今年の夏はそれほど雨が多いと言うことではない気がしますが暑い日が少なく、短いヒートウェーブが来たのを除いて暑い日で２２度前後、最低気温は今は１１度というイギリスとしても気温が低い夏だったような気がします。今週来るはずだったヒートウェーブも来なさそうなので、もう夏は終わりでしょうね。日もすっかり短くなって日没は８時になりました。もうすぐ８月も終わりですし、１１月には真冬になってしまうので、ここから冬は早い気がします。

I feel this summer we haven’t been having a lot of rain but there haven’t been many hot days.  We had a couple of short heatwaves but other than that it’s been around 22C when the weather was good and the lowest nighttime temperature now is as low as 11C, that seems cool even for England.  It doesn’t look like another heatwave we were promised is going to come, so I guess the summer is more or less gone.  The days are getting shorter and shorter and the sunset now is around 8.00pm.  We have only a week left this month and I found last year that it was very cold by the time November arrived so winter isn’t very far.

まだ冷たいお料理を食べる気分になれるうちに、今日の夕食はガスパチョにしました。Thermomix で作るのであっという間にすごくスムース美味しいガスパチョが出来ます。ガスパチョの後には、イタリアンのアンティパスト風（厳密にはイタリアンというよりギリシャ風なのもありますが）なものを３種類。この間パプリカをローストしたときにたくさんあったパプリカを全部一度にローストして、オリーブオイルにつけておいたのでそれを使いたく、パプリカのローストの上に少しバルサミコ酢をかけて乾入りした松の実をパラパラっと散らしたものにしました。パプリカのローストに合いそうなはるみチーズをオリーブオイルで焼いて、レモン汁をかけてケイパーとミントをのせました。もう１品は、YouTubeで見たズッキーニのパン粉焼き、これは焼き足りなかったのかちょっと水っぽい感じに出来上がってしまったので、次回はもっとしっかり焼こうと思います。

So while we still feel like having a cold meal, we had Gazpacho for dinner today, we make it in our Thermomix, it takes just a few minutes and the end result is so smooth and tasty.  After Gazpacho, we had 3 antipasti-like dishes although some are probably more like Greek food.  When we roasted red peppers the other day, we did many of them and kept them in olive oil, so we wanted to use them up.  We kept them very simple, just a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and scattered on some toasted pine nuts.  We also shallow-fried some Halloumi cheese slices, which we thought would go well with the roasted peppers.  We drizzled these with some lemon juice and sprinkled with some capers and mint.  We made one more dish, roasted courgette dusted with breadcrumbs, which came out a bit watery.  I guess we should have roasted them a bit longer but the breadcrumbs had gone very dark so we took them out after 30 minutes, next time we’ll cook a little longer.