I am spending the weekend in Palm Springs with friends. When I spend a weekend at someone's house I like to say and thank you with food. So I cook.

Currently I am cooking from a new cookbook by Lucy Lean. Made in America: Our Best Chefs Reinvent Comfort Food. I think it's a good choice for a weekend of cooking with really great friends. The kind of friends with whom you feel completely at ease. Your comfort friends.

On page 174 Lucy has a recipe for Rigatoni Carbonara (with guanciale) from Barbara Lynch the chef at No.9 Park in Boston. It's a great example of the wonderful food that bubbles up in our great American melting pot. Because Carbonara is a traditional Italian dish that has found its way into our comfortably full bellies here in America. As Lucy explains it, Carbonara as American comfort food, gets its power from our great American breakfast ingredients– bacon, eggs and cheese. Mmmm, feeling comforted? But as much as I love the big 'sit right down and say hello' creaminess you associate with Carbonara, the Italian version has a bit more restraint.

Carbonara may achieve comfort status because of its familiar ingredients, well that and the fact that it is so easy to make. In fact when I make this dish it usually falls into the category of what I call default pasta. In other words I make it on a whim– with my mood and my pantry dictating the direction I will go.

This is the time of year when the Hollywood Farmers Market is literally pumped up with colorful produce. It seems all the brightest vegetal hues make themselves prominent in August. Purple plums, crimson heirloom tomatoes, and golden squash embellish the stalls with all the flair of a Hello Kitty Lunch Box!

But there is another vegetable hitting it's peak with the heat of summer. One that can pack its own heat and yet wears all these colors, and more. I am talking about peppers. Peppers in all sizes and all colors. Hot peppers, sweet peppers, or plain ole pretty peppers. They are really an inspiration to cooks like me who find creative kicks through colorful cues.

In fact one look at these peppers and Peter Piper popped in my pate! Hey it would happen to you too. Nursery Ryhmes carry potent cultural baggage.

Which got me thinking. Did you know  the phrase "Sippity Sup" started out as the title of a Nursery Rhyme?

Sippity sup, sippity sup,
Bread and milk from a china cup.
Bread and milk from a bright silver spoon
Made of a piece of the bright silver moon.
Sippity sup, sippity sup,
Sippity, sippity sup.

I feel kinda bad that I sorta usurped that poor old Nursery Rhyme. I mean it was a lesser-known Nursery Rhyme to be sure. I don't think it held much favor with Mother Goose. So it wasn't really that hard to beat the Google pants off it.

Still, there was a time when you could Google "Sippity Sup" and you'd find references to that less than popular children's poem of the same name. Then "along comes a spider" in the form of a food blogger. And guess what? Now that poor little Nursery Rhyme does not even come up on the first page when you Google that phrase. That's my fault– but it wasn't intentional. I never even knew what HTML was before I started this blog. Let alone understand how to optimize it!

It's July and it's hot where I live. Is it hot where you are too? Well when it’s hot its time to consider a few changes to your culinary habits.

So I have a simple summer soup for you. Cold Spicy Cucumber Soup with Poached Shrimp. It's a great summer starter or even a light meal all on its own. You see there is no hanging over a hot stove involved. In fact if you can boil water and count to 60, you can make this soup. I am serious this soup only requires 1 minute of actual cooking.

Because it's not much more than a spiced splash of cucumber juice serving as a bright green pool for the simply poached shrimp to swim in. The colors are so vivid. See– don't you feel a bit cooler already?

However there is more to a summer soup than merely chilling something flavorful. Summer soups have a whole psychology about them that must be considered when choosing how to prepare one. Because when it's hot out a bit of spice on the tongue tricks the brain into thinking its cooler than it really is. I don't know how and I don't know why. But I promise you its true.