Every year, summer seems to do the same thing to me.
We spend all winter waiting for it. Spring starts to show itself, the days get a little longer and before you know it, summer is here. Then, almost as quickly as it arrived, you look up and the school buses are back on the road, the sun is setting a little earlier and there is the first hint of crispness in the evening air.
It always feels like a blink.
Living here at the beach makes the seasons especially noticeable. Summer has its own rhythm: more people, more traffic, longer days and seemingly never enough hours to fit everything in. Afternoons outside turn into evenings around a table. Neighbors are stopping by, friends are coming into town and people you haven’t seen since last summer are suddenly sitting across from you again.
And, for me, so many of those memories revolve around food.
Some of the best meals of the summer are the ones somebody else makes for you. Others are things you cook yourself, sometimes with ingredients you grew, caught or found close to home. Maybe you discover a new dish at a restaurant and can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe you try a recipe for the first time and immediately know you’ll make it again. Or maybe you cook something you’ve made a hundred times because everyone in your family loves it and nobody wants you messing with it.
There is something beautiful about the memories we make over food.
We break bread with old friends and meet new ones. We stand around grills and backyard pizza ovens. We pass bowls and platters around tables. We eat tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes, peppers straight from the garden, corn, peaches, watermelon and everything else that seems to taste a little better when the sun is shining and you’re eating it outside.
Food has always been one way I mark time.
I love the ingredients of summer. I love their brightness. I love that so much of summer cooking doesn’t require you to do very much. When the ingredients are good, sometimes the best thing a cook can do is stay out of their way.
But I’m also ready for what’s next.
I don’t think the end of summer needs to be sad. Of course, I’ll miss the long days and warm nights. I’ll miss being able to tell the boys to go outside and play until the light starts disappearing. I’ll even miss some of the craziness that comes with living in a beach town during its busiest months.
Maybe not the traffic.
But I really love living in a place where the seasons change. Just as you’re getting comfortable, nature changes the menu.
Soon, we’ll trade tomatoes and watermelon for squash and apples. The grill won’t disappear, but the oven will start getting a little more attention. Pots will stay on the stove longer. Things will simmer. We’ll start roasting and braising again. The food gets a little darker, richer and warmer.
The whole feeling changes. And I think changing gears is important.
There’s always a temptation to look ahead: to summer vacation, the next holiday, the next event or the next season. But when you do that, it’s awfully easy to miss the one you’re actually in.
So, before we move into fall, I want to say thank you to summer.
Thank you for the meals. Thank you for the sunshine. Thank you for the people who sat at our tables and the tables where we were lucky enough to be guests. Thank you for the new recipes and the old family favorites. Thank you for the late nights, dirty dishes, gardens, farmers markets, beach days and all the little moments we probably won’t realize were important until years from now.
And thank you to everyone who spent part of their summer reading these stories.
Now the buses are back. The days are getting shorter. There’s a little crispness coming.
And I’m hungry to see what the next season brings.
