This week, fireflies began flitting silently through the edges of pine groves and into backyards, flashing their pale-green signals.

Just as these quiet harbingers of summer arrive, grills across Alabama are flaming to life with the low hiss of propane and the crackle of blazing charcoal, yielding eventually the mouthwatering aroma of flame-broiled meat.

Memorial Day weekend marks the start of what many people think of as grilling season. Backyards, freshly mowed, will become the scene of countless feasts, serving simultaneously as playroom, parlor, dining hall and kitchen. Following this weekend, two more dates loom large on the calendar: Independence Day marks the season’s zenith and Labor Day its limit. Americans will pack into the three holidays the greater portion of their summers’ outdoor frolicking and feast-making.

While these dates are an appropriate time to celebrate the summer’s warmth and enjoy the flavor of food cooked outdoors, they can contribute to a skewed vision. Not all meals prepared on grills need be feasts, prepared for crowds of a size and temperament seen most often in beer commercials.

This quintessentially American push to do things bigger, louder and flashier has burned its way into the sacred space of the back porch. Home improvement stores offer row upon row of glistening, bloated grills, sporting add-on technology such as complicated anti-flare screens, super-fast infrared cookers, even built-in sinks and refrigerators. Store brochures and the home-improvement and cooking shows that have come to litter cable television have billed the concept of the “outdoor kitchen,” a space packed with thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and furniture despite the exposure of these assets to the elements.

This particular brand of conspicuous consumption seems tied to two trends in American life: The real estate boom and accompanying credit bust, along with the expanding epidemics of obesity and diabetes. That’s a shame, because grilling, done right, could be a balm for both.

At its heart, cooking outdoors is about simplifying things. Instead of a technologically advanced electrical appliance, food is prepared over an open flame. Maybe it hearkens back to the pre-civilized roots of human society, when people hunted game in small groups. (The discovery of and mastery over fire must have improved pre-historic picnics immeasurably.)

Or maybe it’s just a break from what we’ve come to see as normal: laboring over a hot stove, waiting as a plate spins our dinner through invisible radiation, or even trucking the family off for fast food or quick casual dining. Either way, much of the point of cooking out seems to be the escape from the modern kitchen. Lugging out a fridge and plumbing the patio for running water seems to miss the point.

Confining cookouts to the big summer holidays or even to the weekends invites this sort of thinking. If grilling is a special event, the theory may go, we’d better make the most of it, tossing as much food as we can onto the flame. Consequently, the space grows to match the extravagance of the affair.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Gas grills, while introducing a bit of technology to the back porch, make it possible to have an open flame on demand any night of the week, a flame that can be just as quickly extinguished. A few moments outside, then, can produce a tasty main course of barbecued chicken, herbed pork chops or seasoned salmon steaks. Save the T-bones and the platter of cheeseburgers for those weekends and holidays.

(Devotees of the charcoal briquette, whose passions can run as hot as their cooking fires, may have to work a bit harder to cook out more than once per week, but likely will be the happier for it.)

The first benefit of this is healthier eating. By cooking the fat off of these already lean meats and letting it burn away in the flames below, families avoid adding it to their waistlines. Grilling only what they’ll eat that night saves time, money and calories. And perhaps the kids, mom and dad can burn a few more calories while the food cooks, making use of the rest of the backyard for a quick game of catch or a romp with the dog.

It’s perhaps a stretch, but by extension, a family that works to keep its meals and its back porch simple and uncluttered may apply the same philosophy to the rest of the house, and to the finances that provide it. There may be less reaching for expensive improvements that don’t really improve anything except a credit-card company’s bottom line.

But the best result of more habitual outdoor cooking in simple surroundings may be more sublime. In Alabama, of course, we’ve got the climate to cook outside year-round, if we want. It’s the summer, though, when we can get the most out of it. At the day’s close, with twilight steadily darkening the skies and cooling the air, a few minutes spent on the back porch while dinner sears nearby can be a treasure. And for a few weeks, at least, the fireflies will make it seem all the more special.

Contact Metro Editor Ben Cunningham at 256-235-3542.