Good morning. There’s a cool dish out of France called eclade de moules, in which you take a few pounds of mussels, put them on a board or rock, cover them with dried pine needles and then set the whole thing on fire. The intense heat of the burning pine opens the mussels and adds to their brininess the fragrance of the forest floor, and that would be a cool thing to do and eat this weekend if you have access to the pine, and a space in which to burn it. (Here’s a video of the process.)
Summer’s on the down elevator. Some kids are already back in school. Soon enough Labor Day will be here, and after it the reboot that early autumn always brings, with its press of deliverables, its insistence on the new. There will be some pressure on you then. So take care this weekend, and for the next few, to make time to cook as if summer will never end, as if the ease and joy of eating barefoot is not a passing fancy, but a way of life.
The point is simply to take advantage of the next two days and enjoy yourself in the kitchen and at the table where you consume your food, making recipes that bring you happiness and deliver it in turn to those you feed. Drill into our cooking guides for help taking on the larger projects, or to sharpen your skills. We can help you learn to grill. We can help you make a better salad. We’d be delighted to assist you in becoming a master of eggs.
Nothing here pique your interest? Thousands and thousands of other recipes to cook this weekend are available on Cooking. Just sign up for a subscription to access them, against our promise that doing so will allow to keep up our efforts to bring you more and better recipes every day. With a subscription to Cooking, you can browse recipes and save them, share them, rate them and organize them. And absolutely you can leave notes on them, for yourself or for the benefit of others who will do the same for you.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us if something goes awry, either with your subscription or with the recipes themselves. We’re at cookingcare@nytimes.com. And follow us on social media, if you please: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
Now, nothing to do with food, but you should read Alex Abramovich’s interview with the British musician Billy Bragg, in the Paris Review, which came to me via the essential longreads.com. (It’s about skiffle, which you’ll begin to understand if you watch Lonnie Donegan sing “Rock Island Line,” live in 1961.)
Also, I’m thinking we all should probably read Danzy Senna’s new novel “New People,” just out. Let Doreen St. Félix make the case, in The New Yorker.
And I have no idea how I missed this when it happened in 2009, but I’ve just come across “Ikea Heights,” a comedic soap opera that was filmed entirely within the Ikea store in Burbank, Calif., without the company’s knowledge. Here’s the first episode. Have a great weekend.
SAM SIFTON
