Surprise...

Surprise...

I came home from work in a bad mood tonight. My front yard was beginning to look like Occupant had moved away. I really needed to get the lawn mowed and the sidewalk edged. Plus I was hungry and didn't feel like I had time to fix a decent meal and get all the yard work done.

I decided to get the work done first,and as I worked I found myself grumbling way more than I wanted. By the time I got the front cleaned up so it looked a little like someone lives here, and the back yard cut back to size it was just about 8pm. And I hadn't even started supper.

So after I washed up I put a pot of water on the stove and a Mark O'Connor CD in the machine, and picked up a scissors and went out to my garden. I snipped off a couple branches of sage, and that's when I noticed the bean.

There was a single burgundy bean hanging low over the edge of my garden. I picked it because it was just about as big as you want to let them get, and as I did I noticed another one tucked in beside it. And then another. And another. And another. It was like an Easter Egg hunt. By the end I had a nice big handful of beans. When I got back to the kitchen I slipped some thin spaghetti into the now boiling water. Then I snipped the beans and put them in a pot to steam, stir fried a clove of minced garlic with the sage in olive oil until the sage got nice and crisp, and sliced up a mid-sized heirloom tomato out of my garden.

The sage and garlic went on top of the spaghetti, topped by heaps of fresh-grated parmesan cheese. The other stuff filled in the corners of the plate - except for the fresh carrot that I dug up after cleaning out the bean bushes; it turned out to be a nice appetizer. By the end of the third tune I was sitting down to a feast that you cannot buy in any restaurant. What with topping it all with the piece of mom's leftover apple (made with the early tart apples) my mood had turned 180 degrees: positively content.