Summer Eating

The thing that I love best about summer is how exercise makes all food taste just about transcendent. My husband and I spent yesterday canoeing the Lamoille River. It was a long, lazy paddle down a relatively swiftly moving river and the day was perfect. Sun all day long and bugs kept at bay with a steady breeze. It was a lazy paddle, but the four hours in the sun were enough to make us both ravenous when we finally hauled the canoe up the riverbank through a ridiculously luxuriant carpet of poison ivy.

Dinner at friends' house and it was perfect summer eating. Burgers on the grill, steamed beets from the garden dressed with balsamic and salt, salad that most of us didn't get to because we were so full after all the rest of it. Gin and tonics. Finished off with a long soak in the hot tub beneath a three-quarter moon. Summer indeed.