Lunch...with some ingredients from Mary

I got out my day-old sourdough loaf.

Cut two slices. Carefully folded salami pieces and layered them across one slice, like sardines. On the other, I put little slabs of cheese, chopped sun-dried tomato, fresh tyme and dried rosemary, salt, pepper. Lifted top and bottom, and slathered all four sides with rendered duck fat. Heated cast iron pan, and browned on both sides, covered, over medium-high heat.

Meanwhile, steamed green beans. Then poured wine.

Sipped on it.

Once sandwich was crispy and melted, removed it from pan and replaced it with the steamed beans. Added some olive oil to the traces of duck fat in the pan; also tossed in leaves of sage from the box-garden on the railing just outside my kitchen door. Cooked green beans in the fats and sage just long enough to faintly crisp and richly season them.

Added to the sandwich and beans on the plate a handful of mixed nuts.

Added ice to another tall glass, and two squirts of lime juice, then water, and sugar, and stirred it up.

Removed all food and drink to my back deck.

Conjured up sunshine, and warmth. Called stepmother to wish a happy mother's holiday; and a happy birth day to my father, a day early, accidentally.

Listened closely. The backyard hums and hollers. Then, fit and feeling no pain, I played a whole lot of croquet. It's a nice course I have set up now, though it's probably best for the one-person play I've so far used it for. Once I invite challengers, we may find it to be awkwardly set up, and incur too much croquet-ing of each other. We'll see. (I wonder what I'll serve?)