Best and Worst Foods of Summer – Hive and Nest

Worst:

For some reason Independence Day is the big Jello holiday. I guess because the weather is hot and Jello is cold. At least I guess it’s cold. I don’t really know. I find it disgusting beyond belief. it is slippery and slimy and feels to me like eating sweet mucus.

Ice cream bars. The outer coating is supposed to be chocolate but it’s actually something hideous and grotesque that merely looks like chocolate. Even as a sweet-crazed child who had been known to eat baking chocolate out of desperation, I simply could not stomach the coating on ice cream bars. Sometimes I’ll eat one. You know, if I’m at the zoo and that’s all there is. They can’t still taste so awful, I think. But they do. They still make me gag and I sit there like some sort of idiot picking bits of waxy chocolate off of my ice cream and throwing them in the dust, much to the delight of the ants below. But then I am left with a drippy wad of vanilla ice cream and what’s the point of vanilla ice cream anyway? Vanilla ice cream tastes like boring feels. So I lick it once and throw it away, swearing to never eat one of those ice cream bars again as long as I live. $3.50 wasted.

Corn on the Cob. Don’t get me wrong; I like corn a lot. And corn on the cob can be super yummy. But I refuse to eat any food that makes dental floss completely necessary. Heaven forbid you’re at a party or restaurant and don’t have access to floss. You’ll spend the next hour or two going completely insane trying not to pick your teeth. Corn on the Cob is simply not worth the effort. And cutting it off the cob is like a grown-up wearing arm floaties in the pool–totally babyish and out of the question.

Best:

S’mores. It’s hard to communicate to you how much I love these. I really dig food that has a variety of textures and the combination of crunchy and smooth and melty and hard and soft blows my mind. Then there is the toasty sugared sweetness of the marshmallow, the rich blast of chocolate and the mellow counterpoint of the graham cracker. I love the messiness of getting melted marshmallow on my lips and finding some long after I’ve gobbled up my s’more.  Talking about this is getting me so excited I’m about to build a fire pit in my backyard. But s’mores are best eaten while it’s dark, so I’ll have to wait a few hours.

Any meat on the grill. When you live in Texas, grilled food is pretty much a year-round thing. But there is still something summery about a burger hot off a fire. Mister makes fantastic burgers loaded with cheese and pieces of bacon. They come off the BBQ oozing grease and tasting like heaven. Any meat cooked over a fire just tastes better.

Macaroni salad is often disappointing but when it’s done right it is thoroughly delightful and I cannot get enough. Last year I was in charge of making macaroni salad and pulled pork for 200 girls at our church’s girls camp (it was at a vegetarian facility so no meat or animal products were allowed to be cooked on the premeses despite there being a wonderful commercial kitchen. So all food was cooked off-site and brought in.) Making that much macaroni salad is a little difficult. I had to make it in giant 5 gallon buckets and stir the ingredients with my hands. It should tell you how much I like macaroni salad that I was quite literally up to my elbows in the stuff and still wanted more. (Macaroni salad must have a crunchy component! Celery or bell peppers or it’s no good.) The best macaroni salad is made by Hawaiians but we haoles can come close.

What are your best and worst foods of Summer?