This week I enjoyed cucumber sandwiches and tea with my friends on the screened in porch. It was an uncharacteristically civilized evening. I used thin Pepperidge Farm white bread, mandolin thin sliced and peeled fresh garden cucumbers, Kerrygold yellow butter, salt and white pepper. That is it. Super simple. Here is a food poem that makes me think of that not so long ago relaxing and fun evening. May we all enjoy the season of delicate cucumber and juicy red tomato sandwiches.

The high-tension spires spike the sky
beneath which boys bend
to pick from prickly vines
the deep-sopped fruit, the rind’s green
a green sunk
in green. They part the plants’ leaves,
reach into the nest,
and pull out mother, father, fat Uncle Phil.
The smaller yellow-green children stay,
for now. The fruit goes
in baskets by the side of the row,
every thirty feet or so. By these bushels
the boys get paid, in cash,
at day’s end, this summer
of the last days of the empire
that will become known as
the past, adios, then,
the ragged-edged beautiful blink.

from the Writer’s Almanac