we eat like kings

One of the best things about summertime, if you ask me, is how easy it is to eat well without a lot of work.  The availability of fresh ingredients combined with the natural desire to eat cold foods makes preparing meals a snap. 

This summer, we've been eating a lot of grilled pineapple as a snack on the weekends.  I cut thick slices and Steve grills them and we eat on the patio. 

I've also been really into tacos.  Fish tacos, beef tacos, chicken tacos- if it goes in a tortilla and is covered with cheese and salsa, I'm in. 

Lately, we've been trying to eat out less, so I'm always looking for super easy dinners to fix on the weekends.  Last Sunday, I tried out this recipe for avocado egg salad.  Oh.  My. 
I think that the salad on its own is fantastic, but serve it up on homemade bread with thick slices of ripe tomato and some chives from the garden and you've got yourself a top 10 dinner. 

For breakfast, you know how we roll.  I simply cannot get enough of these bowls of goodness we've been eating every morning.  Suddenly, cereal and bagels seem so.... flat. 

Even the beverages are better in the summer.  Recently, while looking through a magazine, I saw this idea for water flavored with fruit and herbs.  We tried it with pineapple and mint.  While drinking my pineapple mint water with a little mint leaf on top, I definitely felt like I was somewhere fancy, doing something exciting, and not just sitting in the back yard. 

And that's something I've been thinking about lately, with regards to our food.  How meals can be an event and how food and drink are something to be savored and lingered over.  I've also realized that the cooler stuff I am able to make at home, the less we want to go out.  This week, I mastered lattes, both hot and iced, using a very basic coffee maker and a sauce pan.  I'd like to thank my three years in Girl Scouts for my spirit of ingenuity.  And my six months at Starbucks for my general knowledge of coffee-based beverages. 

I feel a little sheepish admitting this, but just so you understand that I'm not some sort of cooking robot and am really quite regular- tonight for dinner we're having canned soup.