Lettuce Be Thankful

Hamburgers and summer go together. I make burgers all year 'round but, like tomatoes, they just taste better in the summer. We set the table on the deck in the dappled sunshine under our little madrone tree during those lovely warm evenings when the sun won't set for another two hours or so and we just bask in the fresh air and the sounds of children playing up the street.

I thought this time we'd make one of those lettuce wrapped burgers without a bun, since good buns are hard to come by and I had run out of that Acme herb slab bread that I usually substitute for buns. I used soft Boston lettuce, not a good choice - it tasted good but it had little structural integrity and oozed hamburger and tomato juice down our wrists and dropped our sautéed mushrooms out onto the plates until we resorted to the niceties of forks and knives.

Still, one can't but be grateful for beautiful warm summer evenings. Lettuce be thankful for summer weather, for hamburgers and for a bunch of rowdy malcontents who started our country 'way back when.

Happy Independence Day.