If there was one thing my father and his brothers enjoyed, it was summer. They loved a warm backyard barbecue, listening to Chuck Thompson's play-by-play Orioles’ broadcasts on the radio, and summertime produce fresh from a roadside stand — especially Maryland corn and tomatoes.

They grew up in a small town called Belington, in West Virginia, a lively rural community. Their father, my grandfather, Alexander Lazarus, ran the town's general store. Their mother, Celia Klein Lazarus, was the social butterfly of the pair. She raised five sons and two daughters.

Growing up with the family's store and a mother who loved to cook, the Lazarus sons and daughters developed a love of good food. Then, one day, Celia simply decided that she had had enough of the kitchen. It would be fun to imagine the woman for whom I am named as an early crusader for women's rights, but my dad said that was not the case — she simply had enough of the kitchen scene. Not long before my father passed away in 2006 at age 98, he theorized that a modern doctor would have probably diagnosed Celia with a particularly difficult “change of life,” prescribed estrogen replacement therapy, and she would have gone right back into the kitchen. Alas, no such “luck” back in those days.

Whatever the reason, my grandmother turned over most of the cooking duties to the boys. Into the kitchen marched Ike, Lou, Jack, Eph and Maurice, who, I’m told, was always considered the most handsome son — brilliant and a true gentleman. He died shortly after I was born.

Beef brisket was their universal specialty in my memory. And Uncle Jack made the best baked beans I’ve ever tasted; The Baltimore Sun even featured him in one of their Man in the Kitchen columns in the 1970s, preparing “Dr. Jacob Lazarus’ famous baked beans.”

My dad's personal favorite summertime meal was simple: white silver queen corn and sliced, ripe Maryland tomatoes. Dad, Uncle Jack and Aunt Goldie — I can still see them seated at the redwood picnic table in the backyard of the home where I grew up in Lochearn. They're saying the same thing in various rhythms: “It's a meal in itself! Maryland corn and Maryland tomatoes!”

When this corn-and-tomato eating ritual took place in Goldie's kitchen she would include cold cucumber and sweet onion salad as a side dish, along with a dessert, her legendary pineapple upside-down cake.

Usually Uncle Jack and my dad would wash this down with a few National beers. Goldie would end her meal puffing on her ever-present Salem menthol cigarettes.

In classic 1960s pre-teen fashion I would roll my eyes and gripe to my mother, “Oh, here we go with summer. ‘A meal in itself! Corn and tomatoes!’ ” To keep the peace, my mom would throw together some crab cakes and fry them up in her skillet.

These rabid corn and tomato eaters were not nouveau vegetarians. My dad loved nothing better than a thick steak on the grill. But that was in May and June. Once it was July, it was corn season. I remember the summer before I left to attend college at Mount Holyoke, walking into the kitchen, and having my dad hand me a tomato and announce, “They won't taste this sweet in New England.” I half expected him to send me a care package of corn and tomatoes my first week away, but my mother sent brownies and some cash instead.

And so, on a lovely July morning the other day, I walked out to my own very humble backyard garden, and I removed a few newly ripened tomatoes from their vines.

I could hear those words, again, “a meal in itself!” And I made a note to pick up some Maryland corn.

Carolyn L. Buck is the new coordinator of development and fundraising at The Catholic High School of Baltimore; her email is bucklaz@aol.com.