So, you’re stocking up on your grilling supplies. . . filling your pantry shelves with grilling sauces, BBQ sauces, dipping sauces, pepper jellies, rubs, injections. . . .and you’re sure you’re ready for the summer’s grillings. Have you checked out your knives yet? A good filet knife can make your cookout prep a lot easier. Texas Pepper Jelly is proud to carry Messermeister knives, and their Park Plaza filet knife is the best you’ll ever find and use.

Cookouts are a way of life for many people, and no summer gathering is complete without one. There’s something about eating in the house when the sun is shining and the breeze is blowing softly that is just, well, wrong. This weather was made for eating outside.

Balancing a paper plate of delicious food is what summer is all about. Isn’t that why we have knees in the first place? And no food, not even Thanksgiving dinner, can beat a summer cookout and the food that comes off that grill.

My neighbors are grilling already, many of them, in fact. When I get home from work around 7 p.m., the neighborhood smells so good I can hardly walk into the house from my car. The smell of good barbecue is unequaled in the annals of cookbook aromas.

We’re having a family reunion for Mother’s Day on Sunday afternoon. We’re all bringing picnic food, in spite of the thunderstorm forecast. The main dish is spiral baked ham, and the glaze, which MAKES the ham, is straight from the cookbooks of Texas Pepper Jelly. Why? Because that’s the best one!

We’re also having Pineapple Sweet Fire Potato Salad and the BIG crockpot full of Texas Partytime Beans.

For dessert we’re having dark chocolate cake because it’s my nephew’s birthday. But we’ve got a lot of Texas Pepper Jelly to spoon over the ice cream!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of our readers, because some of you ARE mothers, and the rest of you HAVE mothers.