURDETTE: We are lucky dogs already to spend half the year in Key West and half in Connecticut. But that doesn't stop me from imagining a little place in New York City. Greenwich Village maybe, where I could step outside and grab a bite to eat any time of night or day. And attend a lot of shows and even an occasional opera. And wander around getting to know the nooks and crannies. But then I read the real estate section in the Sunday New York Times and realize I've lost my marbles:). I would however, definitely visit Hank in Paris. And Rhys in England or the south of France. Standing by for the invite...


SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Do any of you lovely Reds need a caretaker for your already existing second homes in the off season? With a husband, a son, a mother-in-law, a new foster son and two cats, I volunteer!

JULIA: Susan, my philosophy is that if you don't own a vacation home, you need friends who do!

How about you, dear readers? Are you second home owners already? Or do you have the perfect spot already picked out?

Mediterranean Tuna Salad with Olive Dressing

This is the elegant magazine version. They used garnish!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The fabulous Kaye Barley is going to be blogging here on Sunday, our usual recipe day, so I'm going to share a dinner suggestion with you today. I ran across this in  BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS magazine and tore it out, thinking it would be fancy to serve to guests. However, when  generous neighbor gave us a huge bowl filled with fingerling potatoes and wax beans, it was like a message from the culinary gods. And I'm so glad I listened! 

It turns out Mediterranean Tuna Salad with Olive Dressing has all the elements I look for in a recipe: it's cheap (but doesn't look it) extremely fast and easy, and, important for cooking when it's 90 degrees out, only requires ten minutes of boiling (so it won't heat up the kitchen to unbearable levels. Oh, and most importantly, it's delicious. I doubled the recipe, which made enough for three hungry adults with two lunch-sized servings left over for the next day. Here it is:

Mediterranean Tuna Salad with Olive Dressing (double portion)

2 lb. tiny new potatoes, halved if large (but if you use fingerlings like I did, you don't have to do any slicing at all!)

2 lb. fresh green beans (I used wax beans.) You only have to snap off the thick stem end - again, no cutting or other snapping involved. Super quick.

2 16 oz cans of white tuna (those are the big cans. It would take 6 little cans to get the same amount.)

Dressing:

1 cup green olives with pimentos. (The standard jar makes one cup. You could go all fancy, I suppose, but I used one  of those no-name brand jars of cocktail olives, and it turned out fine.)

6 Tbsp good olive oil (1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp) Use the good stuff, it does make a difference.

2 Tbsp spicy Brown mustard. I only had spicy sweet-hot and used that instead, and it was quite nice.

2 Tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp sugar

Throw the potatoes into water and bring it to  boil.  Let them boil for 5 minutes, then add the beans and boil for another 5 minutes. You want the veggies to be just fork-tender.


Meanwhile, dump all the dressing ingredients in a blender or food processor, blend or process until they're smooth and creamy.

Combine potatoes, beans, and flaked tuna (try to leave it in bite-sized chunks.) Add the dressing.


That's it! The original recipe picture clearly shows the meal plated individually, with the dressing drizzled over artistically arranged beans and potatoes. But really, who does that? I tossed it all together in  big salad bowl. It wasn't as pretty, but it was super easy and boy did it taste good.

To be fair, this is also day-after leftovers.

Fan of Fans

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Here in New England, we've had  three long months of delightfully temperate weather. Then, just as thoughts turn to new school supplies and getting the sweaters out of the cedar closet, we're suddenly faced with 90 degree days. It's as if Summer has realized she only has a few more weeks to live and has turned up the heat in retaliation. How do we combat it? 

Fans.


This will shock and amaze those of you living in more southerly climes (and by more southerly, I mean below the Massachusetts Turnpike) but I have no air conditioning. Central air is still rare in Maine, in part because we have the oldest housing stock of any state in the nation. Teachers use electric fans in classrooms. You can still find stores with slamming screen doors instead of refrigeration units.  (Is it just me, or do the rest of you get frosted when you walk out of a ninety-degree parking lot into a grocery store that's so cold you need  jacket and scarf?)

 
Lots of folks have window air conditioners, of course, and the number grows ever year, as our average summer temperatures climb and the number of degree days increase. (A chart of Maine's summer climate over the past several decades shows year-to-year variables, of course, but a steady upward trend.) However, at my house, we keep cool the old-fashioned way.


In part, I can get away with no-a/c stance because we have some advantages not shared by households in say, Texas, where Deb lives. First, of course, we reside in Maine. That means we can usually count on summer nighttime temperatures, even after a scorching day, to fall into the low sixties to mid fifties. As soon as the air begins to cool in the evening, every screened window and door is opened in our house. (I just realized another reason we can do this - living in the country, I don't need to keep the place closed up to keep out noise, pollution and overly-close neighbors.) 

 
The second advantage we have is an old house. Close to two hundred years old. The internal climate of our farmhouse changes with the speed and nimbleness of the QEII making a U turn; ie, not very. This creaky, drafty place keeps in cool in the summer and holds on to warmth in the winter (which explains the many times we've been able to carry on during a 3 or 5 or 9 day power outage in the winter.) If we lived in one of those modern tight houses you can heat with a lightbulb, we'd probably perish in our own effluvia.

So the house cools overnight. In the morning, we shut the windows. All the windows. We draw the curtains or shades wherever the sun shines in. If we get several degree days in a  row, as we've been having this week, we close off the family room and The Boy's bedroom, two parts of the house that were "shotgunned" onto the main building sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. Since they have no attic above them, they're particularly vulnerable to the sun. The temperature in the house rises, of course - yesterday it got up to 84 downstairs! - but it's livable. If you have a fan.

I love my fans. We have window fans, to suck the cool air in at night and exhaust the warm air during the day. We have a big square floor fan that we place at the head of the cellar stairs and use to bring the cool subterranean air up into the kitchen. We have fans that sit next to the computers and fans that oscillate while we're watching the television. (Those are the ones that get turned off when no one is there.) I love the feel of the air against my skin, and I love the way I'm still connected to the natural rhythms of the day and the season.


Summer's day hath all too short a lease, the poet wrote, and that's very true for both here in Maine and in the Adirondacks, where I set my books. We have, on average, twenty short weeks between last and first frost. Why spend it enclosed in an artificial bubble? And of course, if it does get Just Too Hot at home...there's always that other old-fashioned solution: go to the movies! 

How about you, dear readers? Can you remember your grandparents using fans and pulling the drapes down? And how do you keep cool in the September heat?