Lauren spent most of the day answering questions, mostly about Genesis, although some people seemed to have decided to start reading somewhere in the middle, so she got some random questions about Psalms, Matthew, and otherwise scattered books.

At some point she was aware that Tommy had started cleaning and cooking a couple of rabbits.  She asked to use the frying pan, and Lauren was more than happy to let her.  Thus supper was served before dark.

She felt bad about meals.  When her kids were growing up, dinners almost always included a meat and a vegetable and a starch--unless it was something like spaghetti or baked beans.  Even hamburgers were served with French fries and dressed with salad as fixings.  She had taught these people to hunt and to fish, but everything they ate was meat.  The problem was, she didn’t know how to forage, other than to hike back through the gate to the fields and gather vegetables from the farms.

Of course, when they were on the other side of the gate they only ate vegetables, except that last day when she shot the turkeys.  Creating balanced meals in the wild was a challenge, and she was not entirely up to it.

It also occurred to her that none of these people would know how to forage--indeed, Tommy was the only one who would know the meaning of the word.  Nor would they have any idea about balanced diets, having lived in a world where they ate what they could get, before Mister Beam started buying meals for them.  Probably they weren’t going to complain, as long as they had food, and she had now taught them how to get their own food, so although they had to work for it, they wouldn’t be hungry.

At least, not until winter froze the lake and drove the birds south and other animals into hibernation.  Well, they would have to deal with that when it came.  There would still be deer, and rabbits, at least.  The hunters might have to travel farther to find them, and people might be a bit hungry at times, but no one would starve.  At least, she hoped not.

She shouldn’t worry about these things.  Summer was still beginning, and there would be ample food well into the fall.  In fact, there would be berries in the woods--something different, she would have to watch for them.  She knew that raspberries and blueberries grew wild; she just didn’t know when.  She also knew that wild onion grass was edible--scallions, and while the flavor was a bit pungent you could eat them raw or use them in cooking.  She was going to have to think about these things.  Of course, she’d eaten a lot of foraged fruits and vegetables, but that was in a different world, and those plants didn’t grow here.  There were often apple trees growing in odd places, but she seemed to remember that this was because people had planted them throughout North America; still, there might still be some.  Trees lived a long time, and had ways of ensuring that at least some of their seeds would become more trees.  She thought that walnuts and maybe chestnuts grew wild, but she’d have to be careful, because she wasn’t that familiar with nut trees.

She sighed.  Expanding the diets of these people was not going to be simple.  God was providing food; for the moment, that would suffice.

There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #470:  Verser Turnings.  Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter.  It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.

As to the old stories that have long been here:

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