Let me tell you how you know that you have fully assimilated into living in Portland, Oregon:

Summer is here. It’s beautiful for a while, and then it’s over 90 for days. And days. You hate it. Only part of your house is air conditioned. You stop eating hot food. And occasionally you might get a day or two in the mid-80s, and they feel so great.
And then, one weekend it rains.

You wake up in the morning, open your door and look up and not down. You smell the rain. You exhale with deep satisfaction. It is August 10th and it is raining, and you couldn’t be happier about it. Soon it will rain every day, and even though you have precious little sun left, you love that it’s raining. That is how you know that you are really a Portlander.

And then what happens? Two days later it’s 90 again. That’s literally what happened this week).

While I savor those moments of cool days, I am not quite ready for all rain, all the time yet. I have way, way too much stone fruit and tomatoes to eat.

This peach and burrata toast is one of my favorite ways to beat the heat in the summer. All you need to do is toast the bread – and in my experience, firing up the toaster oven for 5 minutes is quite manageable even in the lack of AC.

Pair it with a clean-out-the-fridge salad, and your August dinner is ready to go!

Peach Burrata Toast

Ingredients

• 4 slices rustic bread
• 1 very ripe peach. sliced thinly
• 2 balls burrata
• Fresh basil
• salt and pepper
• olive oil
• Optional: chopped Mexican sour gherkins

Instructions

1. Lightly toast bread, then top with peach slices and burrata.
2. Dress with olive oil, salt, pepper and torn fresh basil.
3. Optionally garnish with chopped Mexican sour gherkins