The One Where It Rains . . . In My Livingroom

Do you ever feel that the gods might be conspiring against you? Well, I have. First, while on the drive home from D.C. a couple of weeks ago, we heard some "sloshing" from the back seat.  (Sloshing from one's car does not inspire confidence, especially when one is 5 hours from home.) We turned around (well, A. was driving, so I turned around) to see 2 inches of standing water in the back seats. We sloshed drove home and took the car straight to the dealer, who gave us a loaner car while our car was, well, getting dried out.  The next morning, the garage door fell off its hinges (something to do with a sprocket exploding or something), narrowly missing said loaner car. The next week, A. and I came home to water gushing from our upstairs bathroom and flooding our entire first floor (hello, Poseidon). Lovely.

Fortunately, our insurance company had a clean-up crew on the job in about an hour. The plumber also showed up and fixed the problem (again, something about a valve "imploding," causing our toilet to spew 80-90 gallons of water per minute, and again, I don't care a bit about won't bore you with the finer details). So, for the next few days, we had a few new roommates:

Which is all fine and dandy, except these roommates were loud (jackhammer loud), and hot (the house topped out at about 110 degrees--hello Hephaestus), and just generally drove us crazy.  

To escape our own personal hell home, we headed to Jazz in the Park. With a bottle of wine. It was lovely. I even managed to pull together a light supper consisting mainly of stuff I could grab before losing my mind of crackers, cheese, and gazpacho. I wasn't about to turn on the oven.

I'd recommend this recipe even for those of you who have not been flooded and then steamed out of your homes. I did make it slightly spicier than I probably should have.  It was hot, hot, hot. A. noted the irony, don't worry. While I am sure this would have been tastier with fresh tomatoes, I (a) did not have the time or energy to boil and peel them, and (b) could not reach my stove due to this guy:

Spicy Gazpacho 

(Printable Recipe)

• 28 oz. can of whole tomatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tsp. or so of hot sauce (maybe a bit less, like I said, it was hot)
• plenty of salt and pepper
• 1 bell pepper (any kind), finely diced
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 1 cucumber, finely diced
• 1/2 C. water
• 3 T. red wine vinegar
• a handful or two of fresh herbs (parsley, basil, cilantro, some combination thereof, or whatever you have)

Whirl half of the tomatoes in the blender with water until smooth, and roughly chop the remaining tomatoes.  Add the rest of the ingredients and chill until ready to serve.