Rice Salad for a Screened-In Porch Dinner

Growing up in the suburbs of New York City meant screened-in porches for summer dinners. I still have a very strong affection for them. After dinner on the weekends, my no-longer-married parents used to play bridge with their visiting city friends and drink white wine spritzers and snack on in-shell salted peanuts late into the night. This was the mid-eighties after all. I stayed up late too, trying to learn how to cut and riffle cards, always waiting to see who would end up the “dummy,” an