Another Summer Evening's Meal

So much of "the good life" revolves around food. Good food. Food that you and your family have grown and prepared and put up yourself. Not fancy food. Simple food. Food like shown in the photo above.


A couple weeks ago, Marlene and I and our three sons sat down to eat at the picnic table in our backyard and this is what we had. As I walked out to the table and saw the food Marlene informed me that it was all from our own homestead. I looked at my plate and said, "Hold everything! I've got to get a picture of this!"

So I stood on the picnic table seat, aimed the camera down and captured this image of a typical summer meal. It is the kind of meal we dream of in the depths of winter.

Starting at the top of the plate is a nice piece of grilled chicken breast. That hunk of meat was walking around our yard a few weeks ago. I told James I thought it looked like one of the chickens he butchered. The chicken was exceptionally good!

Below the chicken are some green beans. They are not cooked green beans. They are pickled beans. Dill pickled.

Below the beans, on the bottom right of the plate is a mixture of just-picked-and-cut-up tomatoes, green peppers, and onion mixed with a little Italian dressing.

Moving to the left, we have potatoes. Specifically, they are Yukon Gold potatoes. Marlend cut them in the cube shapes and sliced in some garlic and added some salt & pepper and a little olive oil. She wrapped it in foil and cooked it on the grill.

Rounding out our plate, in the upper left hand side, we have cucumber slices. They were marinated in vinegar. That's the way we like 'em.

==========

In my book, Writings of a Deliberate Agrarian, I have a chapter titled A Summer Evening's Meal. It is a story about another meal my family had last summer in the backyard. It was a different kind of meal because it came not from our own homestead but from a variety of local people we know and consider to be our friends.

For those who have not yet read my book, I offer the following quotation from the beginning of the chapter. It fits with today's blog:

"Few things in life are more pleasing to the sensibilities of agrarians than to eat food they have grown, harvested, and prepared with their own hands, preferably on their own land... This act of providing one's own food is an acknowledgement and acceptance of the Divine order. it is an expression of obedience. It is the realization of freedom."