As I look outside, the thermometer is hanging a little below freezing, the wind is whipping through a sky of steely gray, a typical dreary midwinter’s day. Not too much to get excited about, it is kind of hard to think about much except staying inside and keeping warm. A good day for a nice pot of stew, some home-baked bread, a cup of cocoa and curling up by the fire with your sweetheart, or at least a good book. Then my eye is drawn to what is left of the garden, most of it turned under waiting for a spring planting that seems light years away, but that turned soil, with it’s current coat of frost calls to me with the promise of good things to come. Of course, this leads my random mind down the path to that first meal of the season made entirely of ingredients from our garden, that day is a big deal for a fellow like me who gave up the farm for more cosmopolitan delights, before discovering I had been living in paradise all along.