Summer Eating -- Pickup Meme

Summer time is upon us – or so says the calendar, anyway. I have no idea what the weather will say, or how emphatically it will speak. We’ll find that out when it gets here. But climate change is not what this post is about.

I dunno about everyone else, but my eating habits change in the warmer weather. I eat more raw fruit and veggies, and more cold meals altogether. Not because I like cold food, necessarily, but because I’m usually too busy/lazy to bother cooking if I don’t have to do so. And so say all the Cavern Denizens. If we don’t have to cook, we be juuuuuust fiiiiine!

But. We also do a lot less formal meal eating and a whole lot more grab-and-go eating. It’s called snacking. Ignore what the Canada Food Guide tells you – it’s full of crap about the “right” foods.

Anyway, I wanted to find out what everyone does in the summer for grab-and-go snack/meals.

One of my favorite snacks is apples with cheese. Or any fruit with cheese, but I’m particularly fond of Gala apples with a nice, sharp, well-aged, English cheddar. You know the kind of cheese that is so crumbly that you can almost spread it on bread? Yeah – that kind of cheese. I could survive quite nicely for the entire summer on this, I think. I’m munching on some now, while I’m doing this post…

And then there’s popcorn. No pre-made or packaged stuff, thank you. And you can keep the microwave stuff where it belongs, on the store shelf. I have a hot air popper. It takes – what – a couple minutes, tops, to put out a gallon of hot popcorn? And I use olive oil – not butter – on the popped corn. You can drizzle it on, like you would with butter, or you can put it in one of those little spritzer bottles and spray it on. Butter is too expensive (I have a major popcorn habit) to use all the time. I use regular olive oil, not the extra virgin. I like the flavor of regular oil, and if you buy it like I do – in gallon cans – it’s quite inexpensive. And for those of you who keep track of such things, it’s also monounsaturated and not genetically modified (unlike corn, peanut, and canola oils, which are genetically modified). For toppings, I blend my own flavorings. I use things like onion powder, garlic powder paprika, -- all kinds of finely ground spices and herbs. I grind a lot of them myself, but you can get them pre-ground in the seasoning section of the grocery. Mix with a little salt, and you have customized popcorn that costs a whole lot less than what you buy in those popcorn booths in the mall.

I also like canned fish mixed with chopped onion, and sometimes a salad dressing (depending on the fish), then spread on bread. And I don’t mean white bread. I use a good black bread or twelve-grain whole-kernel bread. You know – the kind of bread you have to chew. I go through a lot of canned salmon this way, and only wild salmon, never farmed. It doesn’t have to be Sockeye, either. Pink, Keta…they all have the same amount of protein. Stock up on it while it’s on sale.

Okay, there are three of my favorite summer grab-and-gos. How about everyone else? And Beep Beep, I know you’re getting ready for the cold weather Down Under, but what would you be eating in the hot weather?

For those of you who have blogs, do a post on your own site and link it back to my comments, okay? Invite other to pick it up, as well. Rather than doing a tag meme, let's make it voluntary.