Ruby Regina Witcraft
I have many favorite meals, too many to mention because I am a dyed in the wool foodie. I have made everything from lobster Newberg to beef Wellington but today I had the best New England pot of cabbage, onions, and carrots. Better known as good eatin’s, in Okie speak.
My husband enjoyed quiet dinners, for two, at home and so did I. Because he appreciated my cooking so much, it was no trouble for me to set a complete table and make a very special repast that he had never heard of. Since his understanding of good food started with a bottle of catsup, which he never seemed able to find in the fridge; it was very easy for me to please him.
When he retired from his oil man’s way of life he decided that he would take over our huge garden. Considering that he was a city kind of guy, I thought that was great because I was way too busy to give a garden much consideration. After a little instruction on gardening I turned him loose and hoped for the best. The first thing he turned up with was a very powerful roto-tiller. That was when his best hit the fan. He ran the thing through my lovely bed of asparagus which was starting its spring production and which we so looked forward to each year. Apparently, he had not read the manual on where the off switch was. Need I say more? Of course I do. I saw the disaster and, “Yelled turn it off!” He yelled back, “How?” The chain link fence finally stopped it and him. As the summer progressed so did he and we had a wonderful garden with corn, beans, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, lettuce, and many other vegies. He was very proud of this accomplishment and so was I. If he got control of the roto-tiller we could have asparagus next year.
However, his newest tool was a two-foot screwdriver and I was concerned about the damage he could do with such a threatening gismo. I kept an eye out for it but he never did use the thing and probably just liked the looks of it in his, by this time, well supplied tool bench. Just a man thing, I guess. He was great with tractors so I cut him a little slack on the tools. I never seemed to need much more than a hammer.
This garden sustained us with produce all winter long, due to a giant freezer, but now about my favorite meal. I never had time to stop for lunch but the gnawing of my stomach, after a long forgotten, four o-clock breakfast, made me so hungry that I could have chewed my arm off. When a private lesson was cancelled, my plan was in play. Through the garden I would go. Picked up a tomato, a hand full of okra, an onion, an ear of corn, some green beans and headed off for the north forty, a quarter of a mile from all the hub-bub at the farm, to a beautiful, gigantic cottonwood tree. There I would sit in the grassy, shade and latterly, devour all of those delicious raw vegetables that my husband had grown.
That, really, was my favorite meal but, alas, no asparagus.