Latest / FROM THE INSIDE OUT by BETH ARNOLD / #61 THE LAST GASP OF SUMMER

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#61 THE LAST GASP OF SUMMER · FROM THE INSIDE OUT by BETH ARNOLD

• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Pull up a chair.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Beth Arnold, and this is from The Inside Out, where American life, politics, and memory meet as we tiny specks in the cosmos try to make sense of it all.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's September 24th, and I'm reading The Last Gasp of Summer, more Southern Food for Thought.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: We've just experienced the Last Gasp of Summer, and we're fast approaching the end of September as well.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to cool fall weather, to sitting outside on my patio without a flock of mosquitoes nipping me every chance they get.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love the softer light of fall and winter, and I want to sit under a more supple sun in late afternoon with a cocktail and watch my two miniature schnauzers chase gray squirrels.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I missed much of the summer's bounty, which brings me such delight.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite things, whether at home or anywhere in the world, is shopping in local farmers markets.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: There you see and feel the life of a community, town, or country along with the heart of the people in the food they've grown with care.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Our farmers feed us, and oh, how I admire beautiful fresh produce.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can see why painters paint still life, although there's nothing still in the energy such vegetables and fruits hold in their natural voluptuousness.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: They call to me with their little vegetable voices to enjoy the bounty summer has brought us and all the recipes I want to try.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love to try new ones and I'm constantly printing them out.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Earlier in the summer, I longed for a delish BLT, so I paid a lot for heirloom tomatoes at two different markets to make sure I had the best ones.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Summer calls for one or more of these classic sandwiches while the tomatoes are full of flavor and juice.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine a summer without thick slices of bacon fried to a crisp, my preference, on good sourdough bread, a thick smear of Duke's mayonnaise, and of course the lettuce.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Some recommend a better lettuce, but I'm quite happy with iceberg or romaine.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: The tomatoes may have been heirloom, but they weren't as tasty as I'd hoped.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'd bought some of them at a fancy local market which sells luscious foods and casually posh cooking sundries of all sorts.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they make a chicken pot pie with cheddar crust that's to die for.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And their cheese biscuits, yum! Small, short, and cheesy, just how I like them.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the tomatoes were merely okay.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: The other place I shopped was the local farmer's market, and those heirlooms weren't anything to brag about either.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: This summer a close friend talked about all his favorite tomatoes being Cherokee Purples.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: The last time we discussed it, he had yet to have any, and I still haven't asked him if he ever did.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: By the time I got some, it was early August in Rogers, Arkansas, and I bought them from a Vietnamese farmer at their farmer's market.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you how delectable they were.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: These are the kinds of things Southern cooks and eaters talk about instead of bagels, pizza, and hoagies on the East Coast or the Vineyards and Third Wave coffee roasters on the west coast.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Summer is the happiest eating season for Southerners, and there are a few things we must have every time it rolls around.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, a delicious homegrown tomato.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, a BLT made with the best tomatoes you can find.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, a tomato pie with same.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, a tomato sandwich with lots of mayo.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, fried green tomatoes, of course.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Number six, I would now include Caprosi salad.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to claim it since it's from southern Italy, the island of Capri.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: People from the south of any country are always friendlier.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Weather makes a difference in people getting out and about in their communities and talking to their neighbors.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who doesn't like tomatoes is immediately suspect, of course, since tomatoes are the most holy of vegetables.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: I know they're botanically classified as a fruit, but come on, who but a botany professor sticks with that?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And there are so many ways to enjoy them.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: When I was younger, I lived with my aunt and uncle for two summers while I worked in Washington.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: My aunt taught me how scrumptious a dollive of mayonnaise was on tomatoes.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: She was from Louisiana and that taste combo seems very French.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was growing up, no southerner had ever heard of tomato pie.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Tomato sandwiches, absolutely, we ate those all summer long.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Ripe tomatoes, mayonnaise, salt, and pepper, usually on regular old white bread.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: But who came up with the idea of making that alluring drippy sandwich into a pie?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, it was necessity that spurred invention.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: At the Tomato Shed Cafe on Johns Island by Charleston, it was a way to use all those ripe bruised tomatoes nobody would buy.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: They put them in a pie with cheese and mayonnaise and it caught on.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the southern tomato pie we know today, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, and dukes mayonnaise, didn't really take off until the 1980s and 90s.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Especially here along the South Carolina coast.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Southern living and community cookbooks help spread it across the South.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now we Southerners are happy to claim it, it fits us.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just the tomato department.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But there's more that I'm missing as summer phase, more that I failed to take advantage of during the hot months.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Butterbeans, speckled butter beans, purple holes, crowders, lady peas, and field peas of all kinds.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Green beans, green, yellow, and red bell peppers, hot peppers, sweet corn to make cream corn.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yellow summer squash, zucchini, yellow zucchini, zever squash, patty pan squash, cucumbers, and eggplants.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's okra.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okra has been part of southern cooking for centuries, but its roots are African.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: It came to America in the 1600s and early 1700s and was carried into southern kitchens by enslaved Africans who knew how to grow it and cook it.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Over time it became part of the food of the South.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Fried okra, grilled and roasted okra, okra and tomatoes, soup, stews, and of course, gumbo.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Even the word gumbo comes from a West African word for okra.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to imagine a southern summer without it now.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: But okra is also a reminder of how much of southern cooking came from African knowledge and tradition.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I finally bought some tender baby okra at the farmer's market last Saturday and roasted them with olive oil, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I made a tomato pie to go with them.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: We grilled a pork steak and it was dinner that we lapped up.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And for dessert?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Summer's endless mounty of fruit, peaches, watermelons, cantaloupes, blueberries, blackberries, figs, plums, musky dines, and scupperongs.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many delicious things we make of them.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Dishes that I always want to taste as part of the season.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, peach cobbler.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, blueberry pie or cobbler.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, peach and blueberry pie.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, homemade peach ice cream.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: My family had an ice cream maker with a crank.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Blackberry cobbler.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: We literally picked the blackberries ourselves and my mother made the best ones.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Number six, fig tart.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Number seven, key lime pie.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Although this is technically delicious all year round, it's a bit more refreshing in the summer.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Number eight, lemon icebox pie.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: See above.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Number nine, banana pudding.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why a summer dessert?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but somehow it is.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Number ten, strawberry shortcake with pastry and whipped cream for me.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Number 11.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Strawberry glaze pie.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yum yum yum.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Strawberries barely belong in summer.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm cheating by adding them.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: In Arkansas, they were ripe in early May and lasted the month.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: My mother made strawberry preserves every year.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a child, my favorite cobbler was blackberry, but now I haven't had one in years.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: I miss my mother's blackberry cobbler.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I would like to copy it, but her recipes are in a box in my storage somewhere.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: She was such a fine cook, and food is love and memories that you make.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I always thought it would make a book of my mother's recipe, and I still can.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: She was the baker that I am not.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I wish I could be, but my elder daughter has taken up her apron in that regard.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have the last gasp of Donald Trump.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean for this summer, of course.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, this past weekend he banned CNN, MSNow, and Politico from the White House because he didn't like their coverage.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: On Monday, all three sued him on First Amendment grounds, and finally, the rest of the press took a stand.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: When CNN was supposed to provide the television pool coverage that day, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox refused to take its place.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: The five networks suspended the presidential TV pool instead, cutting off the TV coverage that Trump lives for.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: We need to see more of this.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of the American press sanewashing the spectacle of a president of the United States throwing his latest fit while announcing nothing but garbage and lies.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: In Arkansas, we would call Donald Trump a sugon.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Pronounced like the first syllable of sugar.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you can listen to my audio to really understand.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just say it again.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: In Arkansas, we would call Donald Trump a sugon.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Historically, a sugon, derived from the Irish Gaelic sugon, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, refers to a cheap, crude bed cover, a patchwork quilt, or a heavy burlap comfort.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: In deep rural southern and Appalachian dialects, the term evolved metaphorically to describe a rough, unrefined person from the hills or backwoods.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Someone considered low-class or trashy, living in improvised or rundown conditions, or in this case a billionaire.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: A local synonym for terms like hillbilly or peckerwood.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: About his ban on the three news outlets, Trump Tantrum tweeted, it is a threat to our national security and must be stopped now.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: As Heather Cox Richardson wrote, there's that national security claim again.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: The same justification he's using for building his tacky ballroom.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And now his triumphal arch.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is also not coincidentally the excuse President Richard Nixon floated for covering up the Watergate break-in June 1972.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And look what else.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: David Ellison's Paramount Skydance has cleared another major hurdle in its$110 billion takeover of Warner Brothers Discovery, which would put CBS News and CNN under the same enormous corporate roof.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: We know in our blood this is wrong.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Larry Ellison, David's father and financial backer, is a longtime Trump ally.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: The settlement actually requires a special independent board to protect the editorial independence of CNN and CBS.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we've already seen that CBS is compromised, but think about that.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And how long would it last?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Why did those attorneys generals settle?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, Trump's Iran war goes on and we're paying for it.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Gas is now$448 a gallon nationally, about$1.30 more than a year ago.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Diesel is soaring at$6.50 a gallon, which means the cost eventually turns up in almost everything that has to be put on a truck.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've noticed how high the prices are, haven't you?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Trump called higher gas prices an inexpensive price to pay.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: For what?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And his enablers keep enabling him.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: On threads I saw a female mega headmaker in California blaming Gavin Newsom, Newscom, she called him, for the price at the pump when Trump is president.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's his war.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: But somehow it's still somebody else's fault.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I keep asking myself how these people can keep drinking Trump's catastrophic Kool-Aid.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Greenland.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: After all those months of threats, talk of taking it over and frightening the hell out of Denmark and Greenland and horrifying the rest of the world, what did Trump finally get?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty much what America has had since 1951.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: The right to maintain and expand our military presence there.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Greenland remains Greenland with its sovereignty intact.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: As Anne Applebaum points out, most of this could have been accomplished without all the threats and bluster.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, people in Trump's political and business orbit have been circling the island looking at oil, minerals, data centers, and God knows what else.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: The usual Trump corruption.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: More sugans?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And down here, of course, the last gasp of summer is also storm season.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: So while all this is swirling around us, the last tomatoes are still coming in.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okra, peppers, eggplant squash, and field peas are still growing.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sweet potatoes are getting fat.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: We know the storms are out there while Trump is busy throwing his stark raving mad tantrums.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: But there is bounty as well.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for pulling up a chair and listening.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: If this piece stayed with you, I hope you'll share it.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if these essays have been meaningful to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: From the Inside Out is an entirely reader-supported publication, and your subscription helps sustain this work week after week.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And my new book, A Modern Declaration, is out now.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little book written in the style and urgency of the original Declaration.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: A book I hope you'll read, talk about, argue about, share, and put into somebody else's hands.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can find it on Amazon now and through bookstores later this week.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, from one tiny speck in the cosmos to another.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: See you soon.