Fresh, NYC

I love using Google to cook, particularly in summer. Not just because you can search the recipe for Alache Soup (above) but also because you can buy whatever looks freshest without fear of failure. After I greedily shop one of New York City's many Green Market farmer's markets, I google my bounty online with the word "recipe" added. It's a little like playing a menu slot machine. You pull the virtual lever and see if you get a winner. This is what I call cooking "forwards." Forwards cooking is ingredient focused. 

But Google hasn't killed off cookbooks for me. I'm not the only one. The destination cookbook store, Kitchen Arts & Letters on Lexington Avenue, continues to thrive after 35 years in business (read a recent New York Times' profile here.) With books you cook "backwards." You pick your menu first, shop second and cook third.

Every summer I pull out favorite cookbooks like Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer (Hyperion, 2003), and Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Parties! (Clarkson Potter, 2001). Cooking step-by-step with these old friends puts me in a more meditative frame of mind. Juicy, ripe dishes like Ina's oven-roasted fruit or Nigella's watermelon, feta and black olive salad bring back pungent memories of summers past.

Despite a thriving website, Garten has a new book out this fall: Cook Like a Pro: Recipes and Tips for Home Cooks (Clarkson Potter, October 23, 2018). No doubt I'll splurge. Her ethos of the very relaxed hostess keeps performance anxiety in check.

Cooking forwards requires creativity, backwards requires intention, but cooking "sideways" (again, my term) is the ultimate in relaxation. All you need is a grill, olive oil, a spatula and a flip arm. Sideways cooking is pretty foolproof. And definitely the summeriest of all.

Diva Dog, Provincetown

This Provincetown summer resident, let's call her Gorgeous, suffers neither fools nor casual photographers gladly. When I tried to flatter her into posing, she looked right past me. Anyone less than Elliott Erwitt, who turns 90 next week, clearly wouldn't do. She seemed to pride herself on the superiority of her fashionable eyewear, her chic mixed fur coat, and her slender frame. I didn't have any treats to offer, but my guess is she wouldn't have taken them anyway. I got down to her level, but she refused to get down to mine. It's not every day you meet the Anna Wintour of Chihuahuas. 

Free, Eastham, Mass

When I first went to the Grand Canyon, I thought it would look just like the photos I'd seen all my life. I was stunned to realize they were inadequate. I realized then that some things could only be understood in person. it was impossible to capture and convey the Grand Canyon's magnificence and menace in a tiny two-dimensional frame. 

Beach sunsets are pretty much the same thing. A lens can't do them justice. People love to shoot them, but they can't really capture them. The same thing is at play: a vast and colorful sky made small loses its reason for being. Sunset photos look like muzak sounds.

And yet, we try.

Here, an unencumbered girl runs and dances at ocean's edge near a hot pink sinking sun on the Fourth of July on "First Encounter" beach in Eastham, Mass. It struck me as a childhood experience of freedom and beauty and joy that I'd want every child to have, and so I shot it, and now I share it.

Play Ball, NYC

Let's not talk about the Mets.

Taunting a Mets fan is like kicking a puppy or pinching a baby. You would have to be extra cruel to want to inflict harm on such a sweet and vulnerable group. 

But hope springs eternal at the start of every summer, including on a ballfield shoved under the highway and dwarfed by skyscrapers. Here, Little Leaguers hit and run on a summer morning. Painted by imagination, it's a field of dreams.

The endless traffic rumble from the elevated Parkway? Really the roar of the crowds. The gigantic green metal curved highway supports? The magnificent arches of a stadium entrance in the Bronx. The imposing line of glass building windows? Press box and corporate skyboxes, of course.

Diamonds are precious here. You take what you can get.

Block out those stressed and anxious managers, aka parents, shouting tips and tricks. Keep your eye on the ball, wait for your pitch and swing for the stands. This just might be the time it flies over the chain link fence and straight onto the bike path. See-ya!

And the noise fills up the stadium.

On The Fly, Millbrook

Hot air ballooning and baseball are not as different as you'd think. They both seduce you into searching a blue summer sky with joy and excitement. Time stands still—as in music or poetry— as you trace the fleeting arc of the soaring ball. The higher it flies, the more your feet don't touch the ground. The world around you quiets and disappears. For a moment, your heart is suspended in air and nothing else matters. And you think, this is weightlessness, what it feels like to fly.  This is being six-years-old and lying smack flat on the grass to absorb the sky.  This is summer, unfettered. 

This emerald green hot air balloon floated out of nowhere above a friend's country lawn in Millbrook, New York, and we all ran out to admire it. We could barely see the people in the bucket, but we waved anyway. The boldly striped flying machine looked down on us and towering evergreens with complete superiority. We were insignificant, but we didn't care. We listened to it inhale and exhale loudly, whooshing like a giant doing yoga. It was above us for just a half-dozen breaths, and then it sailed out of our patch of cumulus-filled sky. Even after it left, a little bit of it stayed, like a memory of a home run. We had more space inside us.

See if you agree. Check out this beautiful National Geographic short film by Joel Schat of a New Mexican hot air balloon festival by clicking here.