"What is your favorite meal to have in the summer?"

We do a lot of cooking on the grill in the summer, since we don’t have central air and can’t stand running the oven and heating up the kitchen.  There are a few things I really look forward to grilling in the summer, mostly quick and easy things with fresh ingredients.

First:  Marinated Grilled Shrimp  (from www.allrecipes.com)  This shrimp is so yummy, with fantastic flavors.  My husband and kids love it (although I leave out the cayenne so the kids will eat it).  The worst part is peeling the shrimp, and the best part is how fast it cooks.  All you need to go with it is a nice salad and some good bread!

INGREDIENTS

• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup tomato sauce
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 pounds fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
• skewers

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, stir together the garlic, olive oil, tomato sauce, and red wine vinegar. Season with basil, salt, and cayenne pepper. Add shrimp to the bowl, and stir until evenly coated. Cover, and refrigerate for 30 minutes to 1 hour, stirring once or twice.
2. Preheat grill for medium heat. Thread shrimp onto skewers (I use wooden skewers and soak them in water for a couple of hours so they don't burn), piercing once near the tail and once near the head. Discard marinade.
3. Lightly oil grill grate. Cook shrimp on preheated grill for 2 to 3 minutes per side, or until opaque.

Another wonderful summer meal, which I don’t have an official recipe for, is grilled portabello mushrooms topped with a mixture of chopped tomatoes, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella cheese (not the packaged stuff, the the kind you buy in the deli that’s shaped like a ball).  What I do is chop up a tomato, some fresh basil, and the mozzarella.  I toss it together with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, then season with a bit of black pepper.  I lightly brush the mushrooms with olive oil and grill them until they’re tender.  Top the mushrooms with the tomato mixture, and serve.  This is something the kids won’t eat, so just my husband and I enjoy it.  He usually isn’t one to accept a meal without meat, but he likes this.  You can adjust the amount of topping to have enough for each portabello mushroom.  It’s easy, fast, and looks a lot fancier than it is!

Finally, I really love a grilled steak in the summer, especially with grilled onions and green peppers.  I’ll marinate the steak overnight in a mixture of soy sauce, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped garlic, and black pepper.  We like the steak cooked medium, about five minutes per side on the grill.  For the onions and peppers, I just stick them on some skeweres and grill them until they’re just right.  Usually I brush them with a bit of olive oil and sprinkle with a little salt.

Those are my top three, and I’d have a hard time picking an absolute favorite!  By the time fall rolls around though, I’ll be thinking of my cool-weather favorites and looking forward to a bowl of chili or a nice chicken pot pie!

A Caprese Salad made with tomatoes at their best, basil at it’s most fragrant and fresh mozzarella drizzled with olive oil then sprinkled with sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Serve with a crusty yeast bread a glass of merlot. Nothing says summer more than that unless it is a .....

Summer fruits Cherries, Peaches, nectarines, mangos....all so sweet and juicy after months of eating apples pears and oranges. I'm talking about the fruits that are grown here and sold at farmers markets when they are ripe. I like to serve them chilled with Greek yogurt sweetened with honey to dip them in. Maybe a few nice juicy plums with Tomme de Savoie cheese or another nice combination I just discovered is ripe melon (cantaloupe or watermelon) with Feta cheese. These fruits aren't here for very long so I try to incorporate fruit into a lot of my meals in the form of salsas, and purees.