Growing Up

Summer has never been my favorite time of year. It's hot and sweaty. I do remember as a young girl I always loved the family time even if it was unbearably hot.

Growing up in a small Colorado town opened up a lot of opportunity for hiking, camping, going to the lake, snowboarding and many many more activities. My favorite of course is snowboarding. Again, not a hot weather person! We had a family friend that worked in Crested Butte at the ski resort. He would let us come there and cover all our rental equipment and then he'd take us up the mountain. He taught me how to snowboard. My sister tried to learn with me one year, she was a skier. It didn't go very well! She ended up crashing so hard her tail bone hurt for days. I always loved the snow still.

We also lived close to Blue Mesa Reservoir. We had a great summer there one year. We took a pontoon boat out and we had innertubes and jet skis. A lot of the family was there. Cousins, Aunts and Uncles, Grandparents. We made it a big family party. My Uncle took my Mom out on the jet ski and ended up throwing her off the back. That was really humorous to me. The ice cold water always felt great when it was a ridiculously hot day though. At the end of the day my family would always be in the kitchen and on the back patio at my Grandma's house. One of my Uncle's would man the grill and make tons of hamburgers and hotdogs, and all the women, there are mostly women in my family, would be in the kitchen making pasta salads, fruit salads, potato salads, you name it and they were probably preparing it. Then we'd all sit out back on the picnic tables that overlooked the Gunnison river and enjoy dinner, watching rafters go by. I remember thinking once, I'm going to be a great cook someday. But I never had the ambition to cook, so those fun times with family, eating a big meal together, once I was grown and out of the house, would only happen when I was visiting Grandma's.

I've been an "adult" now for many years. Never cooked well for myself. An abusive ex-husband made me not want to do anything at all and I would eat out most of the time. Talk about expensive! Then I became a stepmom, and a wife to a wonderful man. My Mom gave me a cookbook of all of her wonderful recipes, and I'd hardly touched it when I met my current husband. Now that I had a family to care for, I figured I better give it a go! Making soups is fantastic. Most of them I put in the crockpot and dinner is ready when I get home. That also generally means it's winter time, which as you know now is my favorite time of year. So during school and winter months, I'd like to say I'm a rock star in the kitchen.

Then summertime hits. And I get the severe summertime blues. How do people want to be in a hot kitchen cooking things when it's so hot outside? Gross, no thanks. That's when my husband takes the reigns and starts smoking everything on our traeger grill. He makes anything from steak and burgers, to potatoes and corn. He's a wonderful cook, but a girl can only eat steak and burgers so many days in a row. I decided it was time I learned how to do some meals on the traeger.

It started simple. Foil packs, with chicken and veggies. BBQ smothered chicken. Things like that. But those got boring also. I like variety! I now like to think that I've graduated to the pro league of cooking on a traeger! Some of my meals are to die for I've been told! Jalapeno bacon mac and cheese, bacon wrapped stuffed jalapenos, potato casserole, jalapeno creamed corn, kababs, pineapple chicken, etc. You get the idea!

I also make pasta salads, jello salads, things like that when it's hot. My husband, being a steak fan, always wants steaks for his birthday and Father's Day. Always. He shocked me this year. I made a jalapeno and cheese stuffed meatloaf, wrapped in bacon, and topped with my secret meatloaf sauce, smoked it on the traeger, and my husband insisted that it was the best meal he's ever had and requested it for every birthday and Father's day in the future.

Moral of this story, even if you don't think you like something, like hot summers and cooking, try something new with it and you may just find you're actually pretty good at that thing you used to not like. I still don't like hot summers, but at least I can put good food on the table for all my family and friends to enjoy!