There’s something about throwing some charcoal on the old-fashioned grill, dousing it with lighter fluid, and then burning the hair off your hand as you throw the match in, that makes me feel good about summer. I mean, summer isn’t my favorite of seasons — scratch that, it’s my least favorite season — but there are a few key things that you can do during the summer that have more of an impact in the hot sun than in the cold snow; barbecuing is one of them.

That being said, everyone these days has one of those fancy gas barbecues where all you have to do is press a button and throw on the meat, which is great when you’ve got company over and all you need the grill for is to make some quick burgers, but when the focal point of your gathering is a barbecue, nothing really beats slapping some meat on an old rusty grill with the charcoal slowly ashing up as the smoke fills the air. Barbecuing at its best.

So for those of you in the southern hemisphere, I apologize, but for us up here in Toronto, it’s not summer. It’s barbecue season.

On a very awesomely related note, Greg Story of Airbag just wrote an amazing weblog post on the charcoal barbecue. Check it out. Also, there’s no real better thing to have after a barbecue than ice cream. For those of you who have trouble scooping it, here are some tips, via Lifehacker.