What else do we do to make summers special at the lake? We eat!

D loves to cook the entire supper on the barbeque, so as to not heat up the cottage. This was the last evening of our holiday: grilled pork tenderloin, squashed potatoes, eggplant and corn.

We often sit out at the table on our front deck. Dining el fresco is especially lovely when surrounded by the tall pines and birch trees.

When old friends joined me from Toronto and Vancouver the week that my Mom passed away, they did most of the cooking. I sat back and basked in their love and attention.

We take turns cooking when we are there on a given weekend. On this day Boo and the Frenchman were at it with freshly sliced pineapple and cinnamon and walnut French toast. Yes it was as delicious at it looked!

This simple meal was a particularly poignant one. The day that Mom died, Sister #3 and I stayed behind to pack up Mom’s things. Mom’s favourite meal was a tomato sandwich and she loved summer tomatoes that were ripe and bursting with flavour. She must have eaten half a tomato and had the second one wrapped and waiting for her in her little fridge. It would be impossible for me to describe the taste of that second tomato half.

Sometimes word gets around that we are all assembling at one of the six beach houses that my family owns. Sometimes it is for happy hour and other times it is at dinner time. You are instructed to bring along whatever you were cooking for supper and if you have enough to share “great”, if not, someone else is bound to have more than they need. This last weekend when one of my nephews hosted a games night, appetizers were brought along. They too were as tasty as they looked.

This weekend, was a little chillier and the wasps have driven us inside. We got out table extensions and folding chairs and eight of us assembled for an impromptu dinner of pickerel, shrimp, scallops, corn, potato wedges and green beans. Life is good, is very good indeed.

Kath’s quote: “Better is a dish of vegetables served with love than a fattened calf with animosity”. -Proverbs 15:17

Love never fails.

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