Although there are a million summer-time dishes and foods that I love, last night we had what I have come to regard as my perfect summer dinner. The foods that now capture summer for me. We had bruschetta (my version involves slices of baguette, olive oil, salt and pepper, fresh basil, a slice of fresh tomato and a slice of fresh mozzarella and gratings of Parmesan broiled in the oven for about 5 minutes), corn sliced off the cob and sauteed in butter, slices of watermelon and ice cream sandwiches for dessert.

This isn't a meal full of childhood memories. Oddly enough, the only one of foods that I got regularly as a child was watermelon. We ate plenty of corn on the cob, but I didn't have it sauteed until seeing a recipe for it in one of the Barefoot Contessa's cookbooks a few years ago. I made up the bruschetta recipe myself (not that it's hard or probably all that original) a few years ago and I don't remember ever having an ice cream sandwich in our house as a child.

Sure, summer also means BLTs, black cherries, apricots, peaches, yummy things cooked on a grill and other pleasures, but in the past few years, no other meal has so entirely encompassed the flavor of summer for me. What foods or meals are quintessential parts of summer for you?