summer laziness

I have to admit that between the heat this summer, the absence of our airconditioning unit - which was disconnected to accommodate our new kitchen - and the constant construction going on between the sheets of sweaty, drywall-dusted plastic in our house, I've been having a hard time sitting down here to write. I just don't want to. I want to sit on the couch and watch re-runs of The Larry Sanders Show. I want to lie on my bed after a cold shower and daydream away a few hours. I want to go to the cottage and use NO ELECTRONIC devices at all. I want to sit on my mom's deck and drink wine while I nibble cheese. So that is what I have been doing: getting lazy in these dog days of summer.

We do still need to eat though, and a food fairy doesn't magically appear with platters of sustenance as I so wilfully imagined her the other day. So, I give you this wine-can roasted chicken from off the barbecue. I filled an old can of beer (that I cleaned first) with fresh lemon balm and thyme and white wine. I liberally salted the bird, inside and out, and left it off the direct heat on the barbecue until it looked all crispy (about an hour).

I've never done this before, but I'm going to be doing it over and over again this summer. It was super easy and very delicious. Torn up pita and hummus alongside and you've got yourself an easy supper. We opened a bottle of this old stand-by, easy-to-drink bottle of chilled white and then flopped on the couch before rolling off to bed.