EVENING IN PARIS

The breathtaking blue of a bottle on Meme’s Corner yesterday kindled a whole delicious cascade of memories of another time.   A windows-open sunny late afternoon in a hot, close house, with the odors of recently fried fish, a cut lemon, a sweet flurry of Coty face powder.

It’s my very favorite shade of blue, for it's the color of the little pointy bottle of Evening in Paris with the small tassel, which the neighbor girl (a senior when I was in first grade) let me dab behind my ears a couple of times.   The bottle, scarce half-size of my Mother’s fountain pen,  was quite the most covetable, incongruously luminous thing in that dumpy little house.

She lived in a small room off the little hall, in a most unusual house.   Her Daddy was a retired railroad foreman, and he’d taken two boxcars, set them on those lacking-a-point concrete pyramids which formed the supports for so many of the small houses in every town I knew, and made a kitchen/dining room/living room down one side, and three bedrooms and a bath down the other, with windows cut and framed and glassed, and no doors on any of the inside rooms but the bath.    They’d put a sort of peaky roof on the thing, and the roof and entire structure were covered in that sandy, several-shades-of-brown fake brick stuff with the texture of a super-coarse emery board.

Her room was the smallest, for when the long space was divided, parents and brother got kind of equal shares, with the last space split into her room and the bath.    Her bed took up most of the space, and was placed squarely across the closet---the only place in the room that wouldn’t block the door.   She had to stand on her bed, or pull it out enough to stand behind it, butt-bumping the bed, in order to hang up or get down any of her clothes.   She said she was really little when they “built the house” and I suppose the menfolks in charge of the design gave no thought of that small girl’s growing up to need more than an 8x8 room. 

The only other item of furniture in the room was a dresser---one that I longed to duplicate, for it was immensely beautiful to my girly-girl heart.   My own room had a bedroom “suit” consisting of bed (the one I later took a saw to and shortened the posts), chest of drawers, and dresser in that old thirties style of the big mirror set between two little wings, with a center shelf thing that allowed no foot or knee room to sit close to the mirror.

Hazel had made her own dresser, of a wooden box on its side, opening facing out for knee room and access to shelves, with a curvy piece of plywood (also cut by her with her Uncle Booster’s hand-saw).   She’d taken the satin and net of her Aunt Maude's big pink evening-dress skirt from her Eastern Star Installation, and tacked it somehow around front and sides of the curve of plywood to form a lovely dresser-skirt. 

I’m sure the vision in that country-girl’s heart was possibly straight from this:

which caused her to tackle hammer and nails and make herself just One Beautiful Thing in that cramped gingham room.   Her small homemade version shone in such dull quarters, and a seat on the bed was the only access to the table.  

  How I loved those words---Dresser-Skirt.   I yearned for the wonderful crackly pink cloud to cover my own old brown dresser, and also mightily wanted some of the ribbon and tulle from the couple of dozen dried corsages festooned around her bulletin board with pearl-beaded pins.  

Despite the small size and meager décor, I thought her room to be absolute heaven.    And she never seemed to get impatient with my presence---she let me watch her wash her hair on Saturday mornings, standing at the linoleum-covered kitchen counter with a small white red-rimmed pan, filled from the battered old “tea-kittle” of the same pattern.  She rolled her wet hair onto cigarette papers bobby-pinned flat onto her head til she resembled my rubber-flowered bathing cap.   By evening, the curls had dried, and were combed out into a shining do around her head---a perfectly smooth, satiny cap in the back, with a halo of luxuriantly bouncing thick hair curved just so, and a finger-waved flip of bangs on the right. 

I was surprised when I googled "permanent of the fifties" and got this old magazine ad.  I'd noticed back then that she looked so much like Virginia Mayo, but this---this is Hazel to the life, right down to the forehead wave, eyebrow arch and perfectly-blotted lipstick.   Exactly as I remember her.

She'd let me watch her get ready for a date---pulling on her stockings with the little snub of the rubber clips on her garter-belt, putting on her lipstick, smoothing all around her mouth with her little finger and a blot of toilet paper, and THEN the opening of that fragrant padded box where the "perfume" lived. 

  The box was an ashy-pink quilted satin thing, with little compartments inside, where she kept a couple of lipsticks, a tangle of earrings, a bottle or two of Cutex red-red polish, and that enchanting cobalt blue bottle of Evening in Paris, with the small silky tassel draped up and over the divider of the box. 

It was elegant and dainty, cool and smooth and regal in my hand, and the simple honor of holding it was a thrill of my little-girl life.

The delicious scent was doled out sparingly, precious as frankincense.   Just a fingertip pressed tightly to the tee-ninecy mouth of the bottle, then touched behind both ears while the finger was still damp.    I don’t think I had any concept of feeling “grown up,” but I felt like the very best ME, transported from those end-of-day grubby shorts and shirt, filthy bare feet from who-knows-where, hair flying and nails bitten, to someone made welcome and worthwhile by that kind young woman, and feeling elegant and lovely in that sweet-scented aura.

I’d love to smell that beloved fragrance again, or hold that cool slim blue bottle in my hand.



WE GATHER TOGETHER

We had about six churches in our little town.   The Methodist was a slender, straight church tapering to a steeple-bell, with the sanctuary jutting out from the T-arms of the other rooms at the back---quiet and scented of Johnson’s wax and lingers of perfume and something like an old man's wallet and the crackle of Cokesbury pages. That picturesque church was cramped on a lot inside the squares of sidewalk-all-round, but taken through a long-distance lens, it could have graced any green sway of hills in England.

 

I can still remember the Calligraphy-lettered names-in-black at the bottom of each of the twelve tall Gothic windows with their stained-glass radiances of crowns and shepherds gilding our cheeks and hair during eleven o'clock church. My young eyes had traced the shapes of those honored-in-glass names hundreds of times a year as the quiet annual succession of ministers (Methodists send;

Baptists invite) droned from that straight-from-IKEA blonde pulpit behind its matching In Remembrance Of Me table.  

 

  Tiny black classic fans up high between the windows moved in a synchronous dance of black filigree all the Sundays I was a member, in those ancient days before A/C, and even after, to "help it along" when the place was filled for funerals or convocations.

 

Even church suppers at the Methodist were quiet affairs---families came respectfully up the back steps and into the door of the big room used for suppers and the before-Sunday School assembly and wedding receptions, the Daddies lifting their hats from just-slicked after-work hair, and the Mamas bearing casseroles and platters with the whisper of  waxed paper over the ham and the rolls and Apricot Nectar Cakes.

 

 

There was such a quiet presence to those meetings, those activities, even Vacation Bible School---attended by every kid in town, with the Baptists and the Catholics tamping down their energy for the indoor parts. We said the Two Pledges, sang earnest, gentle songs, and then did paper crafts, heard the Story, strung beads and tied yarn and burst like a spillway through the doors for recess and KoolAid.

 

 

The Baptist, now---that was a huge pile of bricks, with enormous TARA columns filled with bees, and creaky, thunderous wood plank floors with the sway of pews like ocean waves into the distance. But it was LIVELY, somehow, with wonderful music and a gusto to the singing, with fiery exhortations from the pulpit when the Spirit moved them and the between-Sunday-School-and-Church scarcely-hushed chatter buzzing to a close only AFTER the choir filed in.

 

Forty conversations sounded like hundreds, echoing off those cavernous spaces and hard wood pews, with more going on as the places filled, and unmuted calls out three-rows-over to a neighbor in greeting.    I loved it---it was full of life and energy, lots and lots of the young folks I knew from school, friends I'd envied for their fun tellings of happenings in church or VBS (which we all also attended---you just went to BOTH every Summer), and the year that we all made bookends by tapping tacks into little tombstone-shaped pieces of wood is memorable---we must have sounded like a woodpecker brawl in there .    There were also youth trips and youth choir which met at five on Sundays, before BTU and evening services. 

 

Their Church Suppers took on the aura of those Barn Dances (perish the thought) in which everyone gathered loudly, and all the females brought their VERY BEST casseroles and cakes and pies, served in their best dishes and garnished within an inch of their lives, like those checkered-napkin baskets auctioned off to admiring swains at a hoedown.   There was kitchen-pride and surreptitious comparison involved in both denominations, but the Baptist Ladies seemed to set the best tables.    They cooked more like they MEANT it.

 

 

That church also had a scent---one I can't name, but I'd recognize it this minute and be right there in that  bright buzz of people and the spirit of hearty worship. I looked online at a friend's granddaughter's wedding recently in the local paper, and just by happenstance saw the obituary of my very first boyfriend, when we were about fourteen.   I was immediately transported to the back row of those hard pews, way up under the overhang of the balcony, where all of us "couples" and other young folk sat during church.   The memories rushed in, and I could smell all the same familiar scents---Broadman pages this time, as we shared the hymnal, the Vitalis on his elegantly-arranged pomp, the surrounding wisps of Evening in Paris and Chantilly and Blue Waltz and cold mouton jackets, and the lingering whiff of hot dogs or Frito Chili Pie and Pine-Sol wafting up from the downstairs kitchens.   

 

I don’t believe I’d recognize the Odor of Sanctity, but that ole-time familiar scent of Church Gatherings---oh, yes.

 

MRS. P. AND MR. SHUG

vintage photo etsy

Amongst our great collection of eccentrics and zanies and downright crazies the South seems to be assumed to have, our neighbor Mrs. P. was a mild, genteel version of a Character---a kinda beige presence in all that palette of Southern oddnesses---the bright reds and shrieky yellows, the frivolous, frantic chartreuses and hot pinks, the weepy silver-green-golds, and the moody, muddy browns.

She was a kind, generous-with-what-she-had woman, with a house made of two-boxcars side-by-side and covered with that fake sandy-brick siding.  

  She was never mean in her little stories of the doings about town, never spiteful in the repeating of local gossip, nor did she ever raise her voice that I remember, except when Mr. Shug got on Her Last Nerve by getting out of the Jeep too full of “alky” to get himself into the house. 

His progress across the yard was wavery in the best of times, for he had a little “inj’ry” somewhere down there, one that was not obvious save for his gait, but when he’d been off fishin’ with Hosie ‘n’em, well, the company he kept and the old Coleman cooler full of fish and Falstaff done him in.   He needed hep up the steps, as he’d shout toward Mrs. P., or her elderly Daddy-who-lived-with-them, or my Daddy, or even ME, were I the only one available. 

They were the parents of my dear much-older friend Hazel, who let me come in and watch her primp for a date, sitting on her bed in my dusty-butt shorts and bare feet, as she combed her shining perm and dotted a drop of Evening in Paris on my grubby wrist.

Her Daddy was just a little man, probably six inches shorter than his wife, and I was a sturdy little thing, round and strong-for-a-girl, fostered by my solitary-female status amongst about six blocks of elbows-and-shouts boys, whose lives were lived barefooted and up trees, in sword-fighting and galloping around on imaginary horses, being a cross amongst Robin Hood, Knights, and Gene Autry all at once. 

 And I did all that stuff, too, with my own bow-and-arrows and a thowin’-knife swiped from our kitchen along with a roll of black electrical wrappin’ tape from my Daddy’s workshop.   I wrapped that handle til it was balanced exactly right for the tip-held, flip-in-the-air true flight right into whatever I aimed at.   No tree, post, or clothesline pole escaped---every bit of wood in the neighbourhood looked as if it had been had at by a flock of woodpeckers.

And so, when I was the only prop available, I’d go support Mr. Shug up the back steps.   I’d try to hold my breath against the beery/fishy/sweaty smell of him as I held him upright sort of against my side, and my face turned WAY the other way, while one of us wrestled the screen-door past us. We’d do those little hobble-steps kinda like you’d do in a three-legged race, where the tied-together middle two of the legs were being dragged along by one person, and another leg by nobody at all.   I’d turn him loose at the kitchen sink and he’d hang onto the counter and make his way on in while I fled back out into the yard, gasping for fresh air.

But if Mrs. P. were the designated one, she’d grab him by the back of the belt with one sinewy arm, muscled as a farm-boy’s from all that yard work and wood-chopping and endless clothes-jooging and wringing in that big black pot. She’d hoist him like a puppet, as he sorta dandled his legs toward the steps, sagging and dragging.  Once, just once, I saw her really lose her temper, and I still remember the time-click of that moment, when she’d Just Had Enough.

One Saturday afternoon---I know it was Saturday, because she was sitting way back in the shade of her porch, and I on our back doorsteps, each with a fresh, just-delivered GRIT in our hands. I can still smell that fresh-print, faraway-vinegar tang of the newsprint, warm from the grimy bag shouldered by the GRIT Boy every Saturday, and delivered in exchange for the waiting dimes of the neighborhood.   Mr. Shug drove up and kind of swayed himself out the non-existent door of the Jeep onto the ground.   He hung on to things in the yard and made it over to the porch-post, then yelled out his usual hep-me-Ethel up-the-step.

I think I felt, more than heard or saw, the big sigh as she got up from the chair and came down to the ground to get him. 

Perhaps it WAS the smell of him or the repetition of the thing, like water wearing away a rock, or the heat and the day and her lot in life, all those young dreams vanished into THIS---I don’t know quite what---but she rolled up that GRIT longways and commenced to beating him about the head, while he began to dance drunkenly around the yard, fending off the swats.    I got so tickled by such a show from two adults I had to hide behind the dry flutter of my own GRIT---why, despite his boozy state, he was doing a pretty good Fred Astaire out there, and Ginger was getting in some really good smacks, herself. 

“You get yourself in that house RIGHT NOW,” she hissed, “’fore anybody SEEES You!!”    And she dragged him up and in, and out of sight of prying eyes. 

I suppose I didn’t count as anybody, having often been the dragger to his dragee, as it were, and part of the spectacle, myself, on occasion---a grubby little kid, sunburnt and barefooted in that tromped-down yard, trying to maneuver a drunk into the house for propriety’s sake. 

She was a good, plain cook, and I know that his fishing contributed a lot to their livelihood, for the few little crappie or perch that he brought in were their supper several days a week.   But he cleaned those fish out between our houses on a big old battered picnic table, and I know for sure that that malodorous old table, with the innards scraped off in a bucket and the scales skittered off into the grass with OUR hose, along with general scent of him as I held him up---I cannot abide any kind of fish or beer to this day.

Ah, the people, and the MOMENTS, that we remember.   And I never, EVER told my sweet, beautiful Hazel about any of it.

Vintage photo---ewillys

LUCY'S KITCHEN NOTEBOOK

There’s an absolutely charming blog that I peek in on now and again, for the words and the pictures and the stunningly-photographed views through the lens of Lucy Vanel, whose Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook is much enjoyed around the globe. She’s a G.R.I.T.S. Girl herself, living in Lyon with her lovely French husband, and they are the recent parents of a little son, long-awaited and much adored.

This is from an e-mail to Lucy some time ago, thanking her for a nice comment she made, and telling her of the differences between my kitchen habits and her own---how the literature and the press and the aura of French Cooking make me long to try the flavours of her markets and fishmongers and boulangerie---all seem to have a persona removed from the plastic-packaged goods to which I have become so warehouse/supermarket-inured.

She travels to one for the meat, to another for the bread, and still another for a certain vegetable of a too-short season, finding the perfect small pearly turnips, the tenderest new endive, the spoon-ripe pears on their optimum day. Her tradespeople know her, greet her as Madame, and occasionally show her a too-human side when the day has been long and the work especially daunting.

And to leave the house full of expectation each day, for what may be in a shop, or a stall or a fragrant bakery---though I’m not at all rigid in any segment of cooking save sanitation, I’m not accustomed to going out every morning, finding something wonderful and short-seasoned, and calculating what’s in the pantry/what do I have to buy to go with, and planning dinner right then and there, feeling it a triumphant find of the season. I do well to get to the store with list, glasses, money and market bags. And I don’t think I’m alone.
xxxxx
To Lucy:

The pictures of your coffee press and bowl could have been taken at my own table, though my view is in no way comparable to yours. Mine is of golden sunpeeks through lacy grapevine which I have coaxed (by dint of a weathered trellis) into covering the window of my kitchen. The cobweb of silk on the window is punctuated by drifts of leafshapes, and provides a lovely, ever-changing pattern on the refrigerator, the floor, and finally becomes a wall of every shade of green there is, as the sun makes its way up and over the roof to the west.

And so today I have had my own vanilla-perfumed bowl of Latte, to the music of the windchimes outside, muted by the tightly-closed windows on this very warm day. And I must dress and make my way to my own grocery, the place of all-in-one-store, with sterile refrigerators of silverskinned fish and the pink rows of cuddled shrimp; the shusssssh of the door as it opens and then bumps you on the rear, clouding with the warmth of the let-in air as you consider your choice, is an expected part of the experience.

I'm grateful for the beautiful food, the cleanliness of it, the purity of line, the earth and grit washed away from the great regiments of colored peppers and tomatoes and strawberries, each in their own well-regulated rows.

But I long to walk up to your butcher's counter at closing time, to order the bacon, to greet good evening, to whisk away from his brusque day's-end dismissal. I'd love to approach the vegetable market, touch the peach velvet, inhale the thyme and tarragon which stirs the scent at the merest touch, heft a melon or finger-smooth the squash, and decide on dinner, on the spot.

I will carry home these groceries, place them in the also-sterile cool of the refrigerators and freezers, and lose a bit of the flavour, somehow, in the transition from earth to chill storage. Though I do not long for the heat-drenched days of my life in the South, the covetous thought stirs of MFK Fisher's peach, which lay on a plate in her Paris kitchen throughout the day, changing from its pristine shape and color, and by evening, lay "bruised and voluptuously dying."

I must go, and I cannot wait to return to your blog, devouring the words with my eyes, tasting and sipping and sitting in those places, with those lovely foods and wine. Just the first few paragraphs, the first time I ever found your blog, of your surprise dinner with your husband, the little crocks of tasteables with the first glass of wine, stirred perfect memories of Ms Fisher's jaunt into the countryside for her solitary, perfect, unexpected lunch of a lifetime.
Please write and write, but do not miss a moment; venture out and taste and smell and share. I'll return in a couple of hours and begin from the beginning---it's a treat I've promised myself this 90-degree day.
xxxxx

I whole-heartedly recommend this beautiful blog---I started from the beginning and came forward, and have gone back time and again to the luscious pictures and words, and the continuity is better if the stories of buying and putting together their mountain home and of their long quest for that lovely little boy are read chronologically, but you can start absolutely anywhere and be captivated.

Just click on Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook, right over there in the "Blog List" on the right panel. It’s one of my very favorites.

6/4ths

The weather has been simply glorious lately---every single getting-twilight evening, I say to myself: If I were having a patio dinner/party/gathering, I’d want it to be TODAY. It’s been just that beautiful. Thursday, though a little bit overcast all the way on our quick trip up and down I-65 to and from Chicago, was just beautiful as well. The sky and the sunlight and the breezes---just conjured from a climate catalog.

And now the whole day is supposed to be rainy. No matter. We’ve watched floody parades and waded to and from the fireworks, hoping our chairs didn’t mire up in the grassy field, and trusting that we would not leave divots to plague all the ballplayers.

We sat a couple of years ago beneath umbrellas, sorta huddled together in the evening chill (I still find it weird to be writing that---my Summer standard has been shaken and my heat indicator thrown awry, in this not-like-home place four states from our raisin’). We ducked as the drizzle dripped from the brims, kept big towels across our laps, and squinted at the kaleidoscope-blur of the colors racing skyward, their rainbow totally skewed from the norm and muddled a bit into a strange oil-on-water reflection of themselves through the gentle rain.

One Fourth, years ago, we gathered at a neighboring farm, where my son’s band was playing for the afternoon. Several guests were going home with us for burgers later in the day, and we’d already been to my parents’ house for a huge lunch of the same, plus great pans of baked beans and bowls of potato salad, all of which went home with us for the “party” later---at Mother’s insistence. As we lolled on quilts and lawn chairs, someone mentioned supper, and another chimed in---somehow the word went round the lawn, and when we gathered our things to leave, we seemed to have acquired quite a procession of young folks, hungry from dancing and beer, and ready to head for the familiar kitchen of so many meals in the past.

I dispatched a couple to the little store for ice and more Cokes and extra buns, and delegated this one to gather chairs and another to get out the paper goods, still others to start slicing great plates of tomatoes and onion and cheese. One of the ladies began to inventory amongst all the condiments in the fridge, and brought out mayo and mustard and ketchup, jars of homemade dills and pickled okra and chowchow and salsa. We decided against burgers, from the sheer number---twenty-five, I think, when seven were invited.

I started browning the meat and stirred up a big pot of Sloppy Joes in quick-time, set out the salad, and heated up the beans. The food went onto the kitchen bar just as the errand-crew returned with ice and drinks, and everyone lined up. It was a fun, memorable time, with more than enough food to go around more than once, and I wouldn't take anything for the memory of an impromptu meal with grown-up young folks whose childhoods had been so much a part of our lives.

(No mention here, among the lovely family memories, of the one year that a bunch of us, young folks ourselves, opted against all those festivities and went to see The Graduate instead, and I saw so many people I knew entering the theater, and then was so embarrassed that they might see me leaving that scandalous movie with all that racy dialogue, I scurried out through the lobby with my purse over my face, like Paris fleeing paparazzi).


We plan to walk out the back gate to the fireworks tonight, after our off-the-grill dinner at home, but we’ve already mentioned to each other one Fourth that stands out, even though it was just us two. We were in Georgia to visit the children, and since the one tiny Granddaughter had an early bedtime, we went back early to our hotel.

We went to our room from that bright hot day, stripped into just our underwear, and stood in the cool at our top-floor, almost-shoulder-high window, looking down at the crowds parading past in that Georgia heat---trundling baby strollers, wheeled coolers, little red wagons full of children/lawn chairs/beer. And as the twilight fell, we watched the behind-the-scenes magic of fireworks being shot from a parking garage just below and to the right, flying skyward and bursting over the river that flowed almost beneath our feet.

A scan of the horizon showed nine separate fireworks displays, going off inch-high all at once in every town within sight-range, while we munched drippy, salty boiled peanuts and drank icy Co-Cola. No travel agent could have arranged the "Southern experience" better.

And A Happy, Safe Fourth to Everyone!!

LIL AND BEN---AT IT AGAIN

 

We had a lovely visit with our friends Ben and Lil in September.  We talked a LOT, cooked a little, went out to dinner twice and brunch once, and talked even more.       They usually arrive in August for the State Fair, but this year they were later, heading for points West and then their Winter home in Texas.   Last I heard, when a big box arrived for Sweetpea on Tuesday, they were still in New Mexico, enjoying the sights and cuisine.

 

 

They are of the  Never Arrive Empty-Handed persuasion, and this time, it was a whole satchelful of home-made preserves---all from trees and brambles in their gardens---some of the golden honey from their hives, and even a cake-in-a-jar (large jar in the foreground holds a lemon-poppyseed cake, sealed at the moment the jar came from the oven---a new thing to me).

 

Above trove includes White Fig Preserves, Blackberry Preserves, Golden Raspberry Preserves, Blueberry Jam, Honey, Cake, and a jar of the Preserved Turkey Figs.   We'd had a little canning session last year on their visit, and I must say---pupils have FAR surpassed teacher on this one. 

 

And I could certainly use a photography-and-posting course, as well.   These pictures have flipped more times than an Ole Miss Cheerleader, and STILL I cannot get them right. 

 

 

 

 

 

Honey, Golden Raspberry, Preserved Turkey Figs.

 

 

 

Ben and Lil must have about twelve green thumbs between them, and their energy and talents in the kitchen are amazing.    The day last year that we three got into my kitchen and turned out Five loaves of Zucchini-Blueberry-Pecan bread and canned I-don't-know-how-many jars of Fig Preserves, and STILL made it to a late lunch WAY across the state and an afternoon at a Flea Market (edited to add I'd forgotten that we also came home and canned an equal number of Preserved Figs that evening) was one to remember.

We've already sampled several of these delicious goodies, as WELL AS a bag of their Home-Candied Figs which rival any confiture in Paris.   These wonderful sweeties will brighten the Winter mornings, and many a Cathead Biscuit will sing their praise.

TARTES de LUNE

I love travel blogs. I love to see the places people choose to visit, to see, to immerse themselves in, far from home. It’s wonderful to see what they choose to do and see and buy when they’re on their journeys, and I especially love the ones which visit cooking stores and food shops and the open markets with their arrays of vegetables and fruit and flowers and herbs arranged in those fleeting still-life bouquets.

I’ve looked with tongue-curling envy on all the lovely boxes from Laduree’ and Fauchon, their jewel-box presentations of chocolates and pastries and small, perfect creations of sugar and cream and cake. I especially enjoy the photos of all the luscious pastel macarons, set like precious stones in the velvet of the distinctive boxes, carried gently home for another sweet taste of the trip.




We purchased these in a quaint little shop on our travels; the colors were intriguing, and the creamy ganache smooth as baby-skin. They’re called Tartes de Lune---round and luscious--- one softly tinged with essence of orange, one with the crisp tang of lemon, and the third, scented with delicate vanilla.

I’d never seen a pastry quite like them before, save for their more robust chocolate brethren, but they have a second layer of the fluffy mousse, sandwiched with another of the tender pastry rounds. We’re looking forward to trying them for dessert this evening.

Their scent is enticing, their demeanor, lovely still perfection. Their blush of color, smooth and shining, with the creamy interior cushiony and lush, all belie their humble origins and their purveyor’s plebeian atmosphere. Far, far from Paris, I admit, but so aptly OURS, so perfectly ME, that I find them charmingly alluring and simply delightful in their humble way.

TARTES de LUNE:

From the famous patisserie and purveyor of all things delicious and enticing: THE SMOKEHOUSE, in Pine Apple, Alabama.