Well, if you are a Mrs. Fields wanna-be, you will whip up some chocolate chip cookie dough, throw it on a metal cookie sheet, then place the sheet on your dashboard and leave your car facing the sun for - oh - about 5 hours. The car smells heavenly and you have cookies without ever turning the oven on. Yes, it is that hot.
Let's get back to the original topic though, as I digressed. Monsoons. Now, my client base right now is a team of hydrologists and meteorologists which means 1) I am lost a lot of the time when I speak to them and 2) I am the least geeky person at the table most days, which is quite an accomplishment. I am usually somewhere on the scale between "sadly uncool" and "geek wanna-be" so hitting that mark of total geekdom is quite an honor. I think. Again, let's get back to the topic of monsoons. Did you happen to notice I have my own little stream of consciousness going? Yes, back to monsoons. So monsoon season in Arizona is not, contrary to popular belief, all about the rain. Also, it is not - no matter what Meghen Trainor says - all about the bass, either. It is, instead, all about the wind (no, not that kind of wind....sheesh...). For three months of the year, the wind does an about-face and, rather than blowing west to east as it normally does, it kind of does a Dairy Queen curly-q thing and comes at us from the east. Bam. That left hook will knock you over every time. So as it sweeps up, it picks up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.
Enter, then, the monsoon season. Which does not necessarily bring rain a la Mumbai monsoons, but it brings heat and haboobs. Yep, haboobs. Haboobs are affectionately known as sandstorms to the Republicans and others afraid of anything affiliated with the Arabic world. But we can them haboobs. Say it out loud without laughing. Or calling them haboobies just in case you want a bigger laugh. Although I often swear I hear Carla Tortelli calling them ha-tatas till Tuesday. So we have sandstorms. The sky goes brown. The air goes brown. You can see it rolling in. And then, your whole world goes brown. Everything is covered with. Your eyes. Your tongue. Your car. Your pool. Your windows. Your plants. Your sidewalk. Your gecko. Your cat. Not your dog though - they are lazy and will be inside in the heat. And everything must be cleaned. Again. And why do we live in the desert? So we can witness haboobs and dirt devils every summer. What? You think a dirt devil is a cleaning apparatus? Oh, no. Not at all. Imagine, if you will, sitting at a red light at an intersection. Out of the corner of your eye, you see what looks like a mini-tornado of sand heading for you. Yep, a dirt devil. Although it would be eerier if there were no sand because then you would not be able to see it. But this whirling vortex of sand is heading down the street. Look out, Loretta! And who says there is no fun when it is 116 degrees outside?
Brown. The color of the desert. Which means I try never to serve brown food. Need to color things up a little. So the recipe du jour is Beet Salad. This is a clone of the recipe served by our favorite local spot which is - get this - a Polish/Scandanavian/Canadian joint. Imagine Poutain with Schnitzel and Gravlax. And a few Pieroghis thrown in for fun. But I love their Beet Salad and had fun figuring it out. There are a million variations on the web but I happen to like the simplistic one that Hannah, the owner, serves. So simple yet so good:
1. Drain 2 cans of beets (shoestring work well, sliced beets in a pinch). Don't use the picked kind.
2. If you used sliced beets, you will dice them about 1/4-1/3" square.
3. In a mixing bowl, mix 1 cup sour cream (light okay, haven't tried fat free as it breaks down quickly for most of my recipes) with 1 Tablespoon of sugar or Splenda. Honey just won't do in this recipe.
4. Fold in the well-drained beets.
5. Chill for several hours.
6. Enjoy!
