Food that Feels Right

I don't consider myself the greatest cook in the world. As a matter of fact, my husband is a much better cook than I am. I'm the baker in the family. But I've recently cooked a meal that just feels good in the comforting sense, but also it feels right in the core of my being. But to fully understand what I mean, a little background is required.

I've lived my entire life in the suburbs, but I've been blessed with spending my entire life eating what most people would call "organic, free-range, grass fed" beef. We just called it beef. My grandparents owned a farm where they kept a small herd. My mom eventually took over managing everything long distance, hiring the help that she needed to maintain a small herd in order to keep her Ag exemption and pay for the taxes on the land. As a little girl and young woman, I was so sick of eating beef all the time that I would go to nice restaurants and order the fish - never the steak. It wasn't until much later in life that I realized how blessed I was. And how blessed I still am. But isn't that how it usually goes? We don't always realize until later in life how blessed we were in our youth.

Last night I thawed out two steaks raised on mom's land. As they rested on the table, I peeled and cut up fresh red beets from my backyard. On the salad, I cut up fresh tomatoes also from my garden. I fixed a cobbler for dessert made from frozen peaches I had bought in season on a vacation to Fredericksburg, TX.

This is food that feels right. I had bought the spinach and cucumbers from the grocery store, so I didn't remember or even precisely know where they came from, but I looked on my meal with pride and was happy that I knew from where most of the ingredients came. The food was reasonably local and delicious. Grass fed beef has so much more flavor than the steaks I see in the grocery store displayed under plastic and dyed an artificial red. The beets, tomatoes and peaches were all picked at the peak of their perfection. They were not picked too early to survive shipping and then gassed in order to ripen as the produce in the grocery store so often is. My taste buds confirmed that this meal is the way food should be. And there are so many other reasons why this meal was on the right track.

I dream of a day (hopefully soon!) when I can list the source of every ingredient in the entire meal. I work a little everyday to making this a reality. In my heart, I know this is the way food should be.