Enjoying the fruits of my labor

I try to make it happen more often than not: A meal grown from my own garden or gotten by means other than go-to-the-store-and-buy-it. This time it was pinto beans grown in last year's garden. I put in a little turkey ham (cheaper than pork ham and considering that I can't eat pork...), and a little ham/smoke flavoring bought at the local salvage grocery for almost nothing.

With the beans, I had cornbread with the cornmeal made partly from corn I grew year before last and partly from popcorn that didn't want to pop well. I also used buttermilk from butter I'd made a couple of weeks ago. The teaspoon of baking powder it took came from a canister I'd found marked 'way down - an unusual find.

Along with beans and cornbread, there were greens. Wild greens, gathered from my back yard last year.

I also fried a pan of Jersualem artichokes, growing like weeds from a half dozen roots I planted about three years ago. I will never run out of those.

And butter, homemade. And ice tea, homemade.

I didn't add up the cost; somehow that would have spoiled the effect. I am happy to know that so much of the meal came from the labor of my own hands and not from some grocery shelf.