Farm and food file: August is one, long garden feast

On the southern Illinois farm of my youth, August always meant heat, humidity, and the best food of the year. While we rarely suffered silently through August's steamy weeks, we usually ate our noontime dinners in delighted silence as we enjoyed my mother's exceptional meals.

What made them so exceptional was their simple ingredients. Two basement freezers held the day's main entree, usually a beef or pork roast. Chicken was for Sundays and our limited supply of hams, from two winter-butchered hogs, was reserved for either special occasions or supper sandwiches.

Mom had an almost foolproof method to prepare any roast. If pork was on for dinner, she'd put a just-out-of-the-freezer pork roast in a roaster, shake a large amount of salt and pepper on its concrete-hard top side, and then add