Summer's End

How did summer fly by so fast? It almost seems like yesterday when I stood behind a classroom door with all my friends and counted down to the beginning of summer. It only seems like yesterday. Yet Tuesday, Cy and I must go back to school. The summer just flew by and so, too soon we find ourselves in the kitchen on the last Sunday of summer with squid on the menu.

Squid will forever be calamari in restaurants, if simply because it sounds less slimy. But here its squid that slimy elongated cousin of the octopus. When your in fifth grade at Llewellyn Elementary School (where Cy goes and I went) you spend three days at Camp Magruder doing in-the-field science learning, and you get to dissect a squid. Tentacles, eyes, ink sac, it changed calamari to squid forever.

Right now the squid is being battered and put in the oven Cyrus has already prepared a mayonnaise, garlic and lemon juice dipping sauce for the squid. We also have a salad and (shh, it's still classified) ice cream and brownies for desert. Even though the squid is in the oven the kitchen is still a flurry of activity. Dad at the mixer mixing brownies, Mimi at the sink helping keep the kitchen tidy, Cyrus stumbling over the dogs with a package of something in hand to add to the brownies. The wonderful scent of cooking, breaded squid wafting through the air.

For one reason or another the squid aren't browning. I'm getting the feeling however that we will be eating them anyways as Dad is scraping them off the bottom of the pan.

We ate 'em alright. They were good, yes, but they weren't as good as they would have been if they had browned. Oh well, I guess we will never know what went wrong and kept the squid from browning. The dipping sauce was great and dessert was sublime.