We spend too much of our lives indoors, let’s change it up this summer!
Ok so a little trivia for this month….why is every sleep-sound that is recorded on apps and sleep machines always ambient outdoor noises?
And then there’s this…..Why does food always taste better after hiking, biking ,or swimming? Why does everything taste better outside? For me it was eating lunch at the beach. I think the answer is that we belong outside, we need the natural world, we need bird song and ocean waves, babbling brooks, and rustling leaves. It’s summertime! Time to soak up some victim D 🌞
When I was a kid, my grand parents had a place at “the shore” in Southern New Jersey, my cousins and I would stay with them through out the summer. We would go to the beach early, and stay all day. We only went back to the “bungalow” when dinner time rolled around, then sank into a deep sleep, all us cousins sharing beds. Sometimes we would sleep on the floor of screened in porch especially when it was super hot 🥵(no air conditioning back then). Their bungalow was on the bayside, so we could hear the bay water splashing up against the outside dock. Best sleep-sound ever.
In the morning before we got up we could hear “Nona” in the kitchen. She was already making the sandwiches that she pronounced as “sang-a-witches” in her Italian way… for our lunches at the beach.
No take-out, Just everyday food! Our beach lunches were usually made from leftovers, simple ingredients, maybe some store bought chips once and awhile, and if we were really lucky we each got one of those green glass bottles of 7up my grandfather would keep in a small ice chest.
Usually our sandwiches were made on hard rolls, most people call them “hoagie-rolls” today. What we had for lunch depended on what was left over from the day before. Those sandwiches might be scrambled eggs with sautéed onions and red peppers, or reheated sausage with tomato sauce, sometimes meat balls. She would wrap them while hot in “tinfoil” and put them in a little insulated lunch chest to keep them warm.
I remember my cousins and I sitting on the beach blanket like birds on a wire, wrapped in towels shivering with wrinkled fingers after jumping waves, and swimming…. Never wanting to come out of the water, even when our lips were blue! We gobbled up those “sang-a-witches”! They tasted amazing, even if at times “sand” was the operative word in sandwich. It was Heaven!
We were born to thrive outside… kids need to be outside, we all need more outdoor time.… so this summer, let’s GET OUTSIDE! No pricy flights needed, no driving to Air B+B’s miles away from where you live, no Glamping, where you bring all your indoor trappings with you. Michael McCarthy, in his book The Moth Snowstorm wrote:
“We need constant reminding that we have been operators of computers for a single generation and workers in neon-lit offices for three or four, but we were farmers for 500 generations, and before that hunter-gatherers for perhaps 50,000 or more, living with the natural world as part of it as we evolved, and the legacy cannot be done away with.”
Even now that I no longer live near the ocean, I can find parks, lakes, rivers and streams close to home. We don’t have to drop a truckload of cash in some “theme park” to have fun. Sometimes setting a tent in the back yard for the kids, some good ol’ S’mores, and a sprinkler and can do the trick!
So get outside and use those leftovers!
I still make my grandmothers scrambled egg sandwich’s using leftover veggies, sometimes mushrooms, asparagus in season, even green beans.
I sauté the onions and peppers, add an other vegetables, poor the scrambled egg mixture over everything mix it all up, cook, and fill those rolls. If have any cheese I throw that in, Swiss, cheddar, mozzarella, I add any cheese available, and for those that have to put ketchup on everything, that tastes good too!
Happy Summer