What's For Dinner?

As I was working in our school pumpkin patch today with a friend I got a text from my husband wondering what I wanted for dinner. He was planning on BBQing pork chops that we had gotten from a local farm. Years ago I gave up eating meat. As my children got older they really wanted meat on the dinner menu. So we began to eat it again. Then I watched a movie. I don't remember the title exactly, maybe Food Inc or something like that. It ended, or at least I stopped watching, at the most inhumane death scene of a cow. That was the first time I had heard of factory farming and saw the slaughter houses that follow. I know this may sound silly but I cried like a baby as I watched that. I couldn't believe we, in this country, could, would, treat another living thing like that. So I began researching factory farming and that was when I stopped eating meat again. It took a while to get my family to stop purchasing meat that lived a life of absolute torture but it happened when local meat became available. The local foods movement has made local, grass fed, humanely raised and butchered meat available again. So our family made the switch. At first my husband said how expensive it was. Then we began to raise hens for eggs. We became acutely aware that the local meat wasn't in fact expensive. The problem was the grocery store meat was cheap. And the only way to get such cheap meat was to raise the animals it comes from in cramped quarters eating extremely unhealthy food. The local meat is in fact the true price of meat. Believe it or not this story does lead to, "What's for dinner?"

So I thought about what I wanted for dinner. I didn't have a clue. When I got home I went out into the garden to see if there was something for dinner. I knew there were still lots of greens. But I wanted more than sautéed greens over rice. A basket of greens and the contents of the above basket is what I came in with. Dinner. Isn't it great to walk out back and go grocery shopping!

May your garden baskets be full! Bon Appetit!
Mary