Our Foodie Friday Fun is all about Summer, my favorite food time of the year.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
While it’s possible to grill all year long, it seems more appropriate to the Summer months. I also find it difficult to fire up the smoker at times of the year when the air temperature is cooler and fluctuates more widely during the long periods of time required for real barbecue.
Grilling and smoking, however, are not the food topic today. As you can tell from the post title, today’s screed is about two of my other Summer favorites. It’s impossible to have great gazpacho at any other time of the year. Then again, why would you want a cold soup at any other time? The blend of fresh tomatoes, peppers, vinegar, garlic, and olive oil thickened by stale bread (and there MUST be bread in gazpacho!) is the best of Summer in a bowl. For those of you who are uninitiated, stuffed zucchini blossoms are something you must seek out as well – find an Italian grandmother! Stuffed with fresh ricotta and fried or even just sautéed on their own, they are well worth the effort it takes to find them.
My diet includes either fresh tomatoes or zucchini flowers (or both) whenever I can find them. Of course, the time when these items are at their peak (or even available at all) is pretty limited, which makes them all the more dear to those of us who love them. Which is exactly the business point.
One of the things that is getting lost these days is the sense of scarcity which breeds urgency. After all, everything is always available, it seems. There’s something to be said for scarcity. The way, for example, that McDonald’s released the McRib sandwich for a limited time, or the way that great barbecue places often run out of food early in the day gives those who most value the product a reason to act NOW. There are plenty of non-food examples, of course, but you get the point.
We need get our customers to think of our products like ripe tomatoes or zucchini flowers. October is right around the corner, after all.
Consult Keith 