More Kale Please

Summer hit like a slap in the face. Last week, I went camping with friends to glorious, wooded, rocky, redneck southern Missouri--Thursday, it rained all day, Friday, it was sunny and 75, and then Saturday, bam, it was 90. And I love it. Love it. I have a theory or life philosophy that you can't complain about the weather being hot and about it being cold--you have to pick one or the other. It's supposed to get up to 90 degrees today and guess who still doesn't have their air conditioning on? This guy.

It's time to swim at the pool, go camping and fishing, turn off the oven and toss together salads (except for next week when I master the cake--I am determined to succeed, so get excited readers). I cannot wait until the tomatoes come in and I can make this salad. In the meantime, I discovered roasting greens until they're crisp. So it does involve an oven. But if fall is about soups, winter is about stews and spring is ... I don't know what spring is, recovery from winter? Then in summer, I'll keep it simple: crackers, soft goat cheese and kale chips drizzled with olive oil and salt roasted for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. I suppose we're still technically in spring, but I mean, once people start turning on their ACs and leaving them on, I think it's transition time.

I can barely remember this day back in February when my world was buried in three-plus feet of snow and it seemed like it would never melt. But Omaha in summer totally makes up for the howl of a Nebraska winter. I've already done the Wabash Trace Taco Ride once, in fact, I've been riding my bike about Midtown and Dundee for the past month or so. The farmer's markets have started, some even a few weeks ago. The College World Series will be here in a month, bring thousands of fans to the steamy hot grandstand at Rosenblatt. And then there's Shakespeare on the Green and, my favorite, the Summer Art Festival. Outdoor concerts featuring the Old 97s, the Faint, Spoon, Superchunk and the Morning Benders. Now if only I could round out the season with a summer fling.