Summer might be the best eating season of the year. A cornucopia of fruits and vegetables are at their ripest during this time of year. With more free time outside of class, you’ll have more time to conduct culinary experiments or refine one’s personal cookbook. Summer also means more time to travel and cook outdoors. Here are some gastronomic opportunities to consider in and around Tucson:

Classes

Why would anyone take more classes after finishing a whole year of them? Consider this: how often do you get a chance to eat your completed assignments?

Pima Community College – Pima Community College offers a Culinary Arts program for those who have considered becoming a professional chef.

For anyone who just wants to learn more about cooking-related subjects, there are the continuing-education classes, which are offered throughout the year and usually last for one session. Previous classes covered topics such as Chinese cuisine and cooking for one.

Cuisine Classique – Tucson native Mardi Burden and her husband Bob hold cooking classes in their fully equipped, professional kitchen of their Oro Valley home.

For anyone who wants to learn their way around the kitchen, the school offers the “”Basics of Cooking”” series. It’s a nine-week set of courses covering such topics as knife skills, fish, meat and desserts. At the end of the series, students prepare a five-course meal based on recipes from previous sessions.

This would be a perfect way for anyone new to the kitchen or the budding gourmet chef to pass the summer days.

Travel

You may not be able to afford trips to wineries in France, Italy or Argentina, but you can taste quality wines just outside of Tucson.

Winery day trips – In the movie “”Sideways,”” Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church’s characters embark on a weeklong journey through California’s wine country to reorient their lives and themselves. Thankfully, you don’t have to travel to California to experience similar epiphanies or wines.

With a car and a few hours travel, you can visit parts of southern Arizona that offer the right climate and soil conditions for growing quality wine grapes, and sample the piquant results.

Events

Summer tends to be a slow business period for Tucson restaurants, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find something to do.

Primavera Cooks! – For those with a healthy wallet and a generous spirit, there’s Primavera Cooks!, a summer-long series of gourmet dinners hosted by the Primavera Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on alleviating homelessness and poverty.

You can sign up to create dinners under the guidance of head chefs in the kitchens of some of Tucson’s eminent restaurants such as Janos, Vin Tabla and Pastiche.

There are also spots available for members to learn from professional sommeliers. These apprentices meet with the chefs to select the wine for each multi-course dinner.

Of course, you can also just be a guest and enjoy a tax-deductible meal or two.

Outdoor Dining

The backyard – Whether it’s to take advantage of the cooler nights or to celebrate Independence Day, the backyard is the best place for summer dining. It has a versatility that can’t be matched by other places.

You can invite a bunch of friends over for a casual barbecue, or usher the love of your life to an idyllic setting where a special dinner awaits. (Need romantic recipe ideas? Search for “”Let’s get it on in the kitchen”” on DailyWildcat.com.)