In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the recent Maine International Film Festival (MIFF) and how many of the films were thought provoking, indeed food for thought. My husband, Clif, our daughter Dee, and I went to the festival for ten days, and here are our film totals: I saw 14 movies; Clif saw 24 movies; and Dee saw 29 movies and was therefore the grand winner of the family. ( I suppose I really don’t need to add that even only 14 movies are a heck of a lot of movies to see in ten days.)

You might think with all this movie going that there wouldn’t have been any time for cooking, but you would be wrong. I did indeed manage to slide in a fair amount of cooking, which began with two batches of cookies—chocolate chip and anise biscotti—before the festival even started. The cookies, especially the biscotti, keep quite well in tins, and they provided sweet, little treats to go with the lunches we packed for the festival.

On Monday, when the movies didn’t start until 3:00, Dee, Clif, and I took to the patio and had a lunch of grilled bread and grilled spiced eggplant. The eggplant recipe came from the Cabot Cheese website, and although I made a few modifications, it came out exactly the way I hoped it would, with the bland but pleasant eggplant jazzed up by garlic, herbs, cheese, and tomatoes. Definitely a make-again dish.

On Thursday, my daughter Shannon, who lives in Portland, took time off from work and came to join us for the morning and afternoon. As my refrigerator was bursting with vegetables from Farmer Kev’s garden, I decided to prepare a feast of vegetables, and as the day was sunny and hot, we would of course eat this feast on the patio. We cut beets and potatoes into thin slices and tossed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper so that Clif could grill them until they were very crisp. I also had some delectable sugar snap peas, and I parboiled a bowl full until the peas were tender-crisp. Then I chopped a couple of cloves of garlic, heated some oil in a big frying pan, stir fried the garlic for just a minute or so, and added the peas. Onto the peas and garlic I sprinkled a little soy sauce, a shake or two of sesame oil, and a tiny bit of hot sesame oil. Back into the bowl the pea-pod mixture went, where it was sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds. We also had grilled chickpea patties, and for dessert we had fresh raspberries on vanilla ice cream.

As we ate, the dog begged for scraps, the orange cat plunked himself in the day lilies, and hummingbirds flitted among the red bee balm. All around us were trees, and we felt as though we were cupped by the green hand of the forest, a welcome relief on such a hot day.