Summer is all about outside, lake, beach, tanning, photos with friends, and relaxing. Only thing that would top off those seven things would be some really radical, appetizing food!
World languages teacher Daryl Boeckers let us in on some awesome summer food ideas that you could make and have out on the pontoon, or if you’re entertaining friends for a night.
“So, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about summer food, and I think this one will really click with students, is panini. Most people think “Oh! Panini it’s an italian sandwich and it has to be really difficult’, but it doesn’t. You can buy simple italian bread that’s already been cut and panini can be as simple as… when you think of panini think of Panera. For me it’s the chicken Frontega Panini it has chicken, basil, tomato, and mozzarella cheese as kind of the base of that, but you could buy some nice focaccia bread at a bakery or even at Coborns, or Cub Foods. Then just find fun things to put in like my kids like salami and provolone cheese and that’s it; it can be that simple. That’s something you could grill, put on the grill and you could even put something on top of the bread when it’s grilling like a brick that’s been covered in aluminum foil. You could have it kind of smush and get kind of gooey. You could do things like like the panini that I mentioned from Panera you could do mozzarella cheese, tomato, basil, if you have vegetarian friends for example, and you could I think it’s called a caprazzi salad; and do that inside it,” said Boeckers.
For something more easier and a little more on the lite for us ladies and that you could also take out on the pontoon, Boeckers mentioned one of his favorite things to make in the summertime that is truly simple!
“I would say chicken salad. When I make a picnic I tend to make a chicken salad with a croissant. The key with chicken salad is you don’t want to put the chicken salad on your croissant or bread until right when your going to eat cause the bread going to mooshy from the mayo. So, that with some lettuce and chicken salad recipes vary. Some people put grapes in it, some people put walnuts in it, some people mustard in there’s; it really varys. So, find a good recipe at Foodnetwork.com, you could Google search chicken salad recipes. It’s easy to make, it’s easy to cool in a cooler and you could keep it on your pontoon for like three hours, or you could get into right away a half an hour in. That with chips and fruit and something would be really quick to,” says Boeckers.
For all those grillers out there Boeckers gave a couple of ideas of what you could do on the grill. Being inclusive for vegetarians and vegans too!
“I think that having a bar for hamburgers would be fun with friends if you had six or eight friends over. You could have out kind of your classic dishes, so you could have out tomatoes, lettuce, onions, maybe do red onions just cause it’s summer, but then you could also some fun things like have out blue cheese, blue cheese melts nicely on a burger, and that with mushrooms… you know mushrooms, onions, and blue cheese would melt nicely on a burger. If you have people who are willing to try new things, not a lot of kids your age are willing to try new things, but if you found the right kind of group of kids to try that; that would be a fun play. Blue cheese has a nice tang to it and again back to inclusion of people who are vegetarians or vegans would be to use portabella mushrooms as the actual burger. So, clean it off and then grill it so it get’s kind of the right texture and some grill marks on it and then you could add things like cheese and lettuce and stuff, and it would have that meatiness of a burger, but it could be inclusive to vegetarians or vegans,” said Boeckers,
Kabobs are also a fun thing that Boeckers said to do on the grill, you could go a Mediterranean route and make a Greek glaze with chicken, cherry tomatoes, and zucchini. But we can’t forget the most important aspect of a meal… the drink!
“Sangria is one near to my heart because I studied in Spain. Sangria it has brandy and wine in it, but there are non-alcoholic versions of Sangria out there. They have really big fruit flavors like a peach, you might find a watermelon Sangria. Sangria is for adults is booze like brandy and red wine, but I’m not drinker so I don’t drink the alcohol version of it, but I’ve has a lot of the NA recipes that have like a Pur Aid mango and strawberry and the fruit stays in it, so that the flavors are enhanced. It’s almost better like on day two or day three because the fruit stays in it and then all of the fruit absorbs the flavor, so it’s good that way. Plus it’s fun if you present it in like a clear pitcher it’ll look cool; it’s almost like decoration. You could make that two, three, four days in advance and it’ll only be better, so it would buy you some time the day your friends are coming over you wouldn’t have sit and labor over fruit all day. For me my favorite drink in the summer time is:
- 2 lemons that have been squeezed out into a pitcher of water so I think it’s 2 quarts of water
- 1 cup of sugar (you could reduce that if you wanted to cut down and you can still get the flavor out of puree raspberries.)
- If you take raspberries and either put em’ in a bag and moosh um up, or you get put them in a food processor to kind of get them into a liquid, but that would work well. Then you would want to put them through a sieve. (Little tip: a sieve is basically a strainer) Almost like a pasta to dry out, you put through a sieve so that the seeds of the raspberries would stay out of the juice.
A Boeckers Tip: You could have all your ingredients out because people then can go, “Oh! I want this, this, and this.” They can make their own.
