Happy Lammas! What Can I Share From My Table to Enrich My Community?

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Welcome to this year’s Lammas Blog Hop! If you would like to see the post before this one, you will want to turn to Pepi Valderrama, for the post after this one, you’ll want to jump to Alison Coals.

This year’s topic made me laugh. What can I share from my table? Well, cooking with Bonnie generally means scrounging. It means throwing together ingredients that may never have been thrown together before, just because they were in the cupboard. I always say that I would be a good bachelor cook. People groan when they hear that dinner was made by…moi. In fact, my own mother once commented, “Bonnie, the reason you’re not a good cook is that you don’t care how anything tastes.” Well, duh. You mean most people do?

However, there is wisdom in my method (no, seriously!) and it is this: almost anything CAN go with almost anything. All you need is an open mind and a willingness to experiment. Salsa CAN be a dressing for pasta (hey, that’s probably how arrabiata was invented, admit it!). Dried fruit can go in a green salad (and if you’ve tried it you know that it makes a very delicious autumn blend).

This is true in life as well. Democrats and Republicans CAN intermarry, and I know several who have. A transplanted Alaskan like me can, however reluctantly, live in the flatlands of America’s Midwest. People from different parts of town (yep, this is usually harder than crossing the country) can go and live and work and volunteer in…other parts of that SAME town. 

We are called to go where we have to go and work with the materials that we have to work with. That’s what I can share from my table.

Only that’s not all. When we go where we are called to go, and when we work with the materials we have to work with, that’s when the magic happens. That’s when we find abundance.  That’s where we find the rich, enlightening perspectives that we may not manage to get from our own neighbors (not that our neighbors aren’t also enlightened — it’s just that they thought we already knew all the stuff they have to tell us). Abundance does not lie in sameness. Abundance is in diversity and difference. Did we really think we were scrounging? Nope, we were learning lessons in gratitude. We were letting the scales fall off our eyes so we could see all the abundance that we are already surrounded with no matter where we may be or what challenges we may face.

As the Zen story goes, even the guy being chased by tigers, who fell off a cliff and grabbed frantically at a last branch that was slowly giving way, as he contemplated more tigers circling beneath him, could still take a moment to scrounge and appreciate a strawberry from a vine. Bon appetit!

25 Comments

  1. You’re speaking to my heart here Bonnie! One of my favourite all-time quotes is, “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can,” by Arthur Ashe 🙂

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  2. All similar, each unique as a rockin’ kitchen foraging metaphor of the magic of using hat we have… even if it means getting away from out enlightened neighbors to make the long trek across town. Do you know where I can contact a Town Sherpa? The mountain ones won;t seem to come down and help me get across town.

    Thanks much for your insightful blog from your kitchen and beyond! ~ Jordan

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    1. lol, a town sherpa…I think they’re called parents–that might not be what you meant but is what springs to mind, as I recall carrying a toddler, several bags of groceries, a diaper bag and keys across various towns… 🙂

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    1. Well, I was trying to catch a plane and started writing half an hour before the deadline. That does make for pithiness…

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  7. Wow Bonnie! This post is so up my alley about Positivity. I just posted another blog post on TABI about the topic on positivity. I think its so inspiring to think it that way…with an open mind..that in spite of a bunch of tigers circling beneath one can still appreciate a strawberry on a vine. Thanks for sharing this.

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    1. You are welcome! I will have to go and look for your TABI post. I am way behind on reading even the blog hop posts because I was traveling and even now that I’m here am being badly distracted by my parents (what, is this their revenge for all the interruptions when I was a kid?). In the spirit of positivity, though, I am glad I have them to be distracted by…

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  8. I like your approach to cooking and that anything can go with anything… however I did come across the exception to that rule, when my kids made me breakfast in bed one Mothers day… They served up a most bizarre platter of apples, custard cream biscuits and salt and vinegar crisps and pretty much anything else they could reach and grab… I said – Take it downstairs and we’ll eat together… you start while I go get dressed… 😀

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  10. This post beautifully highlights the spirit of the hop. Diversity! Thank you so much for this. It spoke to my heart. And a salad without craisins just isn’t a salad in my world. 😀

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    1. Thanks, Arwen! That’s so sweet of you. I shall put craisins in my salad tonight in your honor… 🙂

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  12. My mum was always one for making meals with leftovers, whatever they were. So, I appreciate the ad hoc sharing, the memories, and the joyful reminder to enjoy whatever 🙂

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