Sometimes meals draw inspiration from the simplest ingredients...

I know you’ve been there – periods in life where weeks, even months seem to fly by with warp speed as you struggle to keep pace.  The goal for these days is simply to keep our heads above water and not go down with a potentially sinking household ship.  It’s a packed schedule you’re probably familiar with involving mountains of laundry, dirty bathrooms, work deadlines, orthodontic appointments, carpools, more laundry, homework and finally, at day’s end punctuated by weary bodies thrown into bed.  Wake up the next morning – it’s time to repeat once more.

Hopefully somewhere in here we’ve had time, as a family, to connect with conversation (often in the car – great for topics where a lack of eye contact is helpful) and food.  No matter how busy or stressed, we always sit down to eat dinner together.  Sports practice, working late, homework, after-school activities, and plain old exhaustion:  obstacles to the old-fashioned family meal abound.  Here in this fast-paced, highly programmed world, life is filled to the brim and over-flowing.  Some days we’re so close to the edge, something’s just got to give.  No wonder family dinner is becoming a relic of the past.  In our household we’ve managed to safeguard rituals involving food – laundry, dishes, tidying up are, unfortunately, another story. Looks like an earthquake has hit us some days, miraculously missing every other house on the block.  The good news is that even in the midst of domestic disarray we manage to pull together a pretty tasty meal.

Family dinner is an opportunity to not only nourish our bodies with great tasting, healthy food, but to reconnect with loved ones in a way that has become increasingly difficult in this crazy, overloaded 24/7 world.  I’m thankful for an hour to put the world around us on pause temporarily, while we eat, laugh, talk and enjoy each other at our leisure.  We savor these moments, the four of us together, knowing once dinner is over we’re back to fast-forward once again.

So, accept my apologies – life has overflowed these past couple of months, and I’m behind with blog updates.  Be prepared to see a flood of entries following soon, as I catch you up on the stream of Four Cooking Together with Freshness Farms newsletters since mid-February.  It’s been a fun, flavor-filled and fantastic adventure in the kitchen and garden.  As always, four cooking (and eating) together…

First up, peaceful coexistence in a spring garden overrun with weeds – could there be a tasty meal involved?  Of course!