The Iowa Way to Treat You

My absolute favorite musical of all time is The Music Man. I had an LP of the soundtrack when I was a kid, and I played it over and over and over until I knew all of the songs by heart. The Boys thought it was oh, so special when every time we crossed over the state line into Iowa I had to sing "Iowa Stubborn":

Ooooooh, there's nothin' halfway

About the Iowa way to treat you!

I didn't actually burst into song when I sat down to this meal during our Iowa weekend but those lyrics were going through my mind. I grew up on a farm but I've become a city girl who assumes the ingredients for her meals will be found shrink-wrapped in Dillons--but every single ingredient here came off the farm where we were consuming it. 

The smoked chicken had just days earlier been scratching around in the yard. The sliced tomatoes and the cabbage for the slaw came out of the garden. Heck, even the ice cubes were made from rural water, although the tea may have come from the local Dillons equivalent. Husband and I oooooh-ed and aaaah-ed over the deliciosity of the meal, and took seconds (and thirds) of the healthy goodness. It was aaaaah-mazing.

But our lovely relatives were not finished treating us. When we got in the car to come back to Small Town, the back seat was filled with this:

and this:

and this:

oh, and don't forget the chicken:

Nope, nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you. 

You really ought to give Iowa a try.