Dinner tonight was from the farm….

…but it wasn’t anything spectacular.

Roasted potatoes and sautéed pattypan squash.

I was considering preparing eggplant as well, but I realized that the potatoes and squash provided plenty of food [there was even enough for leftovers].

I read an autobiography earlier this year called Kisses from Katie by a young woman who left her privileged American life to live in Uganda and love on the people in her village. One story she tells is how she was preparing beans for dinner for her family and she didn’t realize how long it takes to cook dried beans – but the story was a lesson for me that we are far too opinionated around here about what constitutes a meal.

They were eating beans for dinner. That’s it. Just beans. And here I am feeling like my meals have to contain at least five different food groups AND be beautifully presented.

Dinner doesn’t have to have courses, or side dishes, or any specific food group. It doesn’t have to be colorful, or appealing to look at, or come from a recipe. Dinner could just be food – preferable real, healthy food. And in our house tonight, dinner was just two vegetables that I cooked and we all ate until we were satisfied.

[The kids asked for seconds.]

What I love most about our new simple lifestyle is that our food is simple. The meals are simple. The preparation is simple. The ingredients are simple. And they are healthy.

There are many homes in America where a box of mac and cheese is a standard meal for the kids [and I’m not judging because I’ve definitely been there and done that]. But I almost felt guilty about what I fed my kids tonight, and it was literally just vegetables. It may not have been colorful or fancy or a lot of variety, but it was healthy and it was filling and it was tasty.

And it was from our CSA, which I love more and more.

Don’t get me wrong – there are nights when we have company and I pretend that I love to cook and prepare three-course meals and a home baked dessert. But most nights are simple.

Maybe not usually quite this simple…but pretty simple.

Karis