Fraîchement

Along with my plate of sausage, paté and cheese at The Left Bank came this drink, a watermelon and cucumber "fraîchement" in a tall glass. Although I had never heard the term before, and secretly thought it a little self-consciously frou-frou French, it really did refresh and it's a drink I will try to make at home if the weather ever turns truly summery.

The pink is watermelon, puréed, I suspect, in a blender and the green is cucumber chunks suspended in the pink. Perhaps they added some of the cucumber innards to the purée, because the taste was subtly there amongst the watermelon. There was a very slight fizz to the drink, too, as if it had been blended with some soda water.

Lovely stuff. I'm inspired to try making fruit drinks from all this wonderful summer fruit that is flooding the markets. Even if I don't call them fraîchements.

Cool As The Proverbial Cucumber

The perfect summer lunch for a day that dawned clear as a bell, built the heat by 11am and promised to be even hotter in the afternoon. I had just returned from errands in the interior of Marin County where it gets really hot during the summer and wanted a light but tasty lunch.

Cucumber sandwich on plain white bread sliced as thinly as possible with the Slice-a-Slice, spread with a dab of mayonnaise and studded with thick slices of peeled cucumber.

To drink, the chamomile-mint tea I learned how to make last year - cooling and delicious. Sat down with a good book as I nibbled my way through a favorite summertime treat.