SUMMER FOOD

A wonderful part of summer to me is eating fresh fruit and vegetables, preferably local grown. We are always ready to relieve friends and family of the over-abundance of their gardens.

The basic staple of breakfast year-round for me is granola cereal. Sometimes in the winter the only additions are raisins, walnuts, and a banana or an apple. At this time of summer I pile on strawberries, peaches, and blueberries. If there is some watermelon or cantaloupe that needs to be eaten, it goes on too. The only way to hold all the contents is to eat out of a large serving bowl.

The basic staple for my lunch year-round is a ham, turkey, and swiss cheese sandwich. These days a fresh-sliced garden-ripened tomato makes a colorful, juicy addition. Some say for the sandwich to taste best with tomato the bread must be white.

Typical afternoon refreshment is a smoothie made with milk, vanilla yogurt, fresh fruit and ice chips. A couple of Oreos alongside is one of my exceptions to eating something neither fresh nor local.

Frequent fare for supper includes silver queen corn on the cob (lubricated by rolling it on a big stick of butter),
squash, green beans, or okra, and a tomato filled with chicken or tuna salad. If it is not blazing hot we eat outside on the covered backporch. A meal accompanied by the music and fragrance of a good rain is a most pleasant bonus.

I read in the Bible from beginning to end that God says such food is “good.” The creation story recounts how “the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.”

The last chapter of the Scriptures starts with the words, “Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

These days I live between the two Gardens … Eden and the one in Heaven. For now I humbly bow my head before each meal and say “Thank you, God, for this day and this great food. Amen!”