The Flavors of Summer

By Lisa Kirkpatrick

Ah, summer, when the degree of heat and the languor of the hours seems to intensify the flavors and aromas of the bounteous foods available to us. As we do every summer, we requested the food staff to share memories of summer foods and received a delicious bounty in return. Now it's possible to cruise Chicago's many ethnic neighborhoods with a college-age Rachel Feit in search of nightly culinary discoveries and accompany Pableaux Johnson on a last-minute madcap Tex-Mex eating marathon before he departs the Tortilla Zone for New Orleans and a new era in his career. You can share Wes Marshall's passion for tomato season and learn MM Pack's childhood method for catching crabs, guaranteed to work on the Texas Gulf Coast or the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Boggy Creek farmer Carol Ann Sayle completed the assignment without even knowing it. When I read the evocative reminiscence about Black Diamond watermelons in her weekly "Friends of the Farm" e-mail newsletter (subscribe at www.boggycreekfarm.com), I requested that she allow us to adapt the essay for inclusion in this piece and she graciously complied. So we offer for your enjoyment our memories of the flavors of summer. All in all, it's some of the tastiest writing of the year.