Heatwave Popsicles

Published August 19, 2019

When the heatwave hit Paris, I forgot how to eat. My appetite dissolved into a sad shadow of its former self. I was thirsty, but nothing came close to quenching the void I felt. Not even a cold slice of watermelon could rouse me.

Cooking became unfathomable because the thought of doing anything (moving included) was out of the question. Markets bursting with seasonal splendour, usually full of inspiration, my local market became the most annoying places I could be. Not a single ingredient could excite me. The thought of eating even the most amazing sun-ripened peaches disgusted me because I knew that they would be hot, and this just wouldn’t do. 

Plus, my fifth-floor apartment became unbearable, the heat seemingly able to seep its way into every single surface, walls included. Appliances, too. Even the most beautiful French butter, with its respectably high-fat content, which I always keep refrigerated, had gone soft, the insane chaleur managing to penetrate the walls of my fridge. I couldn’t take it any longer.

I gratefully accepted an invitation from a friend for an apéro at a bar with a terrasse in a nearby neighbourhood. The streets weren’t going to be much better, but at least I could escape the heat-laden surface of my sofa. Drinks lasted barely an hour or so before the two of us couldn’t bear it any longer. How could it be too hot for cold beer?

We parted ways and I reluctantly made my way back to the oven formerly known as my apartment. As I climbed the never-ending stairs, the temperature rising with each floor conquered, I suddenly had a moment of clarity. A vision of the popsicle moulds I had bought on a whim last summer popped into my mind. I bounded up the final flights as if the weight of the weather had been lifted from my shoulders. Had I finally found my missing motivation? I flew in the door and headed straight for the kitchen to that back corner cupboard where I knew they had been banished all those months ago and triumphantly pulled them from their exile. I would go on to make the following recipe for popsicles and everything in the world would become right again.

Link to recipe here.