Summer Foods That Make You Feel Like a Kid Again

We all have those favorite memories of carefree childhood summers and those memories usually include a body of water, a young summer romance (like Danny and Sandy from Grease) and our favorite summer foods.  Since this blog is associated with a food delivery service, we’ll avoid discussing summers at the beach or lakeside cabin sharing your first kiss and focus on those memories of summer eating.

After all, smell (as in coming up from the lake to smell burgers on the grill) is the sense most associated with memory.  To this day, if I even whiff the tart smell of rhubarb, I am immediately transformed into a 9-year-old boy in my mother’s kitchen as she baked her delicious strawberry-rhubarb pie from scratch, including the crust.

Let’s see if any of the following elicit any childhood memories, simply by reading, without the scents, of course.

• Ice cream and anything resembling it.  Yes, it’s great to head out to the local ice cream establishment, but for me, ice cream truck treats return me to my days of youth. The thought of sandwiches, creamsicles, push-up pops, fudge bars, strawberry crunch bars, or bomb pops is as summer as it gets.  Eddie Murphy, in his famous 1983 stand-up routine, Delirious, has a wonderful bit about the ice cream man that is spot-on.  Italian ice, sno-cones, freeze pops, sorbet, gelato, and frozen yogurt all fit into this category.
• Corn-on-the-cob.  What says summer more than a dozen ears fresh off the grill, your own stick of butter, a dash of salt, and those little cob holders that you stick in each end of the ear so you don’t burn your little fingers?  Maybe a clam bake on the beach, but not much else.  (And clams would have made my list, except for the fact that it’s such a regional New England-type food).  Like watermelon, corn-on-the-cob drove my clean freak mother crazy.
• Fire pit foods, especially s’mores and mountain pies.To save money during summer vacations, my folks invested in a small pop-up camper.  While camping all over New England, we always spent summer evenings around a campfire.  While the adults enjoyed adult beverages, the kids enjoyed stuffing our fat faces with s’mores and mountain pies.While most people know how to make s’mores, mountain pies require a special tool; a mountain pie maker, which resembles a blacksmith’s tool.  It consists of two hinged cast iron plates that have long handles connected to them. You then placed buttered bread (both sides) in the mountain pie maker, added your favorite pie filling (mine was cherry), closed the maker, placed it in the fire and after a few minutes, presto, a delicious mountain pie would emerge.

There you have it, my list of summer foods that make me feel like a kid again.  Hopefully, at least one item on the list does the same for you.  And if you haven’t tried them in a while, please, by all means,  indulge this summer.