Can we take just a moment and pay homage to the lowly vegetable dinner?

Before we celebrate the Worship of the Meat (aka the Fourth of July) at the end of this week, let’s reflect on that most wonderful meal that so few appreciate.

Maybe it was yesterday’s garden post that got me going. Maybe it was a comment about purple hull peas that made me long for a steaming serving of their tender goodness, along with a hot wedge of cornbread.

But some of you out there know what I’m talking about. Social media is littered this time of year with snapshots of plates of homegrown or farmers’ market vegetables: 

• Boiled, new red-skinned potatoes–new because you would have just dug them out of the garden that morning, and the remnants of dirt would still be in the sink. That first bite is a holy experience, like eating the earth itself, a renewing circle and a reminder that dust you once were, and to dust you shall return.
• There’s squash, sometimes sliced thick, battered, and fried, or used in a casserole with a flaky, buttery topping. I’ve eaten it cooked down like a porridge, seasoned with bell pepper, onions, and black pepper. You won’t see it like that in the pages of a magazine, and it won’t win any recipe contests, but the nutty flavor of the squash comes through the best.

• Sliced tomatoes, and oh the variety and colors and tastes! Better Boy, Big Boy, Cherokee Purple, Early Girl, Beefsteak, Brandywine, and so many others with names that ring like the sound of wind chimes on your grandmother’s front porch. A summertime dinner plate is incomplete without a slice or two of fresh tomatoes, seasoned generously, if you like, with salt and pepper. 

But where’s the beef? 

Maybe you should ask, instead, where’s the protein? Why, in the variety of possible beans or peas:

• There are butterbeans, called a “lima bean” by the rest of the world, but in the South, the term “butterbean” covers them all, from little green Fordhooks to the half-dollar sized Christmas variety. Butterbeans are much beloved by so many of my family and friends, and I figure they prevented starvation during hard times, but I gagged at the sight of them on my plate when I was a child.
• Give me “shell beans” instead—the shelled bean from rattlesnake pole beans, which the rest of the world calls green beans, after they’ve been left on the vine long enough for the tiny beans to mature–served up in a bowl with plenty of juice, so I can soak my cornbread in it and leave not a crumb behind. 

• Or give me those jewels of the summer garden, mentioned earlier: the purple hull pea. I once used pure bleach to remove the purple stain from my thumbnails before some kind of event where I needed to make myself polished and presentable. I should have left my fingers purple, and let people wonder.

It would have made for a good story.

I would have told them about my grandparents and their gardens, about the hours of shelling while talking about important things, like we’ll get another picking in a few days. We’ll have to carry supper to the field this evening because the men are doing their best to beat the rain, working long and hard hours to finish baling and hauling hay.

We would have been watching Days, as in Days of Our Lives, and why would they have such a stupid plot line? Marlena being possessed by the devil when we know all along it’s probably just Stefano?

Still, we kept watching. 

I’d talk about the satisfaction of running my fingers through a bowl of freshly shelled peas, their texture and damp coolness providing a sensory experience before we knew what to call it.

I’d tell of the kitchen’s earthy aroma when those peas started boiling away.

And then for supper, I’d tell them how it all came together in the best meal I’ve ever eaten.

Then again, isn’t every vegetable dinner the best one?

I was tempted this weekend with fried chicken and meatloaf. A local cafeteria-style restaurant serves them up in plentiful portions. They’re at the first of the line, along with thick slices of cake and creamy pies.

But I knew what was at the end of the serving line, and I was in the mood for it: sweet potatoes, slaw, turnip greens, and Mexican cornbread.

Oh, and one more thing.

Can’t forget the peas.