Summer

How much watermelon does the average American consume each year? (answer below)

A. 6 pounds
B. 16 pounds
C. 38 pounds
D. 312 pounds

I love eating plain watermelon in its simple, sweet glory, but it’s also fantastic in savory dishes. The key is to pair it with contrasting flavors such as salty cheeses, bitter salad greens, acidic vinegars, or smoky grilled meats to balance the watermelon's sweetness.

In fact, why not try something different for this summer – like my new Grilled Steak Tacos with Watermelon-Mango-Jicama Salsa? For this dish, char-grilled steak is topped with a sweet and tangy watermelon salsa and crumby Mexican cheese. This salsa is so refreshing that you may want to make extra so your guests can dunk their tortilla chips in it while they're waiting for the steak to grill.

I'm not the outdoorsy type. Picnics with uninvited guests, like ants, are not my idea of a good time. Sitting on the hard ground or wet grass is never much fun. So, my favorite place for a picnic is a box at The Hollywood Bowl on a warm summer night, with a meal that is perfectly prepared by my wife, Peggy.

When we arrive, the first thing we do is set the table. No sheet on the ground for us. A box at the Bowl comes with tables and chairs, so we spread linens that have been cut to table size and then lay the plates and silver. Flowers appear in small vases and the wine glasses sparkle. (Sadly, the Bowl stopped allowing candles, which was the perfect finishing touch.)

Once the table is set, the food starts to appear. Bread and cheese and cured meats or my favorite, Peggy's chilled heirloom tomato gazpacho soup, generally start. From there it might be roast chicken or cold sliced steak or grilled shrimp with mint and feta orzo. Desserts are home made or brought from our favorite bakery, Valerie Confections. And throughout it all there is the wine - crisp bubbly Prosecco, then unoaked Chardonnay, and maybe an Italian red and a sweet sparkling one for dessert. Truly the perfect picnic in the perfect setting.

Although we certainly are carnivores in my family, I love to eat meatless meals and try to eat about three dinners a week without any meat. For those interested in the health and environmental benefits of eating less meat, you can read books by Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan, who both still enjoy an occasional steak. On our weekly pizza night, I always fix a vegetarian pizza for myself (with maybe some good anchovies). I try to fix at least one or two seafood/fish dinners a week and I love to make meatless pasta dishes. But one of the best meals you can fix for dinner involves that super food: beans.

It's a high quality protein that is very cheap with no animal fat and lots of fiber. I get my beans these days mostly from Rancho Gordo, that wonderful farm out in Napa Valley run by Steve Sando. He grows the most high quality, fresh beans you will ever taste. You certainly can used canned beans and they are fine, but try buying some great quality dried beans sometime. They are still so much cheaper than buying meat. He has some wonderful varieties that you will never find in the grocery store. For this recipe, I used cellini. You really can use any bean you like.

A lot of people are confused about how to cook dried beans and are scared to try. It's so easy. You just soak and simmer. Sometimes I just throw the beans in a pot and cover with cold water to soak before I go to bed. If I don't do that, I just go ahead and throw them in some water in the morning and let them soak all day. There is no exact science to it. After they soak you just need to give yourself a couple of hours to cook them, depending on what kind of bean you have and how long they have soaked. I just put mine on to simmer with some aromatics and start tasting them after an hour and keep tasting them until they are the texture I like. That's it.

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?