45 Summer Appetizers We Love

The kind that can easily outshine a main course.

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45 Summer Appetizers That Can Easily Outshine a Main Course READ MORE Mariana Gonzalez This is the summer we eagerly anticipated for what has felt like the longest year of our lives, and its end is on the horizon. Late summer fruits and vegetables are at their peak. Halloween movie trailers are rolling out. Pumpkin spice lattes are back at Starbucks. But the beginning of the new season isn't feeling the way I, and so many of us, hoped it would. That elusive return to normalcy doesn't feel any more within reach. The wounds of the past year have not healed, and new wounds are still being inflicted.   Still. Some things were good this summer. Many of us got vaccinated, dined at our favorite restaurants again, danced into the night in bars with sticky floors, held people we hadn't held in a long time. I felt the pleasure of a Sunday morning brunch with all my favorite humans. I loved tenderly through homemade meals, shared dining experiences, late night munchies that took the form of feasting in bed. This summer, at its very best, brought me back to my love of food and all of the ways it makes life infinitely better, warmer, more sentimental.   Of all my food memories this summer, I'll be thinking the most and the longest about delicious appetizers that outshined the main course. Special meals I cooked for friends and shared over juicy gossip and endless belly laughs, like this squid ink spaghetti. Cocktails and foods that will forever remind me of a person, an outing, an inside joke, like spicy margaritas, grilled octopus, and this incredible mole. Morning meals that I shared with friends who stayed the night, like perfect egg sandwiches, birria, and micheladas.   Some things were really good this summer. What to Make This Week Garlic Butter Steak Bites All you need for these tender little bites is a pan and 15 minutes. See More Spaghetti in Squid Ink Sauce This dramatic Italian dish is my favorite kind of culinary adventure. See More Mexican Mole Sauce Every home cook needs to make mole at least once. See More Slow-Cooked Birria Tender chunks of beef and red chile, slow cooked to perfection. See More The Spruce Eats on YouTube How to Build a Cheese & Charcuterie Board on 3 Different Budgets Watch Now Things We're Reading, Loving, Pondering There's been a lot of talk about whole milk's comeback. The green M&M is sexy. This Jezebel piece about the "cursed" history of the sexy green M&M was the best thing we read this week. We also loved this NYT piece about the joy of biting into a slice of raw red onion. Eater's guide to "the most divisive and misunderstood denizen of the candy aisle" (licorice) was a fun little read. The Washington Post published a column that disparaged Indian food, this criticism of that piece is a lot better. Did somebody forward you this email? Sign Up for The Spruce Eats Newsletter! Have feedback? Send us an email at contact@thespruceeats.com, subject line: Newsletter Feedback. Follow us:   You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to The Spruce Eats newsletter. Unsubscribe © 2021 Dotdash.com — All rights reserved. Privacy Policy. A DOTDASH BRAND 28 Liberty Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY, 10005