Meal Time

     As I continue to watch a lot of over the air TV I watch a lot of cooking shows on PBS. A lot of us think that a meal is special if it is at an expensive restaurant. But that doesn't have to be the case. Just about any meal can be made kind of special. 
    I guess it can be broken down to two mentalities. Some people eat to live and others live to eat. But there is middle ground there too. Animals pretty much just eat, fornicate, produce feces, urinate, sleep and die. Domestic animals are used to either perform a task or are cared for till they reach a maturity with which they can be used for a raw material or food source. Of course task animals are now as widely used now and hove been replaced by machines. Then of course there are pets. Pets and domestic animals are fed on a somewhat regular basis. Which is what domesticated them in the first place. Think about it. Wild animals on the other hand forage and attempt to eat constantly. Their whole life cycle is about eating and breeding. While not to become prey themselves making them food for another. 
    As humans over the thousands of years we learned that it is better to raise food then chase it. Plants and animals that have proven over the eons to to edible and life sustaining. Some of the more primitive societies till of late have still survived with the hunter and gather mentality. But to do that you need a vast amount of things to eat and a relatively small population. Which usually has a short life span. So people learned to cultivate the land with crops that they could use to produce food for the entire year. They learned to preserve foods. 
    Now in this day and age it is not likely that every little individual or family can have their own little self sustaining farm. Which would provide them all the food they need and a bit of excess to sell for products that they need and cannot produce themselves. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately we do not have to do this. We can work our little jobs and go to the grocery. Which for the most part our only venue for food. Except eating out all the time at restaurants.
    Unfortunately we have set a high bar for our selves that every meal has to be some sort of Epicurean delight we seen on the Food Channel. Sometimes the most simple food we have eating growing up and have not had is really good. Gee, I did not think of potato pancakes. How about homemade chicken soup? See my older post on this by checking the search engine for this site. I have a good vegetable soup recipe and several others. These can be great left overs for work lunches. 
     I never understood it before. But the high point of my father's day is meal time. With him growing up in a coal mine camp in and after the Great Depression a meal was a big deal. There was no fast food. A company store to shop from with the company script (Many employers only gave employees company script to buy things with. You however had to use it at the company store. Your rent and taxes were deducted from your pay and a little cash to play with, that's it. How's that for the home of the free and brave!). So this is middle class? They supplemented there food with a great garden and some livestock. And born at home. 
    Lesson is this. Meal time is the best time of your day. Even if you have to pack your lunch. Make it a good one. It is the high point of your day.