It’s finally hot here. Like really, really ‘summer has certainly arrived’ hot. As I write, the dogs are sitting at my feet panting away, the fan is blocking out all street noise, and things are very, very still. No breeze. No squirrels darting across the driveway. In the heat of summer when my appetite is a little on the light side (which, let’s be honest, should be celebrated rather than lamented) I always turn to this cool summer soup. Using ingredients from the farmers market, it is quite literally a taste of Bay Area summers, and an opportunity to sit back in the shade and try to remember what it was like to ever wear a wool sweater.

There are hundreds of recipes out there, from pineapple gazpacho to spicy clam gazpacho. Some of the more popular recipes call for bread or ask you to blend/emulsify batches in a blender. My advice after many attempts and experiments: Just Do It. Don’t even crack a cookbook (although I’ll give you some broad tips below). Use that cold soup intuition! And this is coming from a girl who is more of a baker than a chef: precise with measurements, and nervous to stray from a recipe. But really, the beauty of this soup is its simplicity. So here you have it:

Gazpacho, Your Way
Go find yourself a crisp cucumber, a red onion, a clove or two of garlic, 3-ish tomatoes, a jar of tomato juice (look for low-sodium, organic juice if you can), and an avocado. Get out a jar of olive oil and some red wine vinegar. Chop all of your veggies very fine. Throw ’em in a bowl. Add as much tomato juice as you’d like (judge how “soupy” or chunky you’d like your soup), and a few large dashes of olive oil and red wine vinegar (a bit less than 1/4 cup). And voila: a delicious summer soup. Chill for a few hours before serving. Scatter slices of avocado on top if you like. Enjoy in a shady spot.