The picnic gene, it's clearly in the X chromosome because we women, we loooove to eat outside, and those men, well, not so much. Give us a sunny patio, a rooftop view, a shady spot beneath a tree, any day, any evening, we're in the mood for an outdoor experience.

Dieting and frugality are a lot alike. After all, when we diet, we eat less and when we live frugally, we live with less. With both, we abstain, we hold back, we do without, we make do. So they are alike, two peas, yes, in that pod called life. Right? Wrong?

"Summer time, and the livin' is easy ..." (Wanna listen while reading? Open the Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong classic in another window. For optimal effect, listen to birds singing at the same time!) Okay, now that we're, um, in the mood, let's skip the birds and move straight to the bees, you know, honey bees.

Many food bloggers, me included, are outright obsessed with cooking and recipes. We're always on the hunt. We scour cookbooks, food magazines, recipe sites, other food blogs -- and our brains -- to come up with one delicious recipe after. We plot. We cook. We tweak. We style. We shoot. We taste. We write. But c'mon. Don't we deserve a little recipe vacation?

Bananas? A summer fruit? Well, yes, bananas are a summer fruit although truth is, banana trees produce fruit year-round so bananas are also fall, winter and spring fruits, too. Still, since bananas are available year-round, we don't see them much in summer, not while precious cherries, apricots, blueberries, raspberries and other summer-only fruits show their much-awaited faces. But this week, food bloggers had me rethinking the idea: bananas, they belong in our summer fruit panoply.