It’s a little early in the summer to luck into corn as perfect as I did last weekend: kernels plump and sweet, that satisfying snap when you bite in. Corn is one of those foods so intrinsically tied up with summer, along with tomatoes, strawberries and stone fruits (all to be extra carefully washed in this unprecedented cyclospora surge, of course.)

Summer’s flavor profile begins to form in us early: the foods we ate as children, inseparable from our sun-bleached memories of ourselves in our dated outfits with our dated haircuts. Summer to me tastes like corn and tomatoes and peaches, but also like the flat, grainy surface of the little wooden spoon that came packaged with the individual cups of ice cream they served at camp. Watermelon, Hi-C fruit punch and Cracker Jacks.

One summer, just out of college, some friends set up a kettle grill on their rooftop and we got busy putting together a cookout, our first as actual adults. “We should make hot dogs!” someone suggested. That sounded right. “We should have barbecued chicken!” Naturally. “We should make M.M.B.s!” I declared, to bewildered stares.

This was one of those moments that occur often when you’re young, when you realize your experience of the world is narrow, that what was standard lingo in your family is not legible to anyone else. We’d called burgers made on the grill M.M.B.s in my family for so long that I’d nearly forgotten what the initialism stood for. “Michael’s Marvelous Burgers” were named for and by my father, the resident grill master. Summer, to me, tasted like M.M.B.s: sculpted patties, salted, peppered and latticed to perfection on the back patio.

“It’s Not Summer Until You’ve Had a Proper Shandy,” a headline in The Times read last week. The shandy, the beer-and-lemonade mix, is “the entry-level drink, an intro to your first proper pint” in Britain, according to the restaurateur Annie Shi. Another headline: “Summer Tastes Like Mango (And Vice Versa)” rounded up treats from across New York including Thai sticky rice and frozen Mexican nieves. We could each fill out our own “Summer Tastes Like …” headline. The taste of the season is specific, personal, instantly familiar. That not-altogether-unpleasant sensation of a grain or two of sand in your beach sandwich, the charred edge of a campfire marshmallow.

I asked my dad about M.M.B.s recently: Was the recipe a closely guarded secret, as I remembered? Wasn’t there an egg thrown in with the ground chuck? Certainly this mainstay of my summer palate was a Kirsch family heirloom.

“It wasn’t that secret, honey,” he told me. “We tried to make it a big deal because it wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “We tried to embellish it, dress it up.” (He didn’t remember the recipe specifically, but he thinks that, yes, there may have been an egg, and perhaps a bit of breadcrumb, for binding.)

These days, summer tastes to my dad like grilled chicken breast sandwiches with strips of zucchini. My friend Franny says it’s warm tomatoes off the vine with Duke’s mayonnaise, hot Gatorade from the cup holder in the car. For my colleague Minju, hot Korean soups with wilted kimchi she grew up eating.

What does summer taste like? It’s a sort of silly question, but the answer comes from someplace deep. Now I just have to hunt down corn as good as last weekend’s.

Roasted zucchini pasta salad

Do you know what ever summer gathering needs? A really good pasta salad, preferably one with enough vegetables to feel salad-y and light. And it should the kind of thing you can make in advance, at the ready for a picnic or potluck. Kay Chun’s roasted zucchini version checks all the boxes. It’s got vegetables galore, along with golden raisins for sweetness and sunflower seeds for crunch. You can toss with the tahini dressing a few hours ahead. It even gets better as it sits.

REAL ESTATE

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LIVING

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KING JAMES

LeBron James is signing with the Philadelphia 76ers. James is 41 years old and the N.B.A.’s all-time leading scorer; this will be his 24th season, extending what is already the longest career in the league’s history. He has agreed to join the team on a two-year, $8 million contract. “I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship team,” he said, “and I am so excited to energize a new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time.” How did the Sixers hook him?

NOW TIME TO PLAY