{"id":1594,"date":"2012-07-19T04:46:03","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T11:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenhopeessences.com\/wordpress\/?p=1594"},"modified":"2012-07-19T07:52:31","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T14:52:31","slug":"the-summer-of-ben","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/?p=1594","title":{"rendered":"The Summer of Ben"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When the kid&#8217;s Uncle Steve coined the phrase &#8220;The Summer of Steve&#8221; he was talking about his fantasy summer of boating, golfing and kicking back on his deck with Sports Illustrated. <\/p>\n<p>For us, &#8220;The Summer of Ben&#8221; is an entirely different kettle of fish, at least as fantastic as &#8220;The Summer of Steve&#8221; and actually involves fish\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.. as in fried fresh sardines, shown below with roasted garlic and fresh pea tapenade, fresh salsa with cilantro and homemade bread.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenhopeessences.com\/wordpress\/wp-contents\/upload\/2012\/07\/img-5695.jpg\" height=\"240\" width=\"320\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"IMG_5695\" title=\"IMG_5695\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yup, &#8220;The Summer of Ben&#8221; involves Ben laboring all day on his thirty five acre piece of farmland to open up the hedgerows, clear the field of wild roses<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenhopeessences.com\/wordpress\/wp-contents\/upload\/2012\/07\/img-5979.jpg\" height=\"288\" width=\"384\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"IMG_5979\" title=\"IMG_5979\" \/><\/p>\n<p>and of course throw the ball for MayMay.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenhopeessences.com\/wordpress\/wp-contents\/upload\/2012\/07\/img-4311.jpg\" height=\"640\" width=\"480\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"IMG_4311\" title=\"IMG_4311\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenhopeessences.com\/wordpress\/wp-contents\/upload\/2012\/07\/img-5991.jpg\" height=\"192\" width=\"256\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"IMG_5991\" title=\"IMG_5991\" \/><\/p>\n<p>THEN\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. he comes next door to cook dinner for all of us.  EVERY NIGHT!<\/p>\n<p>My only responsibility is to tell him what&#8217;s out in the vegetable garden up for grabs then during the hour or two that I have always spent tossing together a meal for the family, I go off and read or take a swim or putter in the garden. BLISS.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenhopeessences.com\/wordpress\/wp-contents\/upload\/2012\/07\/img-5681.jpg\" height=\"216\" width=\"288\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"IMG_5681\" title=\"IMG_5681\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When I said broccoli and red onions, Ben delivered a bacon, raisin and broccoli salad.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenhopeessences.com\/wordpress\/wp-contents\/upload\/2012\/07\/img-5868.jpg\" height=\"264\" width=\"352\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"IMG_5868\" title=\"IMG_5868\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When I said green onions and carrots we feasted on a sesame cold noodle salad.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenhopeessences.com\/wordpress\/wp-contents\/upload\/2012\/07\/img-5888.jpg\" height=\"320\" width=\"240\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"IMG_5888\" title=\"IMG_5888\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When I said high summer,  Ben tossed out pizza with scratch dough and homemade mozzarella and homemade pesto along with fresh tomatoes and zucchini.<\/p>\n<p>When Will clamored for his idea of food, Ben made him<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenhopeessences.com\/wordpress\/wp-contents\/upload\/2012\/07\/img-5870.jpg\" height=\"288\" width=\"216\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"IMG_5870\" title=\"IMG_5870\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Spareribs and<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenhopeessences.com\/wordpress\/wp-contents\/upload\/2012\/07\/img-5875.jpg\" height=\"384\" width=\"288\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"IMG_5875\" title=\"IMG_5875\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Crab Rangoon- for the same meal!<\/p>\n<p>May &#8220;The Summer of Ben&#8221; last forever!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the kid&#8217;s Uncle Steve coined the phrase &#8220;The Summer of Steve&#8221; he was talking about his fantasy summer of boating, golfing and kicking back on his deck with Sports Illustrated. For us, &#8220;The Summer of Ben&#8221; is an entirely different kettle of fish, at least as fantastic as &#8220;The Summer of Steve&#8221; and actually &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/?p=1594\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Summer of Ben<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1595,"href":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions\/1595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.greenhopeessences.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}