photo via Martha Stewart.com

Hello, and happy July! I am writing to you from the surface of the sun. Sweat pours down my back and pools in the most inconvenient places and this idea I had, in which I am going to lie down a lot and breathe shallowly, is pretty much the best idea ever. The other idea I had, where I just won't cook until the fall, that sounds like a good idea in theory, but in practice will either leave me hungry or poor, because take-out is expensive.

Martha Stewart is a woman who has never broken a sweat in her life, yet magically understands the needs of us unattractively glandular people. I may be a little bitter that I do not have an air conditioned mansion, but I can't stay mad at her when she offers up a raft of no-cook recipes that make me cooler, just looking at them. They are mostly salads, natch, but fresh-looking, easy to throw together, and fast. So you can return to your bathtub of ice tout d'suite.