Oh, but first the food. The food will always be there. It is, by far, the first thing I'm thinking about when I wake up in the morning. "What will I make today" and "I wonder how long I have to lay here for until by bladder will burst" are my first thoughts of the day.
To take bursting to a whole new level, I can tell you that when you squeeze a lemon with a hand held citrus juicer, it will squeeze out every ounce of liquid that little sucker has in it to squeeze. I've never owned or used one of these juicers. I've only done it the way you do it when you're in a kitchen with five male chef's and nothing more manly than the clench of your fist will do. So I am happy I have discovered this toy.
I will be holding that hand held juicer all year round. All of a sudden you have this plump, half of a lemon sitting there in it's place, than SQUISH, a flattened disc, a little less rounded, but no less lemony than it started out to be. This lemon has served it's purpose well.
The objective: to marinate organic chicken thighs in about six lemons and about double that of garlic and a little extra virgin. Later, after hours of sitting and patiently waiting in all that goodness, I will grill them on the BBQ, slice, than serve to my special dinner guests. That, my friends is as simple as it gets. Although Caroline informed me that she might only eat the middle of the chicken, (? not sure how she will manage that one) because she didn't like the taste of the outside. That taste was the char-grilled part.
Honesty has it's place.
Corn also has it's place; picked right from the field than straight on the grill, all wrapped up in its cozy bed of husk. Well, this time I bought it from the market, but ideally I would want Farmer Brown to hand it to me from his road side stand.
I once worked in corporate catering, a wee little company in South Melbourne, where I was mentored and made to wear stiff, white painters overalls even in the dead of a Victorian winter. It was there though, that the words, "give it a nice little CRUNCH" was repeated to me over and over so as not to forget that CRUNCH will seal the deal. Sugar snap peas are going to give you just that.
We sliced these beauties and tossed them through a salad of grilled halved tomato's, mixed greens and shaved Parmesan.
If Caroline found any imperfections with this, she didn't mention it. I took her shoveling tomato's than piling up snow peas than shoveling them into her mouth as a good sign.
When our feast was mostly all eaten up inside our very full bellies, we thought it would be a great idea to fill up water balloons and hurl them at each other. While I was inside filling up my balloons, Glenn and Caroline were outside filling up about twice as many. I don't know how many Caroline had burst on her face as I threw them at her with full force, showing no mercy, but she was showing no fear. She also showed no fear as she was trying to sneak down the back steps, which was missing the third one down, and plummeted to her knees. At about the same time as I nearly choked from laughter, she was yelling out, with her water balloon still raised above her head, "I'm alright, I'm alright, I'm good, I'm good". What a sport.
Water balloons are just good fun. 
Even if they do leave bruisers the colour of your most purple balloon.
And that is the way we spend the first day of summer in Seattle. A city, for most of the year, that has you wondering if there are even people living in it. A city that has you playing childish games when the heat comes on, the heat that has you looking around the streets smiling at strangers because you have all of a sudden realized that there are people around. People walking, people skipping and looking up at the sky in wonder.
This is where you spend the late times of the day and the early hours of the night feeling the warm air on your skin, just wondering what you'll cook for dinner tomorrow night.
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