Summer

Whenever I think of summer, I always remember the backyard parties and picnics my mom used to host just around my birthday in July. She always fried up batches of chicken while my dad grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. The menus never changed much from year to year. So I could always expect there to be potato salad and pasta salad. What would a backyard barbecue be without them?

I do love those types of "picnic" salads, but they're usually laden with mayonnaise and oftentimes pretty flavorless. I'm a bit more creative now with my pasta salads. I eschew the macaroni for penne, and make a very flavorful vinaigrette in place of the gloppy mayo. One of my favorite standbys is Greek-style pasta salad.

I love all Mediterranean flavors, but especially the salty and briny flavors of feta and olives. This pasta salad wouldn't be Greek without them. Fresh oregano and red-wine vinegar also help to make this salad feel truly Greek. The best part is the time it takes for this salad to come together, which is just about the time it takes to cook the pasta, 10 minutes.

Memorial Day Weekend is quickly approaching, which means grilling season will officially commence. I say that with a smirk as the Pacific Northwest has been plagued with rain for the past week-and-a-half. Come back sunshine!!!

Old Bay seasoning is one of our favorites around here. Originally used to flavor crab and shrimp it is now widely used and popular in many dishes. The seasoning mix includes mustard, paprika, celery salt, bay leaf, black pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, mace, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, cardamom, and ginger. In the United States it is found in every grocery store but I'm not sure what its availability is in other countries. 

I decided to make a cauliflower salad, something similar to a potato salad but sans the potatoes. This is low-carb and a perfect side to accompany any grilled food you might be serving this summer.

I figure I’ve eaten about 20 pounds of watermelon this summer. Fortunately, it’s 92% water and 0% fat, so my clothes still fit fine.

Even as a kid, I ate a lot of watermelon. Everyone in my family did. I can remember my Dad, his face beet-red from the heat, coming through our back door beaming as he was carrying a colossal watermelon. He always did the same thing: set it down on the kitchen counter and proudly announced its weight – 19 and 1/2 pounds! 23 pounds! Like his lobsta, the bigger it was, the better he liked it.

My brother Chris was always the one to cut the watermelon (seeing as none of the rest of us had his patience). With skills of a surgeon, he extracted every last seed while keeping the melon’s flesh intact. Come to think of it, I don't remember ever seeing seedless watermelons when I was a kid. Did they exist back then?

Sweet, tender, mild, succulent, moist, and juicy. These are some words that describe one of my favorite seafoods, the scallop. I love the shape and design of their shells, which I collect, but I love the mild flavor of their meat even more. Part of the bivalve family of mollusks, these shelled creatures are prized for their tender, white meat. Harvested at sea usually by dredging the ocean floor or by diving, a more ecological method, scallops have their meat removed before arriving in markets. That is why you almost never see them in their shells.

Luckily, I have had the opportunity to see scallops in their natural yet man-made habitat. When I was a teen I worked on a scallop farm out on Long Island Sound as part of a summer aquaculture program. The scallops were housed in lantern nets, suspended directly in the sea between buoys. On reaching the farm, boatmen would lift the nets out of the sea for the students to work on. We moved the baby scallops from their crowded lantern nets into new ones that afforded them the space to grow to full marketable size. While handling them, the scallops, like toy water pistols, would squirt us with briny water. Besides not being allowed to eat the scallops, it was a fun and memorable experience.