The Origin of Concord Dinner

Morgan and I are not warm weather people. This is despite my having lived almost half my life in warm climates (0-10 in gulf coast Florida, plus subsequent summers, 25-30 in Concord, CA). I don't cope well in heat; give me a nice foggy or rainy day and I'm thrilled, but when the temperature gets above 80, my brain stops functioning. This is one of the reasons we sold our lovely condo in Concord and moved to San Leandro - closer to the Bay, closer to family, and cooler.

Allegedly.

We've had record breaking heat the last few days. According to the little Google toolbar on my computer, it was 91 degrees at about 7pm last night. Unacceptable. Our house, which we love dearly, has a few flaws. Foremost is our inability to properly regulate the temperature. The front of the house is south-facing, with a lot of windows that either don't open or don't have screens. As a result, the living room, where we spend most of our time, gets sweltering on hot days. The back of the house stays moderately cooler, but not a lot. The basement maintains a lovely temperature, but since we're in the midst of a project that involves pulling down poorly installed insulation from the ceiling of the basement, it isn't exactly the, um, cleanest place to hang out right now.

When we lived in Concord, we developed a method for dealing with trying to eat on days like this without adding any additional heat to the house, but I don't think we started calling it Concord dinner until we moved away. Concord dinner looks something like this: a wedge of brie and/or some other variety of yummy cheese, fresh bread, some fruit, sliced tomatoes, sliced turkey or smoked salmon. Usually there's some variety of white wine to accompany this meal, but given my current state, we had iced tea instead and skipped the meats. (Yes, I know: soft cheese is supposed to off limits too, but it was pasteurized. C'mon, how much am I supposed to give up?) I did buy Morgan his favorite muscato for later - I'm a good girlfriend that way.

Supposedly the weather is supposed to break by tomorrow; I really hope so because I'm tired of sitting in my house dripping sweat. Through this whole pregnancy, I've been dreading the onset of summer; I'm already running a couple degrees warmer than usual, so I feel it that much more. But, as my mother kindly pointed out last night, I was born in Florida at the end of August. So it definitely could be worse. Sorry, Mom. And thanks for moving to California. I really do appreciate it.