skinny girls & mayonnaise

Culinarily speaking, summertime is a feminine season. Sure, the dudes are out by the grill — sucking beer, flipping burgers and talking pre-season football. But it is the salads, the lightly seared skinless chicken breast pailliards, the peaches and the pink wines that prevail.

Pink wine and figs

I sit here drinking my pink wine and looking at a bowl of figs, feeling emasculated. By late August, I’m wondering where is the cold weather and a long-braised leg of some animal? Where are the root vegetables dug from the earth by muscular, calloused hands? Where are wild mushrooms hunted in the forest by those who are not afraid of waking at 5 a.m., pouring a cup of black coffee and heading into the woods? Where is a season where a man can be a man, unrestrained by sisters, wives and gal-pals concerned about bikinis and wanting “something light”?

As spring fades into the blistering sun of summer, I raise my petite sirah and 2-and-a-half-inch ribeye-on-the-bone against the tide, inviting friends over and serving them thick slices of medium rare flesh, slathered with butter and olive oil, sprinkled with Maldon salt. If there is something green on the plate, it is largely ornamental. Husbands, terrified of the drive home, suppress their delight and acquiesce to their better halves, offering tepid protests, “Oh, red meat… I’ll have just a little. Will we be having any quinoa with this?” Later, they meet me in the kitchen where we furtively eat the fatty bits and gnaw the bone.

But then as the mercury in Southern California rises into the triple digits, summer sun and the swishing of the Pacific seduce me. And I, too, succumb to the spritely harmonies of the Beach Boys, the effervescent allure of chilled proseco and the perky promise of pink wine. I go queer for arugula and dainty heirloom cherry tomatoes, dressed with rice wine vinegar no less! My fridge is overrun with watermelon, squash blossoms, fancy lettuce, shrimp, frothy lagers and bottles of rosé, and I hope my carnivorous friends are not peering in through the kitchen window. But I remind myself that they too are in the same cozy boat, and that my masculinity is not dependent on protein, that I can eat crudites and bruschetta, pasta salad and grilled halibut and retain my manly dignity.

So remember, the next time someone tells you pink wine is for chicks, turn to the Good Book, with which no one can argue: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun.” There is, my burly friend, a season for pink wine.