Eat Your Veggies!

    Tonight we had a great dinner that my lovely wife made me for Fathers day.  It was great and I am stuffed.  We had a little realization with the kids when our oldest started complaining that she didn't like the cucumbers.  They had this really tasty sour cream sauce with fresh herbs in it.  Rather than making her eat it it was easy to just say "okay no problem".  We of course want our kids to eat their vegetables. Tonight however, we had many vegetables to choose from, instead of just the usual one or two.  Lately we have been eating a lot from our garden, all through the day.  It has been nice, we have been finding lately that rather than planning a meal around a meat dish, the meat dish is an afterthought or just a side dish.

We have sat at the table for many meals lately and would have been just fine if there was no meat at the table.  We love meat but we are finding as we are trying to eat more grains, legumes and seasonal veggies and fruits that there is less room on our plate for meat.  Looking back over the last few years we are are consuming far less meat, and we are appreciating the meat we do eat more.  For tonight's meal Shaun-ta' cooked 4 small pork ribs, which is half what we normally would have and we were still pressed to eat it all, between the 5 of us.

We look forward to the day when we can raise much or even all of our own meat.  We also are finding that we would love to have the land area to be able to plant larger numbers and varieties of the foods we love.  We are eating everything we are producing, we are also preserving what we are able to, by canning,  but 5 mouths and multiple meals each day can consume a lot of fresh tomatoes.

Tonight's Menu:

• "Aunt Barbara's Sour Cream Cucumbers" Recipe below
• Sliced Tomatoes
• Baked Beans
• Fresh Sliced Cantaloupe
• Orange Jello Salad
• Grilled Green Tint Scallop Squash
• Chiavetta's Barbecue Slow Cooker Pork Ribs 

Aunt Barbara's Cucumbers in Sour Cream
1      Cup  sour cream
1      tsp.  finely minced onions
1/2   tsp.  salt
2 & 1/2 Tbs.  vinegar
1      tsp.  finely minced chives or parsley
1/2   tsp.  black pepper
2      peeled sliced cucumbers

Combine vinegar, sour cream; add onions, chive, salt and pepper.  Blend. Place cucumbers in ice water, chill and dry on paper towel.  Pour dressing over cucumbers and marinate.

This is a pretty flexible recipe, don't limit your self to cucumbers.  Any fresh herb would be great here, Mmmmm dill dip.  Shaun-ta' used both chives and parsley tonight.