There is nothing like a good hamburger! You know the kind, big juicy and loaded with tomatoes, lettuce, onions, pickles and mustard. A body just plain needs one every now and again. My friends think that I have the most pedestrian palate, but what they don't know is that I've been there and done that with the gourmet stuff.

Don't get me wrong, now; good high brow food is a pleasure on many levels. A beautiful, well prepared plate is a work of art, but for the sake of argument, good plain food done well is extremely satisfying. What chaps my fanny is the whole group of people who wax on and on about a bowl or a plate that looks only slightly better than some of the contents of diapers that I've changed. Where does that crap come from?

The kicker for me is the people who ooh and ahh over the stuff! I have visions of the chef, in appropriate cheffy duds appearing in the middle of a swell dinning room, to announce that the night's special offering is ...drumroll, please...Squirrel's testicles braised in chicken urine with a duck feces reduction. I imagine the cheers and clapping! It's an "Emperor's New Clothes" part 2.

While I am ranting about this topic, I'd like to say that I feel the same way about the salads that consist of a bowl of weeds with dressing that smacks of toilet bowl cleaner. What's that about? Since when was a bowl of crispy green lettuce and crunchy regular veggies a thing of the past? I welcome variety, I really do, but not in my salad bowl! Those curly leaves look just like hairballs and those bitter, dark ones taste like weeds smell. Yuck!

I am aware that anyone reading this is probably chortling over my disgust and thinking that I truly am a rube. So, I should be offended? Not! Our forefathers and their significant others survived on good solid food. Today the buzz words are , "local", "fresh", "organic" and "natural". In our household these are not just words, with the possible exception of organic; they are our mantra. My mother was a scratch cook and for the most part, so am I. Highly processed foods or those packaged in cellophane were not in my mother's pantry. My sister and I watched my mother and grandmother "put-up" vegetables for the winter. Mom slaved over a hot stove in a kitchen that was not air-conditioned until 1956. She and my grandmother would get up at the crack of dawn, leaving me in the care of my grandfather, to go to the Scott Street market, where the farmers would come to sell their produce. Dragging in great baskets of corn, peas and tomatoes, they would announce that before playtime, I had to help with the shelling and shucking. Afterwards, they would blanch and freeze all the goodies and put them in our "deep freeze" (freezer). Mother's insisted that fresh equaled quality. We were the envy of our friends whose moms never saw the Scott St. market, nor the inside of the freezer.

Today in my own kitchen, the smell of tomatoes fresh off the vine (mine or anybody else's) brings back sweet memories of those long ago afternoons. Peas simmering in a both laced with ham can make me swoon! Fresh corn on the cob dripping with sweet cream butter can cause a near orgasmic reaction.

I, like my mother, enjoy feeding people. Whether it's a meal or just a simple dessert, I love to see people eating something I've prepared. Organic? Sometimes. Fresh, mostly. Good? You be the judge! Bless the cook!