Now that summer is approaching, my husband and I have begun to collaborate on meal preparations. Which is to say that summer equals barbecue use. We've got a barbecue that we acquired over twenty years ago, a made-in-Canada piece of equipment that has paid for itself many times over. It uses a direct line to the natural gas piped into our house for winter heating, is efficient and capable of producing an excellent product for our meals.

I love salmon in particular when we're having fish, and my husband dislikes it. But when it's barbecued he tolerates it. Recently he discovered that if he uses a combination of paprika, cumin, salt and pepper carried in an olive oil wash applied thickly over the salmon the result is delicious even by his standards of taste. So that's a victory for our fish meals.

Yesterday's Friday night meal was a little different. Oh, I prepared a chicken soup with rice as usual, and I baked a gingerbread loaf; we had the gingerbread for dessert alongside fresh raspberries. And our main course was comprised of a salad made with steamed broccoflower florets, sliced cucumber, cocktail tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, lettuce and small cubes of sweet onion. Alongside the salad was barbecued chicken breast that my husband found an interesting dressing for.

He marinated the skin-on chicken breast with a combination of lemon juice, garlic powder, dried oregano and basil, salt and pepper. Then he kept the lid on the barbecue for a half-hour, off-setting the chicken so it was not directly over the briquets, and he finalized the process by opening the barbecue lid, placing the now-cooked chicken directly over the briquets and basting it repeatedly with the leftover marinade.

The chicken was toothsomely succulent, flavourful and delicious. Good grief, my husband is turning into a wonderful summer-cook.