THE SUMMER [SALAD] I TURNED PRETTY

What’s Giving Me Life This Summer: Summer Produce and the Drama of The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3

*Spoilers ahead*

I don’t know if it’s the peaches or the teenage angst, but I’ve been floating in a very specific summer headspace of nostalgia — and I think Yalla’s summer salad and the release of the first two episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 are to blame.

Every year, I wait for the return of Yalla’s summer salad. Yalla, a Mediterranean Smokehouse tucked into Portland’s Multnomah Village, offers this fleeting seasonal dish that doesn’t look like much at first — just fruits and vegetables tossed together — but the first bite is an explosion of flavor. Kind of like The Summer I Turned Pretty, which dropped its new season the same week the salad reappeared on the menu. Two different kinds of cravings, arriving at once. The epitome of summer.

The salad — made of fresh peaches, in-season heirloom tomatoes, cucumber, onion, cilantro, parsley, mint, and urfa — is something I dream about for months. I eat it as much as I can while it’s around. Just like I devoured that salad for the first time this year, I inhaled the first two episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty. And when I finished both, I immediately wanted more.

My summers usually consist of fresh, acidic food and emotionally raw nostalgia. Rarely do my food and TV consumption collide so beautifully. Season 3 opens with the Conklin family driving Belly Conklin to Finch University, where she’s starting her first semester. I was instantly transported back to my own college move-in day — a chaotic, sweaty struggle to haul all my belongings from the car to my dorm in the thick Virginia humidity. Meanwhile, the Conklin family breezed through the process effortlessly, carrying in just a few boxes and sharing a beautiful, heartfelt moment together — no sweat, no frantic search for a parking spot amid a sea of anxious parents and overwhelmed freshmen. Then it jumps three years into the future — Belly and Jeremiah Fisher (sorry, but I’m team Conrad Fisher) lying in bed together, preparing for a bittersweet week ahead as Jeremiah approaches graduation.

Sitting on a rare front patio spot at Yalla, cocktail in hand, alternating bites of juicy tomato and sweet peaches, I stared into the sun and realized: this is exactly what I’ve been craving. People-watching. Melting into the heat. A moment of stillness and indulgence. As a Leo living in the often gloomy Pacific Northwest, summer is my oasis — and the sun, my best friend.

As the episode continued, we found out that Jeremiah didn’t read an email, missed some core classes, and won’t be graduating just yet. There were dramatic love scenes between him and Belly — both romantic and fiery — as we learn he cheated on her during spring break and pulled the classic Ross Geller move: “WE WERE ON A BREAK!” We also get a surprise: Taylor and Steven are back together after what seems to have been a brief breakup. I appreciated the buildup to everyone reuniting in Cousins Beach (which is still in progress), but I’m kind of upset that the only glimpse of the beach house so far is through a Christmas flashback with Belly and Conrad. Not that I’m complaining — those flashbacks were everything, and honestly, I forgot how much I love Conrad.

With each bite of tangy salad and sips of my paper plane (my go-to summer cocktail), the world seemed to pause. And lately, that’s rare. Everything is changing so quickly — it feels like emotional whiplash just trying to keep up. But in that moment, basking in the sun with my seasonal salad, time slowed down and I found relief in remembering that everything is temporary. One of my favorite things about spring is the cherry blossoms — they bloom for one week a year and then transform into green leaves. As a minor peach addict, in the summer, I get my fix for three months before going back on the wagon. Both are a time of seasonal celebration. Cherry Blossoms are fleeting. Summer is fleeting. Summer produce is fleeting. But they always comes back around.

Belly says summer at Cousins Beach is what she looks forward to all year — and how quickly that perfect time goes. I keep thinking about four words that define both the show and the season: nostalgia, grief, heartbreak, and paradise. Nostalgia for the days when the Conklins and the Fishers spent every moment together. Grief for losing Susannah Fisher, the mother who tied both families together. Heartbreak for the ever-complicated love triangle between Belly, Jeremiah, and Conrad. And paradise — for the magical stretch of days where nothing matters but picking out which swimsuit to wear or if she should spend time in the pool or on the beach.

My summers reflect the same themes. I zone out eating my salad of the summer and reminisce on my own versions of those emotions. Nostalgia pulls me back to beach trips with my family to Long Beach Island or Emerald Isle, and long afternoons biking around the neighborhood with my sister, heading to the pool or stopping at 7-Eleven for a midday treat. There’s a thread of grief too — the kind that sneaks up in with the warmth of the sun — from the start of my parents’ divorce one June, a time my body seems to remember even if my mind doesn’t. Heartbreak that lingered from my first breakup at the end of college, and from the time I lost while working in a toxic summer camp job that dulled what should’ve been bright days. But then there’s paradise — always paradise — in the form of warmth, joy, fresh peaches, hours on a patio, and the quiet, sun-soaked energy that carries me through the rest of the year.