The other evening I stood at the sink rinsing rice and realized I could see the backyard without squinting. Not because I'd turned on the porch light. Because the sun was still up at seven o'clock.
That's the moment every year when I start craving summer meals that feel like freedom. Not summer itself, not yet. Just the preview. The trailer before the movie. The light stretches and something in my brain says: we don't have to be so serious about dinner anymore.
The In-Between Season
Spring isn't really a season in my kitchen. It's a negotiation. Half the week I still want something warm and heavy because the mornings are cool. The other half, I want to throw cold things on a plate and eat outside standing up. There's no clean line. You just start leaning one direction more than the other.
What changed first for me this year wasn't the food. It was the schedule. My daughter wants to be outside after dinner now instead of collapsing into her post-meal fog. She stands at the back door pointing, and that means I need to be done cooking sooner. Not in a stressful way. In a way that gives me permission to simplify.
Permission is a weird word to use about making dinner, but I think a lot of us need it.
The Weight Lifts
Winter cooking carries this invisible weight. Every meal feels like it needs to be substantial, warming, worth the effort of existing in a cold world. I love that cooking. I do. My Dutch oven earned its keep from November through March. But there's a relief that comes when you can roast a few chicken thighs, pile them over some grains and whatever crunchy, sharp, bright things are in the fridge, and call it done. Not because you're lazy. Because the season is telling you that's enough.
My husband notices it too. He doesn't articulate it the way I do, but he starts suggesting we eat on the back steps. He grabs a beer instead of making tea. Small shifts. The whole household metabolism changes.
I think that's what I mean by freedom. Not vacation cooking or grill-every-night cooking. Just the feeling that dinner doesn't have to hold so much emotional weight. In winter, a meal is comfort. It's the warm center of a dark evening. In summer, a meal is just fuel for whatever comes next. A walk. Bathtime with a toddler who somehow got dirt in her hair again. Sitting on the porch doing absolutely nothing.
Not There Yet
We're not in summer. I know that. The mornings still have a bite to them and I'm still wearing a jacket to the grocery store. But the pull is real. I can feel my cooking getting lighter, faster, less fussy. Fewer steps. More raw things making it onto the plate untouched. Dinner assembled instead of constructed.
Last night I made rice, crispy chicken thighs, quick pickled red onions from a jar I'd thrown together over the weekend, and crumbled some feta on top. Fifteen minutes of active cooking. My daughter ate the rice and the chicken and ignored the rest, which is her right as a two-year-old.
We ate with the windows open. Not because it was warm enough. Because I wanted to hear outside while we ate.
That's the thing about this time of year. You start cooking for who you're about to become. The version of you that eats dinner at 7:30 with the sun still up, who doesn't turn on the oven for days at a time, who makes a meal out of whatever's cold and bright and close at hand. She's not here yet. But I can feel her getting closer every evening the light holds on a little longer.