Brooding On

Roasted Balsamic Mushrooms and Beans

I'm always looking for easy, creative ways to get veggies to the table, and this recipe checked off both those boxes.  


Combine equal amounts of sliced mushrooms and bite-sized fresh green beans in a gallon storage bag (I used about 6 oz. of each).

In a small bowl, whisk together 1.5 Tbs. olive oil, 1 Tbs. Balsamic vinegar, and pinches of salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

Pour your marinade into the bag and smoosh everything around until your veggies look evenly coated.  Allow it to sit like this for as long as you can stand it.  I mixed mine up after breakfast and stuck them in the fridge until dinnertime.


Spread them out well on a rimmed baking sheet (or 2 if you're making a bunch) and roast at 450 degrees until done (15-20 minutes).

Quick. Easy. Creative. Yummy.

Squirreling Away Squash for Winter

Our Acorn Squash vine began to die back, so I went ahead and harvested the fruits.  These tough-skinned squash are actually a winter squash, meaning that if kept in relatively cool, dry conditions they should last well into the fall and even winter -- much like a potato.  
While there are certainly lots of ways to prepare winter squash, here's one of our favorite recipes:

Parmesan-roasted Acorn Squash

1   2 lb. acorn squash -- halved, seeded, and sliced 3/4" thick
2 Tbs. olive oil
8 sprigs fresh thyme
1/2 tsp. Kosher salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/4 c. grated Parmesan

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  On a rimmed baking sheet, toss the squash with the oil, thyme, salt, and pepper.  Sprinkle with Parmesan.

Roast the squash until golden brown and tender, 25-30 minutes.


Eat in Season: Peach Blueberry Buckle




What's a buckle, you say?
Well, what do you know . . . I said the same thing.  And I found my answer here.

The short of it is that a buckle belongs to the same family as cobblers, crisps, and crumbles, all of which are basically just different ways of combining essentially the same ingredients.

In a buckle, the fruit is folded into or incorporated into the pastry.

And, this particular recipe makes use of two amazing fruits that are both at their peak right now.  So grab yourself 4 ripe peaches and a pint of blueberries, and let's go!

Peach Blueberry Buckle

1 1/4 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick butter (at room temperature)
1 c. packed brown sugar
1 large egg (at room temperature)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 c. sour cream
4 peaches
1 pint blueberries
1/3 c. sliced or chopped almonds


Heat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a separate bowl and using a stand mixer, beat the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in egg and vanilla.

Reduce speed to low and add flour mix and sour cream.  Fold in peaches and blueberries.  

Transfer to an 8x8" dish and sprinkle with almonds.  Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (an hour or so).

Optional:  dust with confectioner's sugar before serving.


Thank you to Real Simple for the original recipe.  :)

Spicy Dill Refrigerator Pickles!

So, John walked in on me as I was singing to myself -- and not just singing to myself -- singing to myself a made-up song about pickles.  
I was a little embarrassed, but I explained to him why I was so excited to have found this recipe for refrigerator pickles, and he quickly understood why I was so excited.  ;)

Reason #1:  My cucumbers are not yet at their most prolific, so I'm only bringing them in a few at a time.  That's not nearly enough cukes to justify a full pickle canning session.  But, with minimal effort, you can adjust this recipe as needed and only make as much as you need.

Reason #2:  This particular recipe uses items I already have on hand.  The jalapenos are going strong in the backyard, so I had just the right ingredient to provide a kick.  And, I was able to make use of the dried dill I've got stored in the pantry.

Reason #3:  The fact that these pickles are just stored in the refrigerator and don't have to be sealed by canning makes them an accessible pickle that anybody can try out. There's no need to be intimidated by this recipe.  It can be whipped up in a matter of 5 minutes!  

Reason #4:   A lot of traditional pickle recipes requite a long wait time before trying out your finished product.  One year, I used a recipe that required waiting 1 month before sampling the pickles.  By then, I'd made jar after jar of these pickles that, once we finally got to try them, we didn't even care for.  By then, the cucumbers had stopped producing.  The wait time on these, though, is only 3 days.  I've already had  a chance to try my first batch and decide to amp up the spice level in the next one.


These really are delicious!  And, unlike some processed pickles I've made in the past, they're very crisp!  See?  These pickles really are worth singing about!

Check out the original recipe here.








Homemade Dill Bread

Recently, Girl 1, my most avid photographer snapped a pic of me with my rear in the air and face buried in a garden plant.  She laughed when she took it, saying that I should put that one on the blog if I want to show what I spend all my time doing.  While I don't spend ALL day in that position, I do spend quite a bit of time that way.  How are you to know whether your plants are healthy or what new bugs are calling them home, unless you get to know your plants in an up-close kind of way?  
Anyway, one of the plants I bury my face in most often is the dill.  I just LOVE the smell of dill.
I also love the smell of baking bread.  
I must admit that when I combine the two I find myself absolutely powerless.  All will-power goes out the door.  

A drizzle of really good olive oil makes it absolutely divine!

Here's the bread machine recipe for a large loaf:
(the original recipe actually calls for rosemary rather than dill  But, I figure you can pretty much sub in whatever herb makes you want to bury your face in it.)

1 1/2 c. warm water
4 Tbs. olive oil
1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
4 c. bread flour
3 tsp. dried or 4 tsp. fresh dill
2 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast

* For this recipe, I use King Arthur's unbleached white bread flour because it rises consistently and has a light, fluffy texture.

Like me, you may need to add a few miles to your running plan for the week to allow for this indulgence, but it's WAY worth it -- I promise!  

Greens Gratin

Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal was a lovely read.  Her emphasis on not wasting anything that makes its way into the kitchen really resonated with me.  So, I was excited to try this recipe from the book and found it to be a pretty scrumptious way to eat greens.

This recipe starts with 2 cups of already-seasoned cooked greens.  

So, let's back up a minute.  For your "greens," you can use pretty much any sturdy leafy green.  I used beet greens leftover from my morning juicing.  To cook them, I like to saute mine like this for omelets.  To prep for this Greens Gratin recipe, I just cooked extra during my omelet prep time.
Once you've got your cooked greens, you're ready to make your bechamel sauce (once again, the word bechamel should have an apostrophe-thingy over the first e -- someone should really teach me how to do these things in Blogger). 

To make the sauce, melt one tablespoon butter and add one tablespoon of flour, whisking until combined.  Heat 1 cup of milk in the microwave to remove the chill and add it slowly to the butter-flour mixture, whisking constantly.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to the lowest possible heat and cook for 20-25 minutes.  Remove from heat and add 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan.  


Mix your greens and bechamel well and taste for flavor (my greens were cooked in olive oil, onion powder, salt, and garlic, so I didn't need to add anything more, but you may want to add additional seasoning at this point).

Pour mixture into a buttered casserole dish, sprinkle with another 1/2 tablespoon Parmesan and bake at 400 degrees "until it's bubbling, set, and slightly colored at the edges."  (Adler is nearly always this vague about cooking times.  It took mine about 45 minutes to set up.)

**If you do not care for the taste of cooked spinach or other greens, you should probably skip this recipe.  If you do like spinach and/or it's family members, you may just LOVE this stuff!  

The bechamel sauce makes a nice pasta sauce or dipping sauce for steamed veggies like broccoli.  If you like the sauce, maybe consider doubling your bechamel recipe, using part for Green Gratin and part for a later meal.

Got Taters?

This year's potato planting was not exactly planned out.  I don't actually love Russets, so I probably would've chosen to plant a different variety.  But, alas, Russets are what I found neglected and sprouting in the pantry, so hating to waste an opportunity, into the ground they went.
Potatoes are generally ready for harvest when, despite being well-tended, the plants begin to fall over and die back.  

The large taters will be good as bakers.  The smaller ones will probably go into some potato salad or become . . . 

Bacon-wrapped Potatoes with Creamy Dill Sauce

1 1/2 lbs. new potatoes, halved
15 slices of bacon, halved crosswise
3/4 c. mayo
1/4 c. buttermilk
2 Tbs. chopped fresh dill
1 tsp. caraway seeds
1/4 tsp. Kosher salt
1/4 tsp. pepper

Steam the potatoes until tender, 15-18 minutes.  Let cool.

Heat oven to 425 degrees.  Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil.  Wrap each potato with a piece of bacon and place, seam-side down, on the baking sheet.  Bake until the bacon is crisp, 18-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk together the mayo, buttermilk, dill, caraway seeds, salt, and pepper.  Serve with the potatoes.

**I actually think the sauce is better if made up the day ahead, giving the flavors more time to meld.  You could go ahead and steam and wrap the potatoes, too, but don't bake until just before serving so that bacon will be crisp.

Chevre


"Our chevre had little resemblance to the goat cheese one finds in a store.  Mass-produced chevre, wrapped in plastic or vacuum sealed, often comes from previously frozen curds or even powdered milk -- and the milk is always pasteurized.  Our chevre had as much in common with store-bought as a sun-ripened tomato plucked from a vine in August resembles one grown under lights in February.  No supermarket can get around the simple truth, says cheese expert Patrick Rance, 'that goat cheese is a seasonal joy.'"
From Brad Kessler's Goat Song

 Okay, first off, the word chevre should actually have a little French apostrophe-thingy over the first e, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get Blogger to put one there, so please forgive my inaccuracy.

Chevre, pronounced shev-ruh, is actually the French word for she-goat and has become interchangeable with "goat cheese."
Yesterday, I made our season's first cheese.  Here's a pic of it straining through my new butter muslin (thanks again to my amazing husband for ALL my very thoughtful birthday presents!).

And, here's the finished product -- a gorgeous chevre ball, salted and rolled in herbs-- just waiting for some crusty bread or cracker to happen along.

Speaking of gorgeous, how about that opening pic of Razz?  It seems she's going for some kind of Most Photogenic Award or something.  Add these to the list of words I'd never have dreamed I'd utter, but I just love that goat  . . . and the amazing milk, cheese, and more that she provides us.

"I Got Da Peas!"

Little Boy loves to harvest peas.  Nearly every trip to the backyard (and there are lots of them) ends with two grubby fistfuls of peas mounded on the kitchen counter.  
One of my favorite ways to eat them is in pasta.  And, while I try not to promote a lot of packaged products, I've got to admit I am loving this store-bought pasta.
First of all, check out that price.  This Parmesan-filled tortellini is shelf-stable and and be found right next to spaghetti and other pasta.
To prep, just toss the tortellini into a pot of well-salted, boiling water.  Once it's boiled for 10 minutes, go ahead and throw in your fresh veggies.  I call this particular meal Summer Solstice Pasta because sugar snap peas (a spring veggie) will only overlap with squash (a summer veggie) for a couple weeks right at the beginning of summer, if you're lucky.  
Once the pasta has cooked for 10 minutes, add the bite-sized veggies and boil another 5 minutes or until fork-tender.   

Once strained, I added a couple glugs of olive oil, a dash of lemon juice,  freshly-ground pepper, salt, and toasted almonds to create a dish that allows the veggies to taste like veggies and really speaks to the bounty of summer!

The beauty of this pasta, though, is its flexibility.  We made it another time with zucchini and green beans, and it, too, was delicious.  I'm already drooling over the tomato/basil combination I'm hoping to throw together later this summer!

Follow-up Friday: Pasteurization Debate

The debate surrounding pasteurized vs. raw milk is far reaching.  It has even made its way into our home.  Last season, we pasteurized all our milk.  It was our first time dealing with milk, and we wanted to play it safe.  This year, though, we discussed "going raw."

As this is a follow-up on a previous post, you may already know that we decided to go ahead and pasteurize again this year.  Ultimately, John was not entirely on board with giving the kids raw milk.  The risks, he pointed out, are great, and while it's one thing for us as adults to choose raw milk for ourselves, it seems a different thing to choose it for our kids.

I recently finished (and greatly enjoyed) Goat Song by Brad Kessler and wanted to share with you some of his notes on the history of pasteurization:

Milk comes out of a mammal alive with microorganisms.  The microbes exist to nourish and help the survival of the  mammal's offspring.  Some organisms, like the macrophages and T lymphocytes, aid the infant's immune system; others, like lactoferrin and lysozyme, kill harmful bacteria.  The enzymes-- peroxidase, catalase, phosphotase, amylase, lipase, galactase -- help digestion, while the oligosaccharides are indigestible and seem to exist solely to feed beneficial bacteria living inside the infant's stomach.  All these compounds are found in raw milk -- whether the milk of a cow, goat, horse, human, or whale.  Pasteurization kills them all and turns the milk into a dead thing.

For thousands of years people believed fresh raw milk was a panacea. . . . .What all these lactic enthusiasts shared was the belief in the powers of unpasteurized milk from a healthy animal fed what she was meant to eat -- namely grass.

Yet things didn't always work out so well for the cow.  As a way of cleaning up the wastes from beer and whiskey making (and turning an extra dime), American distillery owners in the nineteenth century crammed dairy cows into cellars and bricked enclosures and fed them hot fermented distillery waste.  The resulting milk, called swill or slop milk, was notably blue and often deadly and sold on the cheap to the poor.  Some dairies added chalk or plaster of Paris to their milk.  Once milk became transportable by train and then truck, milk traveled from farther afield, and city dwellers could no longer verify the cleanliness of the place their milk came from.  Unsafe milk caused outbreaks of diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, brucellosis.  It's no wonder that at the turn of the twentieth century the cry for clean milk was considered a moral cause.

Pasteurization was one method of assuring safe milk;  another was strict inspection and certification of dairies.  Each method had its advocates.  But certification -- a process of making sure the animals were healthy and the dairies spotless -- lost out to the quicker fix:  pasteurization.  Pasteurization worked.  People no longer died from drinking milk.  Yet pasteurization often became an excuse for dairies to sell, not clean milk from healthy animals, but filthy milk from sick animals whose milk had been cooked clean of its impurities.  Rather than rigorously certify raw-milk dairies -- as is done in Europe today -- it was less costly for the American dairy industry to simply zap their milk.  Throughout the twentieth century, compulsory pasteurization laws in the United States expanded state by state, until it became nearly impossible for Americans to find anything but pasteurized -- and effectively dead -- milk.

In a tiny operation like our own, there's no need to pasteurize the milk.  We know beforehand if a doe is sick, and the quality of the milk is obvious because it sits right beneath our noses.

 . . . The debate over raw versus pasteurized gets a lot of people up in arms.  Unpasteurized milk is the birthright of most Europeans, and when you tell someone from France that in the States you can't buy a fresh raw-milk cheese, they look at you as if you've just profaned the Madonna.  It confirms everything they suspected about American culture: that there is none -- especially when it comes to the cultures inherent in milk.
--------------------------------

Interesting stuff, huh?  Anyway, I guess for now we'll continue to top the kids' cereal with the dead stuff.    Our soft cheeses, though, will be a different story this year.  The kids generally won't touch my herbed cheeses, so I feel safe using unpasteurized milk for adult consumption.  After all, "the simple truth is that you can't make a top-quality cheese from pasteurized milk. "  The process destroys the "aromatic esters . . . from the plants the animal's been eating, which give raw-milk cheese its unique herbal flavors."

"Every raw-milk cheese is an artifact of the land; it carries the imprint of the earth from which it came.  A cheese -- even a fresh chevre -- is never just a thing to put in your mouth.  It's a living piece of geography.  A sense of place."

Follow-up Friday: Bucky Boys

Seriously, aren't they cute? 

Unfortunately, the three bucklings have been acting increasingly buck-like lately.  I'll spare you the graphic details, but suffice it to say they were doing horrendous things to Star, our little doeling who is still a year and a half from being ready for breeding. 

The twins (center and right, above) are now old enough to be weaned from their momma, and Oreo (left)  has long been big enough for weaning from his bottle, so it's off to the buck pen for the three of them.


You may recall that about 8 weeks ago we had to administer a wormer to our milkers that had mixed reviews for lactating animals.  Though there's disagreement, some vets claim it makes the milk unsafe for human consumption for a period of time.  We decided to play it safe and only used the milk to feed our bottle buckling during that recommended 8 week period.

But, as seen above, the wait is over!  The buckling is now being weaned and no longer needs the milk, and we've made it past our 8-week waiting period.  This jar is our first batch of pasteurized milk this season!

(More on the debate over raw vs. pasteurized milk in a later post.  It's been a debate even here at our household.)

This Man Knows the Way to My Heart!

Earlier this week, John came home from work carrying 3 GALLONS OF FRESH BLACKBERRIES!!!

Clearly, this man knows the way to my heart!  We'd recently run out of all our homemade jThus, it was a jelly famine around here.  So, these berries were far better than if he'd come home bearing flowers or jewelry (he knows I'm not a big fan of either of those, anyway).

And, just when I thought things couldn't get better, he suggested a jelly-making party once we'd put the kids to bed!  What could be better than jelly-making with my best friend over a little wine and lot of conversation?

(Girl 2 grabbed my phone on her way to bed and snapped the above pic because she thought we looked funny in our aprons.  :)
We decided to try out both jam and jelly.  Here, the juice is straining out of a butter muslin cloth in preparation for jelly-making.

Since this was John's first time with making jelly, he wanted me to give directions and walk him through each step -- so I got to essentially teach him as we went.  Seriously, I was in heaven in my hot, sweaty kitchen!


This ought to last us awhile!


Real Men Eat Veggies

There are a few men in my life (I'll not name names) who think a meal is not a meal unless it involves meat.  Luckily my husband is not one of them.  Men like that would hardly get a real meal around here these days. 

There is one slice of bacon on this plate, so maybe it could pass as a meal.  ;)

With the garden in full swing right now, we're up to our ears in veggies.  It almost feels wasteful to dive into the deep freeze for a chicken when there's almost more than we can eat ripe for the pickin' in the backyard.  Clockwise from top left . . .

Toasted homemade sun-dried tomato/mozzarella bread topped with sauteed beet greens
Bacon-wrapped green beans in brown-sugar glaze
Fresh, raw carrots (if you've never had one straight from a garden, you're missing out.  No need to cook these; they're perfect as is)
Olive-oil fried squash
Sugar snap peas with red pepper

Sounds like a pretty yummy meal to me!

Snap Pea Pasta: Some Recipes Write Themselves

By the looks of this mixing bowl, it's sugar snap pea season!

Like lettuce, this is a crop best enjoyed fresh, so I don't put it by for later.  Taking a cue from Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal, I created this little concoction which is so simple it allows all the ingredients to speak for themselves.

I sauteed the pea pods and some cherry tomatoes I had on hand in some olive oil, garlic, onion, salt, and pepper,

then dumped them, along with some Parmesan cheese, atop a mound of cooked rotini.  The olive oil on the veggies was really enough to oil up the pasta, and the dish was tasty and beautiful in its simplicity.

Both Ends of the Beet

Ahhh, the beet.  If I'm being honest, I'm only just now getting very well acquainted with the beet.  Pickled beets had turned me off the beet in general, and I hadn't given it another look until we started juicing.

ABC Juice, or Apple Beet Carrot juice, is one of my favorites.  It doesn't last long around here, though, so here's a pic of a glass just emptied.

But, what to do with other end of the beet?  You know how I feel about waste.  I've only just begun to experiment with the possibilities, but here are a couple ideas. 

I don't much care for the thick ribs, so I double the leaf over and cut it as shown to remove the ribs.  Cocoa Puff, our rabbit, is more than happy to take care of those ribs for us.

I saute' the beet greens in a little olive oil, onion, garlic, salt, and pepper.

Then, I use them as a filling for an egg-white omelet --yummmm!

Or, as a topping for a rustic Italian pizza with goat cheese and olives -- yummmmmm!

Or, as a dish unto themselves.

Or, . . . . got other ideas for me?

The sauteed greens will keep in the fridge so that they're ready at a moment's notice to be called upon to add to a meal. 

Solving a Garden Timing Issue

I grow cilantro in the garden for use in salsa.
But, the cilantro is enormous and about to go to seed.

Meanwhile, the tomatoes have yet to set any fruit.

And, I grow dill for use in pickles (and if I'm being honest, because fresh dill is one of my favorite smells ever and I've been known to just go dunk my head into the plants and take a few deep breaths before moving on with my garden work).

But, the cucumber plants (in the far left row), are still squatty little guys.

What to do? 

Dry the herbs to save for later use, once the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers are ready.
Last year, I hung herbs to dry, which is a completely acceptable way to go about it.  I read, though, that using a dehydrator is the prefered method because the more speedy drying time preserves more of the flavor.  So, out comes my handy-dandy dehydrator (for being what I think is the the cheapest kitchen appliance we own, this thing is proving to be quite useful!).

Here, I have the cilantro leaves, ready to be dehydrated.  Eventually, the leaves need to be separated from the stems, and I find it easier to do this work on the front end before everything is so brittle and more difficult to handle.
Unlike the cilantro, I allowed the dill to overlap a bit.

Dehydration only took a few hours (and made the entire house smell great!).  Once finished, I dumped the brittle leaves into a big bowl . . .

 . . . and crushed them up into tiny flakes by grinding them between my fingers -- this was definitely the most fun part. :)

For storage, I poured them into jelly jars with air-tight lids and placed them in the pantry to wait patiently for the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers to grow.

Problem solved!

Life Cycle of the Backyard Strawberry

Our strawberries are super-productive right now.  Here are the ones I carried inside yesterday.  I took in just as many today.  They just don't stop!
So that you can get an idea of how big a strawberry patch will give you this many berries, here's a photo of our patch.  If you're familiar with our backyard, it runs along the West side of the shed that sits in the middle of our backyard.  It's probably about 12 feet long.  I ordered the plants about 4 years ago as a little pack of slips.  This patch has developed from what was originally 15-20 small, spindly sprouts.

As I harvest, I throw the "good" berries into my basket and the "bad" berries out onto the grass.  When I'm finished, I go back and gather up the bad berries in another container.  The berries on the left are the ones that go inside.  The ones on the right are the ones that have bruises or that pests have beaten us to.  Oh, the joys of organic gardening.  It's hard to complain, though, when you're eating 2 quarts of fresh strawberries a day.



Not to worry, though, those beaten up berries don't go to waste.  The chickens, it seems, aren't nearly as picky about their berries as we are.  And berries are some of their very favorite foods.  The chicken poo is "harvested" once a week and added to the compost pile, where it will turn into black gold -- an amazing fertilizer.  Eventually, it will be added back to the soil around the strawberry plants, fueling future berries.

Even if you don't have chickens, you can still grow strawberries from strawberries, like we do.  Just skip the chicken step and add the battered berries (and all your other fruit and veggie scraps) directly  to the compost pile. 

And, some of those lucky berries that make it inside get to go into my very most favorite food in all the world --  a backyard berry pie.  Our berries make a great strawberry pie because they're a bit more tart than, say, Bald Knob berries.  The sweet/tartness of the berries combined with the sugary pie filling is just DIVINE. 
This genuine smile came at the end of a very long day.  John and I were exhausted and had just gotten all the kids down to bed after traveling home from an away softball game.  I'd completely forgotten about the pie I'd made that afternoon . . . until I opened up the refrigerator.  John and I then pigged out on pie as our long, busy day faded into the background.  It was a nice moment.

The School of Essential Ingredients



I just finished The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister.  She writes the magic of the kitchen so very well that you can nearly smell the aromas lifting off the page. 

The central character, restaurant owner and chef Lillian, speaks to her assembled students on the opening night of their cooking class, "Well, then, I think we'll start with the beginning," and then produces a pot of live crabs. 

One of the students asks in dismay, "Are we going to kill them?"

Lillian's response is spot on: 

"Yes, we are, Chloe.  It is the first, most essential lesson. . . . If you think about it . . . every time we prepare food we interrupt a life cycle.  We pull up a carrot or kill a crab -- or maybe just stop the mold that's growing on a wedge of cheese.  We make meals with those ingredients and in doing so we give life to something else.  It's a basic equation, and if we pretend it doesn't exist, we're likely to miss the other important lesson which is to give respect to both sides of the equation.  So we start here."

Processed foods and cellophane wrappers have done a wonderful job of distancing us from the life that once inhabited our food.  The backyard homestead and garden serves to constantly remind me of the life of our food.  Last night, I watched as John absentmindedly dumped down the sink the last few bites of strawberries as he cleaned up dinner.  I may have overreacted a bit as I reminded him that those berries he'd just dumped were handpicked from our garden that morning. (He apologized profusely.  :)   As much as I hate to see anything from our backyard go to waste, this is most true of the chicken who spent their days pecking away in our backyard only to die upside down on the fencepost.  We both kill and eat them with a certain reverence. 

We ought not waste our food, and it's not just because we're thinking of all the "starving children in Africa."  It's also because we have an appreciation for the once-living thing that died to provide us life and nourishment and enjoyment.  So, once we've said "Amen," let us raise the fork mindfully; and, at the meal's end, let us reverently despair at waste.