favorite summer things

After reading all the 'summer must have' articles in the magazines which feature absolutely nothing that I must have, I've decided to pass along my own list of summer items, free of outside endorsement.

1. Trader Joe's steamed lentils. This is a very large bag of already-cooked lentils that has made meeting my protein and iron requirements as easy as lentil pie. For the past week I've been putting them on the salads I take to campus (they come with a bit of dressing, so no need to add anything), and a couple nights ago we heated up a batch to have alongside Indian food. There's no shortage of cold and warm lentil salad recipes out there, so I might even try to make some kind of main dish with them this weekend for dinner.

2. Popsicles. Cheap, grocery-store brand, buy-one-get-one-free popsicles. They make the absence of AC on the West Coast almost bearable.

3. The Rome series on HBO. Our trip to Italy inspired fastmiso, so we downloaded both seasons. We're only two episodes in, but I can already tell it is going to be a rewarding experience. I feel like a genius every time I recognize a name. 'Hey, Pompey! I know him! Grad school is really paying off...' And, as odd as it may sound, it's really nice to see Republican Rome represented with lots of color. I feel like I always forget that everything in Rome would have been painted with colorful frescoes, and that Cicero did not, in fact, walk around white marble in a white toga looking at white sculptures.

4. Odor eaters. Seriously. I picked up a set of inserts for the Italy trip and they are going to be my summer staple. I basically live in little ballet flats, which can have pretty disasterous results once the summer heat sets in. The inserts do an amazing job of controlling sweat and stink, so I can go sans socks, stockings, or footies all summer.

5. Greek. Not the language...the greatest tv show on abcfamily. With all my other mindless tv shows about thirty year olds playing seventeen year olds finished up for the season, Greek is still going on strong. I've been downloading episodes, but I'm pretty sure you can also stream them through the abcfamily website.