Simple Things In Life

Last night, my beautiful, wonderful, absolutely amazing (in bed) wife dug deep into the old home files and made us a homemade chicken pot pie.

Oh My God!

I'm not sure if there is anything better than a hot, dripping, right out of the oven pyrex dish full of toasted dough and meat and veggies and, um, oh wow, I'm getting a woody all over again............

And it got me to thinking (which is dangerous, I know!) about the simple things in life.

I cook well. As many of you know, I pride myself on being able to whip up exotic cuisine with a pocket knife and a pine tree. I have spent the majority of my adult life fine-tuning this talent and I pride myself in my wide knowledge of most things that have to do with food preparation.

But when I close my eyes and sit back, I am taken to that chicken pot pie. Or my mothers fried chicken with rice and gravy and butterbeans. Cornbread. Peach cobbler.

Country food. Ya'll all know what I mean. The "not fancy" stuff that we grew up eating at our mamaw's house.

I used to try to do that each Sunday for lunch but I haven't been very good at that these days because our Sundays are not the way I would like them to be due to other obligations that have to do with nursing homes and kids going in another direction.

But since the wonderful chicken pot pie last night I am reobligating myself to cook some soul food more often and to pass along the gift of preparing those meals to all my children so they will have what then need later in life to bring back those memories that only food can lead us back to.

So maybe tonight, or later this week, you can drag out the old recipe box and look for that dog-eared index card, written in old style penmanship that was done by your granny or a great aunt, and cook something old. And when you sit down to eat it, let those memories flow over you like water and rejoice that the greatest gift God ever gave us was memory.

Find a good one and hang on to it!

Peace.