Its Saturday, a workday like any other, and yet the kids and I still have to eat even when we are busy. We also have to feed our souls. Here is the ultimate solution to the busy summer lunch - a tomato sandwich.

Now it is not even worth beginning without fresh tomatoes straight from the garden, so warm and full of sunlight that they are about to burst. Choose one that is almost too ripe, so soft that it start to split just from the pressure of picking it. Be careful it doesn't fall off the vine as you reach for it. At this point of the season, the variety of the tomato hardly matters - Brandywine, Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter, a Lemonboy or Cherokee Purple, even those unidentified generic 'tomato' plants you picked up down at the local WallyWorld and planted amongst the weeds off the back deck. What matters here is the ripeness and your awareness and appreciation of the imminent end of summer.

Pick your bread. It should be soft and absorbent to pick up all the juices that are welling out of that perfect tomato. A good choice is my Daily Bread, or even some of that store bought white stuff. This might be the only real use for that stuff. Don't try to get all fancy and use a crusty artisan bread here, don't even toast it. It has just got to be soft.

Butter just one slice, preferably with Homemade Butter, but again, since the tomato is the star, you might cheat a little and still get a good result, but only if you have to. This is to be the top of your sandwich. You may add a bit of mayo here too if you like, and sometimes I do, especially if I have recent made it and have a little left, but its not absolutely necessary.

Now lay your bottom slice of bread on a plate close to your cutting board and prepare to slice that beautiful fruit. Use the sharpest knife you have, with smooth serrations if necessary, and try to preserve that precious juice. Try not to smash your tomato as most of the flavor is in the juice not the flesh as some folks may seem to think. Let them think it and keep the juice for yourself, summer is too short to argue. If you lose precious juices onto your cutting board carefully pour them onto you bread before arranging you slices of tomato. Afix the top slice and enjoy. Savor. Mop up any excess juice with more bread, and wash the works down with cold milk, Fresh Farm Milk.

Repeat.




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Dawn is that magical time daylight meets, overlaps the truths of the night.. Before they are bleached out in the harsh light of day. When your night time thoughts, beliefs and ponderings are still alive and colorful. When disbelief can be suspended and truth is still personal and not imposed upon you. When prejudice and habit have yet to awaken.

I generally get up before the sun, and it is in that time that I reflect and collect myself and prepare for the day. It is in that time that I often feel the clearest in my direction and in my life, before the world's obligations begin to take precedence.

Two months ago, I would never have believed we would be leaving our mountain and starting a new journey. In all my travels, both literally and figuratively, I have always sought a home base. For a while, this mountain has been my center of operations, but I now believe it has simply been main camp, and it is time to strike out again.

To that end, I am repacking my Backpack Bistro, double checking my bugout pack, and heading out. I will be posting on our progress, and soon we will be back to our focus on wholesome food that can be prepared anywhere and will appeal to nearly everyone - well at least my family, and, I hope, yours.

Thank you for the emails, and please don't hesitate to hit the comments. Watch for the real opening of our store soon, along with information and sources to help you build your Backpack Bistro as well fortify your home base. Oh, and my book, "The Indigenous Gourmet Walks Through the Seasons" is close, but still holding out on me. When I get it just right I will post some excerpts and maybe some sort of a bonus for those of you who subscribed to me early and have stuck it out while I have been finding my way in this new (to me) electronic world.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have a farm to find and a fresh, natural food supply to re establish.



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Written in 1903 by Antonio Machado. Translated and recited Robert Bly.

As often happens in life, we have suffered a series of setbacks here, and have been unable to post. Rampant development is rapidly destroying much of the rural countryside in western PA, and it seems we are the latest folks to be "developed out". Without going to great detail, in the last short while we have seen clear cut logging next door, a newly senile landlord with no respect for personal privacy and who hates children and folks who have no practical knowledge of, say gravity, building a series of water control ditches which will catch little or no water and send said imaginary water into places where water is undesirable. (In fact the only place where there really might be water, it is going to be directed into my foundation.) My garden, my pasture, my house and my home are for all intents and purposes destroyed. Since I have been on a long term lease, (operative term lease) we are probably going to be removing to another site for our homesteading lifestyle. Until then I will blog when I can, and in the meantime, at least we will get back to the backpack style of cooking. Remember, my original premise was that anyone can cook a good meal for themselves and their family anywhere they happen to find themselves. New posts with this in mind soon, I promise.

In the meantime, I have taken a town job with a great local chef who still cooks real food rather than reheating pre-made meals from a factory. Check him out here www.chefdato.com/ or stop by if you are in the area. You won't regret it, I promise.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to pack.


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