Smells Like Summer

It smells like summer in my kitchen. There is a bowl of mangoes ripening on the table and the sweet, tropical scent fills the air. Although, I might enjoy them a little more if I hadn't read this about their family group!

Speaking of summer, Figman sat up in bed yesterday morning and said "it's barbeque day". Like Puscatawny Phil, my little groundhog wakes up and knows, this is the day. So we dragged the barbie out of the shed, filled the gas canister (a priority ever since it ran out halfway through the cooking one time and the local garages refused to fill it during their "peak times") and called up our friends.

"Keep it simple" Figman said sternly to me. "I do not want one of your extravaganzas, okay? Just a barbie with our mates." So I picked up some lamb cutlets, skinless chicken thighs and good pork chippolatas and a loaf of bread. And decided to throw together one of my favourite summer salads - Nigella's Watermelon and Feta Salad. It's so full of good flavours - crunchy sweet watermelon, the salt and cream of feta, mint, pepper, lime - I mean, how can you go wrong?

Nigella's recipe online misses the "1" from the "1.5" kilos of melon, in case you were wondering (I went and checked Forever Summer to be sure). I used a small pale green mini Lee watermelon - I just love these small whole melons with a thin rind. I prefer Danish feta over Greek, although according to the European Court of Justice, there shall be no such thing as "Danish" feta anymore. I leave out the olives and parsley because I can't stand either, but I have also been known to throw in some salad leaves at times - it's a very adaptable.

The men did their manly thing at the barbeque and some of them even liked the salad! We finished the meal on the same simple note - a couple of packs of mini-Magnums in classic and honeycomb, so that the greedy among us could have one of each if we couldn't make up our minds (that was me, me, me by the way. And a mini-magnum is not THAT big). Not bad for the first of the season.

PS there was a little goats cheese, tomato and ciabatta action going on in the kitchen while the mens were cooking the meat. But it was out of the Figman's line of vision, so it doesn't count, right?

PPS for every mean thing I say about Blogger, and really, how angry can you get with something that's free?, I have to say something pleasant. And today, after the Plumbaby figured out how to turn off the computer with one quick gesture before his mama could go "NOOOOOOOOOOOO I HAVEN'T SAVED THAT YET!" I can only say how very pleased I was with the 'recover post' feature. So thank you Blogger.