summer savagery.

Hot buttered corn on the cob. Ice-cold watermelon. Two foods which can flip the caveman switch without warning. Before you know it, you've got a row of huge destroyed corn kernels where your front teeth should be and watermelon seeds stuck in your salty, butter-smeared eyebrows. And that's why we have no real photos tonight.

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Mara and I were talking about some kind of very summery dinner for tomorrow night because it's supposed to be a million degrees and because we haven't eaten dinner together for the past couple of nights (dogsitting, music work, etc). Somehow we were having problems coming up with anything other than corn on the cob and watermelon on the possibilities list. Here are some other ideas gleaned from perusing the Dinner thread on eGullet:

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A wedge of boring old iceberg lettuce sounds perfect, chilled, with just a tiny bit of homemade blue cheese dressing. Oh, and some crumbled bacon on top. Sorry!

Marinated cucumbers. Weird, b/c as I just mentioned a couple posts ago, I don't really like cucumbers. But as I also said, I've been liking this thing I've been doing with allspice and cloves, etc.

A Caprese salad sounded good to me just now. Not the bad kind, a good one. Easy on the excellent (not Excellent) mozzarella, heavy on the basil and tomatoes. And good balsamic, nicer than the one we have.

I'm still thinking about Abra's watermelon, mint, and feta salad.

One deviled egg. OK, two...one for Mara. OK, four: two more for Dennis and Klary to go with Dynasty.

A perfectly ripe avocado sounds nice, but what are the chances of finding a perfectly ripe avocado if I don't already have one?

I thought about BBQing some scallops. This little tangerine/tarragon salad looks good for underneath. Variation here.

I thought some more about bacon, but then I think about bacon a lot.

I need to find a new BBQing fish...the last couple of pieces of salmon I've gotten have been really disappointing.

Beets. And fennel. Not together.

These strawberry salads have been showing up all over the place.

David Lebovitz was just talking about frozen grapes, but I have no idea where I saw it. I had never heard of this, but I guess everyone else has. But this dessert appealed to my inner bradipo. So I bought some and froze them, and yes, they're better than non-frozen grapes.

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Miscellaneous Corporate Linkage: The BBC has also been giving this summertime food thing some thought. If you Google "Picnic Food", you get their site, which doesn't have a ton of recipes, but their choices are well-considered. The Food Network also has a page where they try to pull some picnic ideas together here.

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