Summertime on the Water

Behind the Curtain: Summer Food

Summertime on the Water

The stereotypes are true: people in the Pacific Northwest love their outdoor activities. Whether it’s hiking, biking, skiing/snowboarding, camping (or glamping), or boating (in which category I’ll include pretty much every activity that involves floating on the water, in anything from a boat to a kayak to an innertube).

Now that it’s officially summer, the weather in Portland is starting to have more sunny days and fewer gray, dreary ones. That combined with the fact that our city is farther north than Minneapolis, leads to there being a lot of sun to enjoy this time of year.

Brian and I moved to our current home, floating on the Columbia River, because for years we had enjoyed spending our weekends on the water in boats. Living on the water seemed like the perfect environment for us, but we also didn’t want to live actually in a boat. So our floating house fits the bill perfectly. Of course we still wanted to go boating, so we have a new boat that fits behind our house and lets us spend weekend days out anchored on the river.

Being out on the water on hot days, we do a lot of salad kind of things—chicken salad, potato salad, pasta salads and so forth—but we still love the classic American summer foods.

Very much including hot dogs. Hot hot dogs. A few years back Brian learned a trick for cooking the dogs at home on the stove then putting the dogs and the hot water into a large thermos to keep the hotdogs hot for a lunch or dinner away from the house

I still look forward to hotdogs on the grill, because that’s one of my oldest summer food memories. But having nice, hot hotdogs hours after leaving the house—and without having to hang a grill off the side of the boat (eek!)—is one of my favorite summer meals.