BOOKWORM: ANSWER

Thank you for the replies, and we do have one correct answer. (Though I do disclaim, disqualify and banish from all further contests our estimable contestant CARO, who is scary-smart, but who may have heard this puzzle before, living in the same house and all, though I changed the widths and increased the number of books just to mix it up a bit).

It is, indeed, 1 1/2 inches of nibbling for Mr. Bookworm, a nice portly gentleman of leisure, at his Club for lunch. Today it's perhaps a bit of Bulwer-Lytton (dark and stormy nights being right up his alley, all snug as a bug, and all). Then a nice meaty plow through a plate of Gibbon, culminating with dessert---just a smidgen of Carroll, for he DOES love reading the exploits of his Great-Great Uncle, the All-Wise Caterpillar.

See the books above, in the bookends (and NO, Mr. B. did not hollow out that space for inserting the trout---it's all an illusion). As books a customarily arranged in a bookshelf, they stand from left to right, with Vol. I being the first-on-the-left, Vol. II just to the right, and so on.

So, if you look at Vol. I, the front cover is touching the BACK cover of Vol. II. Therefore, Mr. Bookworm, starting at Page 1, would nibble only through the front COVER, which is 1/4 inch (a nice first course).

Then all the way through Vol. II, which is 1 inch total---a lovely entree with vegetables.

Now, approaching dessert, just a nice little nip through the 1/4 inch of the Back Cover of Vol. III, and VOILA!! He's done.

1 1/2 inches of tasty books, the brandy and cigars enjoyed, and he's off to a nice comfy chair in the Reading Room for a nap.

Now, for some Unfinished Business:

There were no responses to the Saturday Puzzles I posted way back in March, so I just completely forgot about it.

http://lawntea.blogspot.com/2010/03/saturday-sillies-puzzles.html

Forthwith, the answers, if anyone's interested:

Left to right, and down the blocks:

Painless operation
Excuse me
Play in the yard
Life after death
Crossbow
Partly cloudy
An afterthought
I’ll be there in a minute
Torn apart

XXXXXXXXXXX

Playwright of Numbers:

1111000

IONESCO

1 11 100 0

I ONES C O

And for the little ditty above the fireplace:

If grate be empty, put coal on.

If grate be full, stop putting coal on.

Don't put coal on over a high fender

You'd be an ass to risk it.

I LOVE puzzles, especially word puzzles.. Hope I haven't bored you with too much all at once.

Have a wonderful MOTHERS' DAY WEEKEND!!

PS I love to solve puzzles, but this spacing thing which JUST WON'T DO RIGHT after the umpteenth time---that's a mystery past my solving. Sorry.

I MISS MISS LUCY!

 

 

 

 

The difference between me and a chef is that I have to do my own dishes.

Miss Lucy

Miss Lucy is a Louisiana institution, like the powdered sugar on your shoes at Café du Monde and the century-simmered LSU/Ole Miss rivalry. She was raised in the good ole Cajun Cookin’ tradition, with homage paid to the Kitchen Trinity in every dish save that Strawberry Thing.

She’s a petite woman, looking much like a cross between Diane Keeton and Loretta Lynn, and quite attractive behind those 80’s glasses, which she pushes up almost as often as she stirs a pot. And stir, she does!!! I’m USED to Southern Cookin’ and all rich ingredients, and the only thing which perturbs me about her cooking is the way she shows off her wonderful non-stick cookware, then drowns out her dialogue with loud, metal-utensil skritches and scrapes of the pot through every recipe.

http://www.lpb.org/programs/lucy/

I used to watch her on RFD TV, somewhere between the cattle auctions and the HeeHaw re-runs, and stepping into her kitchen, across the counter from those pots and pans redolent of simmering peppers and onions and seafood and lots of seasonings, is a step into another kind of cuisine entirely. She is so welcoming and homey, you’re time-transported to childhood and feel as if you’re sitting there watching your favorite aunt cook supper for the family---you wanna get up and start setting the table and pouring the tea.

I cook with butter; my many recipes involving Philly caused me to be christened Goddess of Lily-Gilding on a very well-known cooking website, and Heaven help me---I’ve put a can of Campbell’s Cream Of into more casseroles and gravies than you can shake a spoon at, but Oh, My!!!

The constitution of those dishes on her dashing red stove must be that of wall-spackle; by the third ingredient, that big spoon just stands there upright until she returns with yet another richly-thick item to add.

I’ve looked up her Crawfish Etouffee recipe, and the one online is not QUITE the recipe I watched her make one cold evening several years ago (before we got this new-fangled TV system which looks DOWN on country matters like the folks in 5-7-9 look at me). That pot grew and grew, from the two sticks of melted oleo to saute the peppers and onions, and start the “light roux” with some flour, to the can of Campbell’s, the blocks of Philly (scritch becoming scrape as she tried to incorporate all that paste) and then the seasonings and a coupla pounds of picked-out crawfish tails.

And she’s no wilting lily, herself---she goes out to those big metal buildings on the ponds--- those gifts to the local economy and lots of rural families; she walks in where those ladies are picking that meat, puts on her own apron and hairnet, and sits right down. You can tell a cook who knows her ingredients---and knows where they come from. She’d no more quail at dressing game or gutting a fish than she would at putting on those waist-waders and manning the nets.

I like her; I wish I could still get her program---I’ve  shown her to the family and we’ve laughed at all the folderol, but good cookin’ comes out of that kitchen, and that’s what counts. And if you broke your leg, she’d be at your door with a 9x13 of Shrimp and Cornbread Dressin’ before the plaster cast had set.

I’d love to taste some of the food which comes from her cheery red kitchen; I know it would taste good. And rich. And spicy. I’ve just wondered if maybe instead of headin’ down there to try, it might save time to just throw some creamcheese, Campbell’s and a pound of butter in the blender, and just mainline the calories.


MISS LUCY’S CRAWFISH EGGPLANT DELIGHT
1 medium eggplant
2 eggs, beaten
2 c. flour
2 c. oil
1 stick oleo
1/12 c. each of chopped onions and bell pepper
1 c. chopped celery
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. crawfish tail meat
3 T. white wine
¼ c, Chicken Broth
1 c. green onion tops, sliced
S&P to taste
1 lb. grated Cheddar
1 ½ c. grated Parm
1 9-inch pan of cornbread, crumbled,
OR 3 c. bread crumbs.

Peel eggplant and slice into thin rounds. Dip slices into eggs, then into flour. Fry slices until golden on both sides. Drain on paper towels.

Melt butter in large skillet and sauté onions, BP, celery and garlic. Add crawfish and wine and cook 10 minutes. Add broth, green onions and S&P to taste.

In a LARGE casserole dish layer: Half of eggplant, all the crawfish mixture, all of both cheeses and half the cornbread crumbs. Layer on remaining cornbread, then eggplant. Foil-wrap and bake 350 for 30. Uncover and bake for 10. Serves 6 to 8.

Recipe and picture from her website

That layering order was a bit odd---why separate the cornbread in the first place? I think I'd do Cornbread, eggplant, all of crawfish mixture, half the cheeses, then eggplant, cornbread, then rest of cheese. Just to keep the layers interesting. I LIKE making layers of stuff in casserole dishes, especially when sauteed onions and lots of cheese are involved (SIS---I'm craving your enchiladas). There's just something about the scent of it cooking and just the mere accomplishment of a perhaps complicated thing, then the kitchen is all neat and dinner's ready.

BOOKWORM

One of my favorite puzzles of all time:

In a bookcase, there are three books in the trilogy---Vol. I, Vol. II, and Vol. III.

Each book cover is 1/4 inch.

In Vol. I, the pages accrue to a total of one inch.

Vol. II is exactly one inch thick, total.

Vol. III's pages accrue to a total of 1 1/2 inches.

A bookworm begins nibbling on Page 1 of Vol. I, and nibbles his way through to the last page of Vol. III. Filled to the brim, he lies down for a nap.

How far did he nibble? (ANSWERwill appear on Saturday---anyone else?)

HONEYSUCKLE TREES

Janie at Southern Lagniappe did a lovely post yesterday on the honeysuckle vines and roses she happened upon on a deserted roadside. When I’m in a still, untraveled place like that, I wonder how many blossoms are truly “born to blush unseen, and waste their sweetness on the desert air.” And finding them, preserving them through pictures, and sharing them with an uncountable list of viewers to appreciate them---that was a special gift.

I’m used to honeysuckle---we loved it as children, plucking it unmercifully, sucking the tee-ninecy drop of sweetness from the broken spot at the stem end, and tossing away the still-bright husks without a second thought. We also cut great sheaves of them, to go in cans and bottles and whatever jug or vase we might appropriate, taking them to neighbors and shut-ins and decorating our tree-houses and playhouses within an inch of Miss Martha’s life.

But up here---the honeysuckle is a different breed entirely. The blossoms are there, sweet as ever, small and distinct, the smooth perfection of their whiteness like that of tuberoses and gardenias.

Oh, yes, we have them here---growing more prolific and more burdened with bloom than any I’ve ever seen in that fertile Southern soil.

They are not the quick-creeping vines of my recollection; they’re limbs.

The blooms begin as close buds, tipping the stems with a tiny nipple of whitest-white. Then, as they open, their golden scepters appear, laden with the coveted fruit: pollen. And, as they fade, their entire being is clad in gold, slowly dwindling into a gentle husk, swept away by the wind.

Though I consider EVERYTHING flowers, and figure that the Lord made them all beautiful blossoms, then FOLKS came along and arbitrarily decided that some were weeds, and it pains me to cut down blooms to die and wither in the pile of limbs, I’ve been trimming unmercifully this morning. I’ve lopped and pruned and moved great piles of the cut branches. I’ve cleared yards of them, overgrown several feet into the yard, blocking the sun from the ivy and the other beds.

For these are not ordinary honeysuckle vines; they’re TREES. Honest-to-gosh, housetop-tall TREES.

Out beside the drive, all along the fence, and comprising almost all of the overhanging shade in the arbor, with trunks springing full-blown, are dozens and dozens of these, shading almost the entire yard.

The golden debris on the ground is partly dropped older blossoms, and mostly the beee-julianna maple spinners, taken flight in every neighbor’s yard and finding a home here, in my garden, flowerbeds, gutters, driveway and housetop. The guys swept up an honest-to-goodness two BUSHELS of the things Monday, and that many are back.

This is my arbor-in-progress, with what Chris calls my Gate-to-Nowhere. It certainly DOES lead somewhere---to Peaceful, to Breeze-combed, to Quiet, to Put-Your-Feet-Up, and to RELAX. No Open Sesame; no Clicking Heels, just Enter and Be Glad. Pretty good for a piece of metal found atop someone’s garbage pile.

The small yellow unbidden flower just appeared one day, and has been just a joy to see.

And this, scourge of gardeners untold, is a lovely thing to me---as perfect in its unique self as a snowflake. Chris says it looks like 10,000 Will-O-The-Wisps dancing, holding hands.

So we may have left the South, but it certainly hasn’t left our hearts:

And yes, I tasted a few today---just for Old Times.

CHOCK-LITT CAAAAAKE

A remembrance not my own, just written down from memories of long talks over coffee with an Aunt in Alabama.


I’ve known only two people in my life who didn’t like chocolate. One was a bit strange in other ways, as well, and the other came by her dislike honestly.

One of the Aunts on Chris’ side married very young---she was fifteen and her husband nineteen when they ran away and got hitched---they had been forbidden to see each other until she was sixteen, and it finally got the best of them. So, when all the younguns got all dressed up in sheets and charcoal-smudge whiskers and GrandDad’s oldest clothes on that still-warm Halloween night, they dressed up, too. She had worn clothes-under-clothes for several days, sneaking them out into the barn and stashing a couple of outfits and her best dress and shoes in a pillowcase beneath some old stuff stored out there.

On Halloween, she put on a long gingham skirt and and one of her Daddy’s old shirts over a dress, crammed her stockings and her Bible into her purse, and then “went walking” with the rest of the young people of the community. They were, indeed, of the soap-your-windows era, along with the tip-the-outhouse and some skylarking young gents were known to have opened the front door of a rival’s house and turned two pigs and a turkey in on his Mama’s best India rug.

Aunt Birdie Mae met her sweetheart down the road and they set out on his horse for the next county where he had kin, and where they had visited the church, and knew the preacher. So they were married the next day, staying with his kinfolks for a while, then coming home to a very cold reception from her family.

One of his married brothers had just finished building a new little house for himself and his own bride, and they asked the newlyweds if they’d like to stay with them for a bit until things cooled down. And they did, with nothing but his steady job and the clothes she had carried from home, and apparently they lived on there for quite a little time, for the main part of the story occurred on over in the hot Summer down there in Grand Bay.

The two young women got along pretty well, with the division of labor around the house and yard and milking-barn divided about 70/30, Aunt B said, in favor of the hostess. Aunt B did most of the cooking, all of the kitchen work, a lot of the animal-tending and the milking, whilst her sister-in-law quilted and tatted and made clothes all the Winter through.

Then, in the Spring, the menfolks plowed up the garden plot, and Aunt B. planted and hoed it, then canned everything that wasn’t needed for the three-meals-a-day for the four of them. It got hotter and hotter, she said (and I believe her, for we’ve lived in southern Alabama, too) and the canning seemed to stretch on forever.

The BIL and SIL would go to town almost every Saturday afternoon from the farm, getting the week’s staples such as coffee and sugar and tea, and perhaps some fabric for a new dress, and they’d spend the time visiting up and down the streets with friends and shopkeepers, always stopping at the drugstore, where they’d have a cold Cherry Phospate, with real cracked ice.

And Aunt B., seldom invited on these trips, would stay home on the place, week after week. And every Saturday, she’d pray for the couple to just get gone for a little while, just a breather from the constant companionship, so she could wash her hair and dry it in the sunshine of the yard, and sit in the swing in the shade a bit without a pan of peas to shell in her lap. The noon dinner dishes done, the floor swept, the shoes polished for church in the morning, and a bit of respite in sight, she hoped.

BIL would pull the buggy up to the yard, while SIL checked her hat in the mirror, then she’d walk out onto the porch. Aunt B. would watch her go, relief almost overtaking the fervent prayer that she’d just GO, and then it would come:

Every week without fail, SIL would stop on the porch and turn, or she’d get all the way up the step into the buggy, settle onto the seat, turn to Aunt B., tuck her head coyly, and say, "Chock-littt CAAAAAAKE, Birrrrdie,” in the most annoying voice in the universe. She’d blink beseechingly, with a little smile that knew she couldn’t be refused, since they were so beholden to her and her husband for the roof over their heads.

And so, Aunt B. would plod into the kitchen, get out the bowls and the spoons and the sugar and the Hershey’s can, throw some more wood into that already-glowing woodstove, and start mixing batter and frosting. I can only imagine that sometimes she didn’t plod. I like to think that some days she'd bang things around some---stove-lids and sifters, or yell out what she REALLY wanted to say in the stillness of that empty hot kitchen, or even have to go all the way out in the yard to get those cakepans and spoons from where she’d hurled them.

But she made that cake, every blessed Saturday that they lived there. She worked in that stifling kitchen every week, baking the layers and cooling and frosting, heating the whole house past bearing in that Summer sun, doing her part to help with their upkeep.

And I never DID see Aunt B. eat chocolate---not once.

Not us---I made one yesterday, and this was breakfast.