Better late than never.

I've been trying to get a 'Hot August Night' date on my site for three years.

Each August seems to melt effortlessly into September before I get my act together and then, quite suddenly, everything falls into Autumn.

As the sun sets on this August, let's raise our glasses, pretend we're on a blanket outside The Greek Theatre in 1969 and Neil Diamond is calling us 'Tree People'

If that's too esoteric for you, then at least mix yourself a Mai Tai, stoke up the grill and get steamy with someone special.

Get hot with a hottie.

Or get fruity with a fool.

After a couple of Mai Tai's it's really all the same thing!

The Neo-Tiki Mai Tai; double rum, triple fruit juice and a little coconut milk float. This will have you both howling that mating call of the luau goddess, Lakkanooki Gotme

(Thank you Vickie Eydie)

The Mai Tai wasn't always a delicious object of ridicule. It had a very noble birth at Trader Vic's and consisted of fine, aged dark rum, almond liqueur, orange liqueur and fresh lime juice.

Demand overwhelmed supply; the availability of 15 year old rum meant the drink was compromised to 8 year old dark rum and some light rum.

Then it slipped further into the realms of corner-liquor- store brands of rum.

The pineapple was introduced to make up for the cheaper rum.

Wherever a wedge of pineapple goes, a Maraschino cherry is bound to follow.

And suddenly we are left with a cocktail adorned with the fruity beauty of a blonde bombshell trying to do the Hula on a beer mat.

Mmm!

I love it when my cocktails have less dignity than I do!

This came to me subliminally.

I was barely conscious of picking up the apples and nectarines at the market.

I don't know why I tried out my new mandoline slicer on a Granny Smith apple...it just seemed hard enough to grate without involving the loss of any of my fingers or knuckles.

There was no sane reason to try grating a nectarine.

Once I started, it was commonsense to squeeze lime over the matchsticks of fruit, so that they wouldn't turn brown.

A little olive oil...

Some mint and pepper flakes...

And suddenly there it was; the perfect Summer sidekick. I can't think of a grilled meat that this wouldn't be sensational with.

Big, fat Flintstone sized pork chops, brined in salt and vinegar then marinated in rum and juice.

Grilled to succulent perfection.

Huge wedges of chili-lime pineapple caramelising along side the chops.

A crunchy-tangy slaw on the side.

This is the kind of meal that BBQ's were invented for.

'Soo Soolaimon, Soolai, Soolai Soolaimon'.

I am the same age as this chant.

It comes from Neil Diamond's classic double-live-at- The-Greek recording, 'A Hot August Night'

My childhood was populated by bar maids who played this album over the pub's stereo whilst they set up their bar in the morning. My sisters and cousins played it endlessly.

At no point in my life has this album not been part of the soundtrack.

I think it was the first cd that I bought, replacing the dog- eared LP with a shiny-bright, scratch-free recording.

It's fun. It's silly. It's gut-wrenching. It's chees-thentic rock at its zenith.

And it is the perfect 'drink & a date' playlist because you'll both know the songs and by the third Mai Tai, you'll both be singing along like dazed groupies.

Take a ride on the Diamond Express!

Possibly the simplest and sweetest of all blooms in both scent and form.

Equally at home around the sweaty throat of Elvis or a heat-dazed, camera-toting tourist (and every beauty in between).

The blooms of Frangipani and Plumeria trees are the ubiquitous tropical bloom; delivering the happy-sweet buzz that a Mai Tai can only try to emulate.

Lop a bunch of blooms off a neighbour's tree (thanks, Sid), pluck blooms to adorn each other's bodies. Try to follow their scent around the house...

They are built to please, their five petals always giving a happy answer to 'He loves me, He loves me not...'

This is everything a creamy, sticky, boozy Tiki-lounge cocktail should be...except it's a dessert!

Everything here is a shortcut; store bought pound cake, packet mix pudding, canned pineapple...and all drenched in rum.

Topped with priapic bananas and lost cherries, this is as much a sexual innuendo as it is a dessert.

Your reputation is shot, so you might as well have a second helping!

My friend, Lisa dropped me an e-mail inquiring about the nature of muffins.

Dry vs moist, to be particular.

I happened to be in the middle of all this Mai Tai nonsense and mulled over the basics of 'mix the dry and wet ingredients/ lumps okay' and then pondered the indigenous moistness of coconuts.

So, with ridiculously little effort, I added coconut milk, pineapple and rum into my basic recipe and these cheeky little devils popped out of the oven 20 minutes later!

I have a whole stockpile of recipes lined up ready to send out.

I'm even going to add my 'Gutless Wonder' recipe section to the site.

That's right; a butter-free corner of thelovebite.com!

In the meantime, get buzzed on something sweet and sticky, sing along to Neil Diamond and get lei'd!

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Cheers, Mannix

mannix@thelovebite.com