Good morning. New York’s starting to empty out, all the therapists decamping for the Cape and islands, the novelists down the shore, accountants to the Dells, engineers to float camps in the Bob. Among many other things, it’s a great time to find parking.

Me, I’m holding down the fort in the kitchen for a few more days, and I’m going big on blender meals just as if I lost my teeth in a fight: a watermelon-and-lime smoothie for breakfast (the juice of one lime for every quarter of a basketball-sized watermelon); Julia Moskin’s gazpacho for lunch. I make it in bulk. In the heat, it beats cooking.

Except that it doesn’t, really. I like to cook even if it makes the kitchen feel like a sauna. So, come dinnertime, I’ll be spinning through our site then heading off to the store for ingredients, same as I do in January.

You could do the same, but I’ll prime the pump with a few ideas of my own. You could serve BLT pasta (above) tonight. You could make Spanish-style shrimp with garlic. You could make oyakodon, the Japanese chicken-and-egg rice bowl.