Making do (it's tough, but...)

If you don't do well in the heat, do you know what helps? A lovely long cool drink. Do you know what's not ideal? Discovering the tall, slender green bottle in the fridge which you put there specially for your evening drink after a very long day (started with yoga at 8am, slotted in a parental 90 minute shopping trip, and finished my last vendor demo at 7pm) when it's 32 degrees outside is RED WINE.

So I haven't made my mint-lemon-rose lemonade-elderflower-white wine cocktail to go with tonight's hilarious Midsummer Night's Dream, that I saw about this time last year with Kate, well fuelled with prosecco and madeleines (*sobs*), I have hastily improvised a sangriaish cold red wine, rose lemonade, rosemary (*shrug* I had some spare in the fridge) and orange. It's really not bad, if a bit unexpected.

It goes rather well with my dinner though - this is just a salad, but it's a salad including pickled cherries, because although it's definitely early cherry season I got some which were a bit elderly and squishy already. If you get good ones, just eat them, but I knew they wouldn't last the week as unpickled salad veg, so I Improvised again.

Pickled cherries: boil cherries with sugar, vinegar, splash of water and star anise, cool it down, refrigerate. Ideally leave it a day or two before using - I did them at lunchtime on Tuesday, so not too bad. It doesn't have to be star anise as the spice, I've used bay and peppercorns before, but I have a lot in at the mo and they are really good - sweetly tangy.

I put them with some leftover goats gouda, rocket, sliced almonds and dressing of just oil and seasoning. No need for sharps in that dressing. It probably goes better with red wine tbh, but I still wish I'd got the white open. It's that sort of evening.