ETSY SELLS EDGING

Yes, they do!   In a circumscribed, roundabout way I discovered this today, whilst hunting a photo for responding to a comment from two friends' comments yesterday that THEY, TOO, make up little stories and vignettes about folks they see out and about, or sitting in the dentist's office, or across the room in line at Panera.    They see more than that lady in the ill-kempt wig, or the stylish trench-coat, and travel light-years with a couple merely dipping their fries at Wendy's---we go right to where that person might be going, or what they're going home to.   It's a bit of a curse with me, I guess, for I get so carried away with my mental note-making and phone-fumbling to tap out a few hints for later (NEVER A PICTURE), I miss hearing my number called or how I should be pushing my buggy forward to close up the line.   

I expressed happy satisfaction that there were TWO like-minded souls admitting that quirk of the imagination, and the propensity for silent, never-uttered gossip about innocent strangers just awaiting some caffeine or the next bus.  (Thank you, Merry and Jeanie)  (Hearing an imaginary organ chord here, from my childhood radio "stories," when the SHADOW KNOWS ...).  

And in my silly way, I likened our common trait to having the same hobbies or crafts that created a shared kinship of mind.   I confessed my own lack of any hand-held skills or crafts, and my stumbly child-and-teen attempts at embroidery and crochet, to the dismay of my Mother and Mammaw Jessie---both whiz-bang at anything regarding thread, and their hardy efforts to help me learn.   No such luck--I'd even set my dusty-butt shorts onto a small chair, take up thread and needle and tee-ninecy stork scissors, hold my knees together beneath my Imaginary Jane Austen skirt, and  scratch away at the blue edges of ironed-on pattern ---I used the proper color Coats & Clarks, but only yielded a first-graders' swoops and swirls of their initial encounter with paper and crayolas.  

Mammaw would gently and valiantly take up my tatty mess and in an hour, have a queen-worthy inch of exquisite border trim all around the dresser-scarf/pillowslip edge, shaming its shambles from my needle.   I was not worthy.   But my Hope Chest (a handsome cedar trunk-on-bun-feet crafted by my high-school sweetheart-husband-to-be in SHOP) was repository of all those efforts-at-style, along with elaborate lacy trim around every one of the several dozen pairs of pillowslips from our wedding shower.    

The successive decades have occasioned many a careful removal and re-stitchal of almost every one of the beautiful skeins to countless new pairs of pillow cases from when we briefly lived in Shawmut, AL, home of West Point Pepperell, and known far and wide for "lady weekends" to shop at all the local outlet malls.    I can at least match the color and stitch wee, almost invisible stitches to reattach the lovely old laces.   I hope some of the five Grand-Daughters will like some of these---two are avid knitters, with one a genius at drawing with thread.    

And I can still smell the scent of my Mother's Estee Lauder and Coty on those long-ago linens when I open that cedar chest.  Funny turns a story can take, but that's what Wednesdays were made for.  

IMAGINE THAT

 

As we rode through the long olive hills of Kentucky a while back, I glimpsed a lady at the mailbox, comfortable in a yellow sleeveless blouse and jeans, putting in a handful of envelopes and swinging the small red flag to Attention.

So insignificant and so everyday was that small, familiar gesture, that I imagined her day there in that green spot, that immaculate yard with its baskets of petunias swinging on the porch, as she went back into the house, into the orderly rooms smelling of breakfast.   The Dawn bubbles in the empty sink are long-gone, along with their kin from the Purexed single wash-load, gurgled out and down into the faraway ditch in the field.  The almost-done clothes are now perfuming the hall with warm Downy air from the dryer.

She’d washed up the the few dishes “real quick,” except for the black skillet where she’d fried the bacon.   It’s sitting still on the stove, gleaming with bacon grease, for the supper cornbread she’ll bake later.   She’d written a few checks with her first cup of coffee, sitting there at the table in her duster and slides, and soon as she was showered and dressed, she’d run out to the mailbox to get all the bills in before the carrier comes by. 

She’s completed all her little morning rightenings---beds made, yesterday’s Bluegrass Press, well read before supper and folded in the can, and her long shelves of African Violets given their weekly feed of Miracle Gro beneath their blue-light awnings.   Her husband rode off early after his third cup of Folger’s, away to the Co-op to check out those new butterbeans that cook up like speckled ones, into a big pot of purple-brown pot liquor and soft, rich old-fashioned beans.   He’ll be back with the seeds, and probably a lot more, and put the hills in before suppertime, coming in smiling and muddy-handed, pants-legs wet up the shins, from giving the rows a good drenching with the hose. 

Marlee has done all the chores with the TV on louder than usual, for she’s been following along with that awful trial way out there in the West.   She’s followed it all the way through, missing in only a few places when she had to go out to help with the Missionary Luncheon, or the days she takes her Mama to the doctor, and she’d give anything to haul off and slap the smug smirk off that murdering hussy’s face.  Her and her "apostle" boyfriend and their unforgivable spree of mayhem---Marlee's just had about enough of the primping and smiling and lying, and she broke down completely yesterday when the family spoke about their lost brother and friend.  

Marlee is a good Christian woman, and does right by everybody, but she knows, sure as she knows her shoe size and all the grandchildren’s birthdays, that SOME FOLKS just Pure-D need killin’.

BUTTER SCOT PIE OR THEREABOUTS

I love my Cookbook shelves, "curated" in my fashion over the years from gifts, hand-me-downs, yard sales, Goodwill shelves, Half-Price--Books' lower tiers of immense coffee-table volumes with photos like portraits---those last ones retailing for the price of dinner at Ruth's Chris, and marked down to a shameful $3.00 remainder.  I treat them like novels, avidly turning pages, soaking up the scents and color, or marveling at some of the combinations or language.   They vary so widely as from "Now, skin your rabbit," to caramelization color wheels like from a paint store, and I love them all.   And, save for a few baking directions (the science of THAT gets into rocket science sometimes), I hardly ever use a recipe.    I've read over the ones that seem promising, and then I just improvise on the ingredients and taste combinations---my slipshod concoctions have turned out to be palatable, and some, including a crustless quiche that I improvised one Sunday morning in the Sixties, has probably spread over five counties, from word-of-taste request at a hundred weddings and parties over the years.    

 I still re-read sections of my Larousse just for the beauty of the words and images, and just bought a 1926 French edition of a generic Larousse, which I've been meaning to get to all Summer. Might be nice to see what it shows in the translation.

My favorite of all, I think, is the little spiral-bound cookbook by the ladies of our little church in Alabama. The small church volumes with the cardboard covers and little plastic spiral edge contain fourteen recipes for Green Bean Casserole, all printed so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. There are omissions, transpositions, and hilarious typos, in addition to some really outlandish combinations and seasonings.

But the little books contain the best of each cook's repertoire, gleaned from old McCall's and Farm Journals and from under the hairdryer. Mammaw's recipe for pound cake and Sawdust Salad, Mrs. Pund's uncooked fruitcake, the various alchemies which convert a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom into veloute, bechamel, whatever is required---those are the foundation of a kitchen and a cook's reputation. They represent the downhome, solid, family-around-the-table values which are disappearing like vapor from our homes and towns.

The little book I love most was in our little rental house in over on the Alabama/Georgia line, along with everything else which had belonged to the owner, an elderly woman who had gone into a nursing home. We slept in her beds, gathered the clean, fragrant sheets from her clothesline every week, ate from her cut-glass sherbet dishes, read her books, watched the children's almost-Easter-Egg delight at pulling radish after radish from the little garden rows of that one Spring garden we cultivated.   

When we were leaving, I knew her son was to auction off all the household goods, so I asked the realtor if I might buy the little cookbook with its margin-filled writing from its owner's hand. She gave it to me, and I've had it almost forty years now. I smile every time I look at the flyleaf---in her beautifully-formed letters taught to scholars in another time, in the shaky, still-elegant script of an eighty-year-old hand---thin, pale brown scribing, as slender as the trail of a hatpin dipped into a rusty inkwell, it reads:

BUTTER SCOT PIE. LOOK ON PAGE WHERE PIE ARE.

It's sitting there on my shelf, with its "Cream of Chicken Soup" right up there with all the gifts of Ripert and Bouchon and Escoffier's lingering aromas of demiglace and Poulard, and Anthony's timeless way with the Kitchen Language---that scuffy small brown book is a tiny parvenu whose provenance befits royalty to me.  

And snugged in-between in the pages of one of my Mother's "Taste of Home" annuals are the cardsfrom her recipe drawer for Squash Pickles and her Karo Pecan Pie, both in the elegant left-handed back-slant of her 1940's Sheaffer (her Valedictorian prize at graduation).    

Anyone else just "read" them like novels, and just enjoy the having?   Y'all have any treasured and tender souvenirs in your Cookbook shelves?

SCONES ALWAYS REMIND ME . . .

We had scones for breakfast---an odd, quick thought as I perused the shelves for something kinda special for at-home-on-a-cold-morning. We had Bisquick, which we never seem to have, but this was left from making the sausage balls for Christmas morning. And I'd been telling myself to try out making muffins to use up that quart jug of  eggnog left from Christmas---we never seem to drink it, but you just BUY ONE to be sure.  

So that's what I did; I measured out the Bisquick and threw in two teaspoons of sugar, then the custard, and stirred it all together. A handful of dried cranberries, and dropped from two spoons onto the silpat---a scatter of Turbinado sugar sparkles, then oven 425 for 20 minutes. A quick brush with melted butter, a few slices of bacon out of the microwave, and we sat down. It was lovely and different---I DID sprinkle a bit of cinnamon over the last two bits of dough in the bowl before I dropped them, just to try the different taste, and they were quite nice.

I go back often and read a little excerpt from a letter from my dear Cousin Sandra, gone from us way too soon---her imaginary, wonderful life filled with warmth and love, as was her REAL one:

 A rosemary bed interspersed with basil, lavender and multicolored zinnias lines the porch front.  We watch the sunrise and smell the scent of fresh baked scones bursting with blueberries to be painted with cream and sugar and eaten with cheese scribbled with honey, and some sun-kissed figs. We sit sipping coffee and telling our stories.

I will bike to the town square and open my little bookstore and knitting shop around midmorning. The sitting and chatting and loving each other is the first and most important part of our days.

The old worn stone pathway leads from the back door to the

kitchen garden where we gather hands full of herbs, baby field greens, yellow and orange tomatoes, tiny carrots, and pencil thin asparagus for shared meals.

The fresh laundered cloth gives off a faint lavender perfume as it is spread atop the farm table.   A vase of old garden roses sits amongst the just lit candles. The room is filled with the laughter of friends and kinfolk and little ones, and all will be blessed.  And all will be blessed.

We will sit on the porch in the evening and watch the rosy leavings of the sun. This pink-washed peace is for all of us. How I wish I could give away a piece of these days like loafs of warm bread.

As the day draws to a close, we kneel together and bow in adoration with thanksgiving, praying---O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed.   Then in Thy mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest.        Amen.

Always together at last light, we will hold hands and hug and grow young together in this place.

ANNE SHIRLEY WOULD HAVE LOVED MY DRAPES

 

Who has had Miss Sandy's curtains??   You know---those heavy Laura Ashley/Rachel Ashwell chintzy-folds and loops with corner swags like Princess Diana's Weddin' sleeves?   Surely somebody knows someone, or has viewed a prospective house that gave you an itch to grab down those great dollops of fabric and go SHEER for life.

I confess to a thoughtless moment of that loopy frenzy, in the last-house-before-we-bought-this-one:   It was a tall-front-steps leading in to MORE tall steps up to kitchen and bedrooms, with a small mezzanine effect between floors, carpeted and with double windows looking out front, like where a visiting suitor might sit with his hat on his knees til he was announced.      The carpet was a pale baby blue in that 8x10, perfectly sized for a Goodwill sofa we'd acquired, and since I had a bolt of baby-blue polished cotton stashed somewhere---that's all it took.    There were Sandra Lee kits all over K-Mart and WalMart, with all the snazzy do-hickeys to bend cloth to your will, but it was a lazy Sunday afternoon, everybody was gone to the movies, and I had the neatest little stepladder . . .  

I have mentioned quite a few times my absolute ignorance with anything that requires thread.   My childhood attempts at a Sampler would get you laughed off Antiques Roadshow, and any crochet effort became a Barbie hat in nothing flat.    And I didn't CUT the stuff, just rolled the bolt out on the floor til it looked like enough.     The curtain rod was a medium-heavy one, just round enough for a few good swags, with a long floor-length pulled to one side to get the proper "puddling," and surplus enough on the top corner for stuffing in a few dozen fluff-squeezed plastic grocery bags.   No rhyme or reason, no measuring---I just poofed them out to Anne Shirley's Dream of Glory.   They were big blue melony mounds on one end, and it took me quite a time to duplicate that over-blown swag on the other, but I got some semblance of it.    

Getting the "puddle" right on the other end, a big Rosewood vase of Chris' canes on the outer end, and we had a proper sitting room to befit a very unimportant manor somewhere.  It was indeed the mimic of Carol Burnett's Po'Teer dress, in a more modest color.    I smiled every time I went up and down those stairs, and sometimes would just stand in the kitchen and LOOK.   It was stylish at the moment, and I had sculpted CLOTH in to something recognizable, if not prim.   And it was the only place in the house that never had books or magazines or Coke cans or shrugged off sweaters lying about.   And that little bit of Serenity was worth it all. 

I took the whole thing down when we moved to this house, and used the yards and yards to wrap glassware, and have no idea where that great length of blue cotton went to.    I DO, however, have a decades-old little bolt in the front coat closet---happy little teapots on a pinkish sateen.    I just KNOW it will make a perfect cover for the cushions on the park bench in the up Sitting room, come Spring.   Better late than never, and I have some new rolls of duct tape.