Summertime Contentment

Question---Where does one find contentment in the "dog days" of summer in The South? Those July days of seemingly inexhaustible heat and high humidity.

Answer----at the kitchen table, of course.

Nothing says summer like homegrown or local produce. Just going to the Farmer's Market can calm one's spirit. Kentucky pole beans. Shelly beans. Mounds of squash. Cartons of okra. Baskets of tomatoes---Bradley, Cherokee purple, Ripley. Ziplocs of shelled purple hulls, butter beans (aka baby limas) and cream peas---the lady peas aren't "in" yet.
Then, hurrying home to "prep" and cook for friends, neighbors and loved ones adds to the excitement.

Bread and butter corn. White Corn. Silver Queen. 
Milking that corn from the cob, a labor of love-----a season all its own---- mixed for me with sentimentality and salivation. A touch of sentimentality as I lightly cut the tips and milk the corn just as Mama Davenport taught me 60+years ago. (Note--best done outside & with an apron or old shirt because "milking corn" is a splattering endeavor.)

Nothing better than fried corn for this gal, who can salivate/drool just smelling it cook. 

Whether it's peach juice dripping down your chin----the smell of cornbread baking in a black-iron skillet in the oven*---or peas, with strange names like pinkeyes, shirt and britches, zippers, and whippoorwills, simmering on the back burner, there's solace found when "sharing" summer's bounty. All served, of course, with sliced "homegrown" tomatoes and a BIG glass of "sweet tea" with lots of ice.
King David might not have had sweet tea, but he and his people were recipients of the bounty of others, as their hunger and thirst was refreshed by others.

They also brought wheat and barley, flour and roasted grain, beans and lentils,...

The people are hungry and weary and thirsty in the wilderness. 

(1 Samuel 17: 28-29)

Gratitude for the local harvest. Sounds, smells, tastes of freshness. Supping with others.

Summertime Contentment at its best.

*2nd serving---"poor man's cornbread"---another Mama Davenport "recipe" for frying a mixture of cornmeal (Sunflower SR from Hoptown is the best) and HOT water. Mixture is about the consistency of pancake batter and Mama always fried them in bacon grease, which she kept in a "grease" labeled aluminum container of the back of her stove top.