Dinner on the Deck

Evening dinners on the deck in the months before it gets swelteringly hot is the one of the best  things we all love in our family. This dinner, inspired by the kebab recipe I shared here , just came together effortlessly. We have gotten so good at pulling this kind of a thing out of nowhere! Our dinner was a relaxed and quiet al fresco garden dinner for mother's day - featuring our mediterranean kebabs, pesto rotini, wild grain rice, roasted red potatoes and of course some of my favorite pecorino cheese. To top it off? My one and only favorite wine, chianti.

Barefoot evenings on the deck like this make summer feel like it is really here - it's easy to completely slip away and forget that there is work and responsibilities and an early rise coming in the morning. I love these lazy nights, where the dinner slowly carries on into the darker twilight hours, and no one needs to know the time or check their phones because everyone is there. Once the sun goes down, the lights lining the deck make everything look so magical.  Dinner is usually followed by everyone unhurriedly roaming to the fire pit, where more wine is drunk and s'mores are made...

These kinds of moments make me so excited to have my own dinners and gatherings...with lots of wines, lots of cheeses and olives, dishes inspired by Tuscany - simpler and lighter and better - alla griglia.

I'll have a big annual festa, where everyone wears light linens and sits at a huge, long wooden table filled with all sorts of pasta piatti and small dishes. Dinner will drawl on to the latest midnight hours, there'll be fairy lights strung about, and the great white moon and the stars will be the grand finale at the end of the night.

ciao! xo