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Florence King is the Queen of writing about G.R.I.T.S. and Belles and all manner of Southern Womanhood; Fannie Flagg is an absolute genius with a golden gift for dialogue and character and scene, as well. My own Mother was given a lifelong wedding gift by her favorite aunt, a thin, rangy woman with an ever-present Camel in her hand or between her lips. She called Mother in one day just before they were to get married, had her set up the ironing board, and handed her a set of khaki work clothes and several of my uncle's white shirts. Not until Mother had ironed them to Aunt's satisfaction did the lesson cease, and this was not a steam-iron affair---this was a glass Coke bottle with a sprinkler stopper, sprinkling JUST SO, then ironing with a curly-cord iron plugged into the outlet on the side of a ceiling light fixture. THEN, they went to the kitchen, where Mother cut up a chicken, did all the appropriate hand-scrubbing and sanitation necessary to a kitchen, then fried the chicken, made a smooth, lump-free gravy and a chocolate pie from scratch, using the crust Mother had made that morning and had chilling whilst she ironed. Aunt had felt sorry for Mother because she'd never been allowed in the kitchen except to do dishes---she was left-handed and made Mammaw nervous, cutting "backward like that." All that probably accounts for my having been allowed free run of kitchen, knives, stove, and pantry from a very young age. Maybe that's why I like to cook so much. And G-girls mostly say "Bee-hind." And sometimes, in exigent circumstances, they can be heard to mutter, "Dayum, Bobby Ray!"

Yep, just last night. A client of ours is a food distributor, and is always handing Chris something to try---yesterday's goodies included two 10-serving bags (frozen) of Tennessee Pride sausage gravy and a jar of neon pickle relish. I looked at it in the twilight-approaching room and took it to a lighter place to be sure. Sure enough, it's an "authentic" relish without which Chicago hot dogs would be incomplete, and one of the ingredients is proudly listed as "Blue #2." I was planning nice sandwiches of the luscious pink ham Chris baked on the new grill, in foil, for several hours, open for another hour or two, to a melty-tender pinkness. He asked, "How about biscuits on this cool evening?" and so I made five big ole cathead biscuits, brushed with melted butter before and after, for a lovely sheen. The bags of gravy were flattened, frozen pillows of gray with lots of sausage crumbs. I laid them on the cutting board and sliced each into four neat squares with the big cleaver, inserted them into quart freezer bags, for seven more breakfasts, and heated one as directed. The package requires 16 ounces of water added, so each little pack will take four (they say, but it was so thick and clotty that I added at least twice that as it heated---but Chris said it was delicious). The ham quickly sizzled up into soft, tender slabs, perfect for inserting into a golden, steamy biscuit. He had fig preserves in his "dessert" biscuit with a pat of soft butter; I had threads of honey on mine. More of that lovely cold mango and pineapple sticks to finish.

I wanna bring this thread back up especially for Chufi, over on the dinner thread. She's in Amsterdam, but her picture of a fried drumstick, properly marinated in buttermilk, Tabasco, etc., then cooked to the perfect golden-brown, perfect shattery crust, is worthy of any Below-the-MD-cook in possession of her Mammaw's black skillet and a leftover cotillion corsage. G.R.I.T.S. Girls are of a Southern State of MIND, not geography. They are be-mannered at birth, born to be gracious, social, tolerant of others' foibles, and just a tad bit short-tempered with foolishness and unkindness. They may be young or old, hair ranging from whalespout wisps to blue once-a-week helmets sprayed into submission at their Standing Appointment. They almost all own pearls, gloves, compacts, and several sturdy purses; hats are optional, though the G.R.I.T.S set probably own as many feathery sweeps and veiled toques as the Royal Families of Europe, and wear them with more panache, as well. They can take their French manicures straight home from the salon and plunge right into that bowl of buttermilk chicken, flour it up and fling it in that skillet beside the pot of collards as well as they can sashay their satin-clad selves into a country club, the opera house or the White House. Dirt under those fancy nails just means they've been in the tomato patch or the rosebed or the horsestall, but they clean up REALLY well. They have a zest for life, for literature, for Family and Friends; both are legion and necessary. Countless generations are remembered and celebrated; Grandma's necklace is a lovely accent to Granddaughter's wedding dress, and the tiniest new member of the clan is welcomed with her own add-a-pearl and a whispered word of womanly wisdom in her tiny ear. The littlest ones know to say, "Yes, Ma'am" and keep their skirts down and their knees together on their trikes...they aspire to be cheerleaders and doctors, mothers and teachers, writers and world-fixers, and usually achieve any and all of those, and much more. Martinis and Mystery, Gloves and Lawnmowers, Satin and Skillets---all are part of a G.R.I.T.S. Girl's makeup, along with good manners, kitchen knowledge, love of animals and the outdoors, luxurious perfume and scandalous underwear and perhaps a good knock of bourbon on occasion. It's a soothing, sizzling Sisterhood, and place is no deterrent to membership. It's all in the outlook.

I just happened upon three half-pound shiny black tins of Grace Rare Tea, from the Grace Tea Company: Darjeeling, Superb 6000; Owner's Blend (Rare Congou---I had no idea what this was; the name was enchanting---it's a lovely sippy tea, almost nutty) and Connoisseur (Master Blend), which, despite the luxuriously-elite name, is a nice morning cuppa, plain or with cream and sugar. They're all lovely, brewed in the sweet little clerical-collar insert to my ancient McCormick (free premium in the 40's) teapots. We're avid RoT people, and have almost every flavor on hand. Friends from England brought us a Royal Purple tin of delicious "Wimbledon" tea last Summer. Wish we could buy that blend here.

Whatever the fee to your bookseller, it was worth it for this line alone. Thanks for sharing it for free.

Or check the temp by reaching out ONNNNE fingertip to gently rub that bit of steam off the little glass window over the numbers. Ouch.

Thanks, Pam...happy Holidays and GET SOME REST!!

My first thought in the thread was the clouds of Arpege spritzed about by dorm mates in college lo these many years ago...a distinctly unpleasant food additive. And that segues into hot glue and boiled Velcro? Is there any taste transference? I've never made either recipe, but somehow have acquired just the SPOONS for the dish...don't know whether to hang head in shame or make the eggs for dinner.

I've nothing to add re: wraps except that you have to take a look over on the "Regrettable Foods" thread---post #426. Some enterprising chef has spelled out "Buon Compleanos" INSIDE the rice---not on top. The nori is twisted into the letters and goes all the way through---I asked.

I bow low and kiss your sweet-encrusted hands. The idea of all of you, in a swirl of sugar and butter and flour and chocolate and all the creamy, dreamy, crusty, luscious variations thereof---sugarplums dancing, indeed! You all have my admiration and vicarious delight, with a wish for a warm footbath and comfy cushion at the end of those long, exacting days. And a shower the minute you get home---all that deliciousness floating in the air, dripping onto surfaces, sticking to hands and aprons and sleeves---I am reminded of every trip to Cafe' du Monde---their staying open 24 hours seems to omit a time to mop the floors, so every step is accompanied by a little scritch scritch of shoesoles on the sugar-snowed floor. I especially envy those of you who are making the BIG look-into sugar eggs---the rich kid across the street had one when i was a child, and she'd let me look into the magical scene of bunnies and a far-off castle---I probably left eyebrow traces on that thing. It was the most transporting, lovely thing I had ever seen, at seven, and I longed for one of my own with a fervor usually reserved for bikes and dates with Davy Jones. I wish you all well on these long, bone-wearying days. The fruit of your hands will delight all the senses, give joy and pleasure and great memories, and will be remembered longer than you realize.

Well, Live It Up, it looks as if you did exactly that, to your guests' great enjoyment. Catering your own wedding is a BIG endeavor, and you seem to have carried it off with great aplomb and style. Welcome!!

In the beauty of all the arranging, I didn't even SEE the "Buon Comp" until just now!! Was it written with a writing tip AFTER? Please tell me it's not spelled out with intricately-curved bits of Nori arranged inside the rice, spanning from top-to-bottom with every slice like that Christmas-tree-in-a-piece-of-hard-candy thing. That would just be too MUCH, somehow.

I came on to post a couple of verses also set to "Turkey In the Straw," but things here are best left just as they are. Just for today. Neither Mozart nor Eminem could follow that at this moment. (wandering off to replay BoRap, just for reassurance)

Cerise Octopi and Bento Bunnies!!! This thread gets a new life of its own and grows and grows. Well, AWWWWW is better than EWWWWWW any day, and certainly beats and .

Yep---nine nice packages in the freezer, from a foray South by DS#2 last weekend. He and DS#1 (who still lives down there) and a friend from here had a good ole time fishing midst the greening and the coming of Spring...they were even there for Time-Change and figure that by rolling home on Sunday, they lost TWO hours in the exchange of mileage and time--one in the night and another as they drove home. They count it well worth it for these nice fish and the two great gatherings they had out at the Huntin' Camp. #2 already cooked a nice mess for his family, and we'll have some probably tomorrow, with hushpuppies and slaw and maybe some special fried potatoes, with the nice flour batter with garlic and salt and pepper and paprika, making little crispins all over the fluffy, crisp slices. Homemade tartar sauce with our own last-year-canned dill pickles and some sweet onion. Big frosty glasses of 40-weight tea with lemon, maybe a cobbler out of that last couple of bags of peaches I put up last year. All this to say: I cook fish, and gather raves and compliments. I just don't like eating it. And Fishing, itself---the calm of the lake/stream/river, the soft sigh of the water against the boat---all that is just delightful, but speaking as one who married into a family of Huntin'/Fishin' fanatics, it just ain't fun when you have three little children, all a year apart, and you spend part of your lake-time escorting the girl one back to the house to weewee and the rest of the time either baiting a hook, taking a fish off a hook, or getting someone's hook untangled from his screaming sister's hair. I learnt my lesson, and now, I just let the fish come home to me. PS: Big Hoss, whatever happened to Uncle Bud's Catfish place? We used to stop several times a year on our way South and back---have they all closed now? It was Chris' favorite place for catfish, besides our house.

Girl Scout campfire round: Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts, Musculated Monkey Meat........ Please somebody else continue this one, if you dare...I cannot bear writing down the rest. add grimace and blush smilies; when have I been so embarrassed? edited because I had blocked out some of the horror, and thus misquoted

Gotta make THAT, Brooks!!! Sounds terrific. (besides, there's all that pesky leftover blood orange oil hanging around in the cupboards)

Then count me amongst the weird phalanx, as well. An ancient, arthritic Presto percolator, though I bring it out and set it amongst an espresso machine, a Senseo, several presspots and drip pots, and somewhere in there is a little Aladdin-shaped bottom-to-top Mediterranean thingie that makes luscious syrupy brew. My parents loved perked coffee, and the SHAPE was even important...none of those little-perkynosed-top-pour things...a nice SPOUT was necessary, and the Presto has quite a nice profile to its credit. I'd always set up the pot the night before, and when I emerged from my bedchamber, the smell of that brew and the sight of Daddy, feet up, in the pool of golden light from the good reading lamp, in my easy chair with a copy of Louis L'Amour---those are some nice memories. And I wouldn't part with my old Franklin stove for all the stainless-steel, console-like-a-rocketship marvels of this or any other age. She's a black, gleaming, six-burner whiz, with a WIDE oven (whose idiosyncrasies run to blowing out the pilot when you open the door without turning on the gas first). I LOVE her, and she has a lovely family history, as well, having nourished a generation of middle-schoolers (including DS #1) in our little town before coming to me some twenty years ago. And my Mammaw's chipped Homer Laughlin pieplate---I'm not a cracked-crockery user, but this one---it's turned out more lemon icebox and coconut cream and chocolate pies, all nestled into that never-fail family-recipe crust and topped with egg whites just stolen from the hen, than any lineup of pans in a restaurant kitchen. It's a pretty ceramic plate, with faded roses in the center, and just a whisper of the gold inscriptions all round the edge. I not only JOIN the Weird Ranks, I'm a founding member.

Avon Lady demonstrating Rose scent in a spritzer + curtains and carpets holding smell for several days, til laundered and steamed = YUCK.

Oh, Ducky, Dear, That entire page was hilarious!!! Especially the amorous bull. I will add a bit of a caveat: years ago, a dear friend had as a guest a young Japanese woman with whose Mother my friend had carried on a church PenPal correspondence for some thirty years. The daughter was to be in the USA on business, and her Mother had requested that she take a side trip to meet her only-by-mail friend. SO. They were to be so busy with little outings and sightseeings, etc., that I invited the family and their guest to our home one evening. Then I somehow got it into my head that I needed to cook something Japanese. I checked out books from the library, I inquired of another local family, I read and perused and tried to think how I would find all those exotic ingredients. So I just gave up and did a good old Southern Sunday Dinner, for an evening meal: Baked ham, green beans right out of the garden, with tiny pink pearls of new potatoes, coleslaw, devilled eggs, tomatoes still warm from the vine, Powderpuff Rolls and sweet tea, banana pudding and fresh peaches right off the trees in the yard. Good old Carb Central, but quite a number of typical Southern dishes. And I was, in essence and afterthought, offering a guest the best fruits of our labors, with the plants that produced them only a few yards from the table. And the guest LOVED it. She ate and ate, marveling at the fresh juiciness of the tomatoes, and the perfect baby beans in their pot liquor. Then she said: "I'm so glad you did some typical American food---everyone else I've visited here cooked some kind of sukiyaki, to make me feel welcome, and I didn't think I'd ever get to eat any American food. This is wonderful." I was glad that she felt that way, and in retrospect, felt a bit of relief in that I did not go bumbling about trying to make something she might find find familiar, yet regard as an amateur venture, much as if I'd been in her home, and she had whipped up one of those mushroom soup-bean casseroles. I look on that time as a moment that I escaped trying TOO HARD to do something unneeded in the first place. Favorites are favorites, but it might be a particular recipe, or a particular cook making that dish so special to him...it's just that old thing about not serving your guests a dish you're making for the first time. (All the above wordiness brought to you by my own absolute abhorrence of the horrid stuff--I watched Bourdain grimace down the rotted shark and thought, "I'll bet that tastes just like lutefisk!"). edited because I had forgotten the peaches---Aiko took a bite and looked up with tears in her eyes. After all the hustlebustle of cooking and arranging, how could I forget a reaction like that, from something so simple.

Tea bags, S&L, fruit, bag of cashews or almonds, chocolate anything, one of my little sharp Radas, sometimes one of the small cleavers, spices (depending on destination), Chris' little silver flask w/scotch or CR, Some kind of salty crackers, a big travel mug, his pillow, my journal, Cryptic Crosswords (Aeronaut ), a pen, our books and a lot of pretty cooking and decorating magazines for relaxing. And when we go to his parents' house, I usually take a cake, pies, banana bread or muffins, everything needed for breakfast, and several Tupperwares of salads--chicken and tuna and pasta, along with several frozen casseroles and some loaves from DD's bakery. The crowd gathers, reaching eighteen or twenty for dinner for a couple of nights. We travel 700 miles with coolers of food, and only one SIL brings a contribution to dinner: a box of Kraft M&C, cause that's all her children will eat. I can't complain---we lived there for several years, and I spoiled them. It's also much easier to cook everything here and have it all ready when the hordes get hungry. I also take a percolator and several measured-out baggies of coffee, because they buy only instant. His Mom beams and smacks her lips over the good brewed coffee; one of my favorite memories of her is that every morning we wake her with a cup, sit on her bed in our jammies, and talk for a long time. His Dad comes in and serenades us with one of his dozens of harmonicas, the brothers begin to arrive, and we all go have muffins and sausages and laugh a lot. ETA: the only thing we left behind at customs was one apple, confiscated when we returned from England. BIL had carried a five-pound bag over, distributed amongst his suitcase and his carryon, and no one said a word. He bought a couple at a street market in Bath, and they took away the lone survivor at Gatwick. He didn't care---he'd been sampling Scotches in the duty-free since five a.m. They also sheep-dipped our shoes, because we had been to a farm in Scotland; the weird thing is that they didn't ask if they were the shoes we were actually WEARING at the time.

Well, this was over quicker'n Christmas!!! My server was down for the day, and here it is, all finished. I hate to see you go---the glimpse of another world so far away, yet so kitchen-kin, has been mesmerizing. Thank you for your words and pictures, your kindness and your respect for your workmates. It all came through the page, and we'll remember your generous, welcoming spirit taking such good care of your guests and staff. Please feel free to hop in with updates any time. They'll always be welcome, and we'll look forward to more views out that sunny window into the BLUE.

Is this perhaps the work of THE Artist? Lovely. If not, do you share? We'd love to see.

To get back onto the subject of takoyaki though, you're mistaken about the pan they had. The pan, called a takoyaki-ki, is of special design, which has round cup indentations in it, which along with turning the batter when it's cooked enough, forms the balls of takoyaki. It's not surprising to make that mistake, considering how much batter was all over the pan though! ←

Loved the "in the kitchen" pics. More, more!! I also love my Senseo, but it takes a bit to get it just right, awaiting the blink to stop, placing the pod to get a good seal, heating the milk separately (micro), etc. And just this morning, I made the first pull with YESTERDAY'S yukky pod!!!. I'm not at my best at Oh Dark Thirty, and my clock runs FORWARD into WeeWee time, perky and goingoingoing into the late hours, but awakening to them is something else. So, I think your personalized "pods" for your coffeemakers are just right. One of our favorite hotels has these in the rooms, and I like their taste. And, speaking from a Deep South perspective, would the warthog be anything like a Wild Hog in flavor, do you think? We've been gifted occasionally with a roast or a loin, and it's like a game/pork, just as you would expect, though it does not require all the "traditional" vinegar soakings and salt baths so beloved of the Southern kitchen. I'm also trying to get my mind around a Warthog farm, if indeed they are farm-raised---or did I misunderstand that bit upthread? Little corrals of the lusty beasts, snorting their way to the trough, stamping those pointy feet and marking their territory, gazing out onto the far horizons with their squinty, calculating eyes. And I love your respect and consideration for your staff...some of mine were with me for twenty years, and we always fell right back into that easy comradeship and caring for the work. Do you ever serve a cold bread---my Mom's banana loaf is in the fourth generation now...Granddaughter #1, now seven, has been measuring and mixing those wets and drys since she was three. It's a favorite here, and requested by all returning guests and family for brunch or breakfast. Little slices surrounding a small dish of cream cheese or mascarpone---a nice thing to have on the table til the "hots" arrive, or just waiting by the coffee and tea station to nibble whilst gazing out at that glorious horizon framed in your windows. This is one of my favorite blogs of all time.