I have to admit it: I’m still thinking about summer. Ah, summer, the time to boat, to swim, to cook on the . It’s all good.
I like being outdoors best. During the winter, we venture out so much less. The walks are shorter, colder. I love the silence of the woods in winter, but I miss the birds terribly. It’s far too quiet sometimes.
The other day, we were finishing the last of our Christmas shopping. There is always that last-minute gift. I like to kid that I need something to do on Christmas Eve. As we walked the store, I noticed that the summer items were out already. While it snowed outside, we strolled past racks of swimsuits, aisles of garden furniture and . Maybe because I was so cold from the damp that the thought of being outdoors was so surprising.
We found the winter gloves that were our last gift to buy. My mind, however, kept going back to those thoughts of warm, summer nights. It seemed so far away. Would it really be possible to swim in that lake now frozen and covered with snow?
When we came home, I browsed through my cookbooks, past the stews and soups to the grilling section. Grilled steak and grilled shrimp sounded so good. That’s the magical thing about a : just about anything tastes delicious when it’s grilled.
That’s part of the reason that I cook and don’t bake. I didn’t inherit those particular genes from my mother. Baking is exacting. You cannot make a mistake when you bake. When you cook, there’s always a fix. No recipe has to be a disaster. Just throw it on the grill, and you have a meal. End of discussion.
I suppose that it’s going to be a long winter for me if my thoughts are turning to summer already. Rather than fight it, I’ll embrace the season. A savory beef stew sounds very good right now.
