Deer and Chutney

Friday, 22 January 2010 01:23

On Sunday morning after church my wife informed me that our garage refrigerator and freezer were not cooling properly. Upon further inspection, I realized I had unplugged them on accident the evening before, thus all the frozen meat had defrosted and needed to be cooked. My wife being a wise woman decided to make the best of the situation, Lemonade from Lemons as the phrase goes and convinced me to have friends from church over for dinner. They were very pleasant guests and helped us eat much of the chicken, fish and some T-bone steaks. I greedily horded the deer meet for me to consume at some later date. That brings me to the title of my blog post, deer and chutney. I began cooking the back strap and skirt steak around 8:00PM. It was rather late and I was not happy with the way the back strap was cooking so I brought in the meat for my wife to work her culinary magic upon it. As any good southern woman knows, few things are bad dipped in flour and pan fried in oil. This is what she did and they were very tasty. As I savored the first bite of venison, I knew that the experience could be further extenuated if I had the right condiment. Getting up from my favorite eating spot (the ottoman in front of the TV) I went and rummaged around the refrigerator. That would be the inside refrigerator which will be the focus of a future blog entry. Upon inspection of what might add the perfect accent to my deer, I found some chutney given to me by my dear friends Butch and Laura Hall. They sent us a wonderful Christmas care package full of all sorts of wonderful items. From Kokopelli wine bottle corks to Anasazi beans. The Halls are truly wonderful people. In the refrigerator, I found the magical missing ingredient for my dinner to be complete.

Even though the kids had lost the controller to the satellite and I had to listen to Sesame Street, I was very content to eat my dinner and ponder how fortunate I was to have a wonderful wife, dear friends and 3 healthy children. God is good and I am a very blessed man. Sometimes I do not see it until I step out of what my own expectations are for my life and look at how God always gives me more than I needed much less deserved.