racheld

I want YOUR Saturday!!! I'm ordering one just like it for next week. Ours was sunny and gorgeous, with a bit of patio sweeping, flower de-heading, and lunch of salad: romaine, slivered sweet onion, parmesan shreds, homemade skillet-toasted Challah croutons, with dill dressing. I came in from the garden with my shirtfront held up, filled with just-picked tomatoes. We quartered two and laid them on the salad. Microwaved a little cup of leftover yellow rice cooked with tomatoes, black beans and cumin. We're in the middle of the city, but I imagined I could smell the drift of leafsmoke from an Autumn fire somewhere in the neighborhood.

I LOVE plastic bowls with lids!!! I'd been debating getting the carousel thing, but then I made a fortuitous trip to my favorite grocery, which has a "back room" in which they stock huge items, case lots, oddities and other esoterica of the munching sort. A nice young man was handing out coupons, which he said were "dollar coupons" for the cases of the Glad disposables...any size. When I looked at it, it was a store-made xerox, which listed the cases as "$1.00 EACH with coupon." What a find!!! He had handed me a handful, so I loaded my basket with eight cases of assorted sizes, and at checkout, it rang up as a $66.00 subtraction, leaving the final cost as $8.00. They are stacked in the storeroom, with a little stack of each size neatly arranged in a plastic shelf in the pantry, lids standing to the side, ready to hand. I find myself pressing leftovers on dinner-party guests, with great hunks of birthday cake or moussaka going home with friends in the cute little packages. Maybe it's the BOUNTY of it, the great number, the WEALTH of the acquisition---I can't say. It's like going to the library and seeing those great riches just arranged there, awaiting my taking. It's a good thing my shopping gene got left out at birth---my nesting one sure takes up a lot of room.

There's a great onion diagram somewhere in the cosmos and you can caramelize only certain shapes? Well, I'LL certainly have a lot to answer to. Especially those ridiculous "blossoms" I made with that cutter gift set last Christmas.

Marshmallows have their place. Though you probably have to have been raised at the kids' table in a home where a crusty-gold pan of sweet potato hunks, dripping with cinnamony-buttery-syrup glistening in streams from each spoonful, with handfuls of the big white pillows tossed on top for a two-minute journey through the oven at the last moment...the resulting brown-encrusted pan of tooth-aching glory is a sanctity unto itself, like a bite of Autumn which must be consumed before the leaves will drift and the snow fly. (Though the prospect of snow where I come from is scarce, and the leaves just turn brown and drop). The idea of marshmallows on the plate, outside their realm of toasted-on-a-stick and sagging gently to cover s'mores, is foreign to a great number of raised-outside-the-South folks. Sue Grafton, speaking as her nifty, otherwise-clever character Kinsey Milhone, said once that the prospect of marshmallows on sweet potatoes was as appetizing as licorice on broccoli. Now THAT is a nauseating comparison, and all-round slur upon the taste of all Southern cooks. Just try it once, like I ventured to try a lox/tomato/onion/schmear-laden bagel and never looked back. Just take a few yellow-gold sweet potatoes and bake or boil them til tender. Slip off the skin, or scoop out that wonderful soft manna inside. Stir it in a bowl with a little light brown sugar, a snowing of white sugar, a glug of good vanilla, the merest THOUGHT of cinnamon or nutmeg. Throw in a good chunk of softened butter and beat it to a creamy, unctuous softness. Slather a nice casserole dish with another handful of butter, and spoon in the golden mass, smoothing the top like icing a cake. Bake it til it's steamy and fragrance is rising from the oven, then take it out and scatter on great handfuls of the tiny size or arrange rows of the big 'uns in neat ranks, sitting firmly on their little round bottoms. Put it back into the oven for a few minutes, and take a peek. The swell of the sugary little masterpieces is amazing---they gather themselves and begin to grow like the finest yeast rolls set to rise. They fill the pan, maintaining only the shapes of their round tops to show their division, then even that smooths over into a sweetly-bubbling mass which turns a gentle tan, then ever more golden as the moments pass. When the surface is perfectly golden brown, remove from the oven and serve as soon as possible, with all the attendant warnings which should accompany hot sugary dishes. Dip into the crusty softness, all the way to the buttery bottom, scooping up layers of orange custard and white frosting, topped with the gently crackling top. Have a taste, and decide for yourself. A hundred years of Southerners will applaud your bravery and adventurous spirit. And agree amongst themselves that you must be kin somewhere in that big ole family tree that spreads from Texas to Virginia, and all the way to the Gulf and beyond.

Dear Daughter brought home a gorgeous round challah this p.m. from her bakery. We intended to have it with dinner, but went on several errands near Chris' favorite catfish place, so we stopped there for dinner. We'll have challah French toast for breakfast tomorrow. Maple syrup is great, but not quite ALL that a bread of this perfection deserves. So, I just hit the fridge and made: 1/2 block cream cheese, stirred with brown sugar Ditto, with powdered sugar and vanilla; another with sugar and orange zest Can you stand another one? One of the little "soft cheese" tubs, contents almost all used up, of cinnamon/brown sugar, into which I put a little more cheese and some more sugar. What the heck, they'll last for DAYS. Fresh strawberries to slice and macerate in the morning. Thick-cut country bacon. Two immense ruby-red tomatoes, picked in the dark as we got home, to slice as a little side dish. French roast in the pot. Now I lay me down to sleep. May I live past breakfast.

Could you clarify please? Haunted with visions of digging dead orange segments, stiff pineapple slices, and shriveled grapes from under couch cushions. And what kind of pie?

Thanks, Ling...peaches are poetry. Last night we had brownie-crumb sundaes with another scoop of the Edy's. A nice contrast to all the quesadillas, salsa and margaritas which made up dinner.

Wooo, Busboy!!! You've come through again. Vive la difference!! And anybody who's tasted Southern barbecue has taken the Holy Communion, is automatically one of the Elect, and everybody's qualified to like, adore, crave, try to replicate, and have dreams about that GOOOOOD pulled pork. (And there's also a platter of beef ribs on Riverwalk in San Antonio that this dyed-in-the-cotton Delta girl is gonna taste again before I die). As I said, v. la d.

Chris brought home two peaches; he extended the bag, saying, "I smelled this as I rounded the banana aisle. I think you could just brush the velvet off." I opened the bag, inhaled the almondy peach breath captured within the plastic. The two must have weighed more than a pound. They had just a blush of true peach, with great swells of deep purple swirled across their necklines, their softness under my fingers a remembrance of orchards and trees and wasps defending their bounty. I touched the button on the electric kettle, removed the two little ID stickers, ran the fruit briefly under the cold water. The silvery stream parted and sluiced away from the unheeding velvet, leaving it as dry and untouched as before, with tiny dewlets adhering in a couple of places. Peaches in a bowl, scalding water cascaded on, time for a minute. Icy water replaced hot; hands into bowl to feel easy skinslip under my cool fingers. The slick globes emerged, inner color mirroring the gentlepeeled skin, round and perfect as an apple on a plate. A soft pat with paper, drying of hands, then the little crescents falling from the knife into the bowl--the scent of Summer, memories of four-bushel days in a hot kitchen, preserving the sweet depths of flavor in jewelly jars. Quick snowing of sugar, squeeze of lemon, gentle toss and cover laid on, to rest on the counter, melding and yielding juices, until time to spoon into two bowls with a scoop of Edy's Double Vanilla. Capture Summer where you can.

The skin of a good ripe musky-dine will pop right off when you squeeze it between tongue and palate---that's the removal method the Good Lord intended. And skins are good for you, all those vitamins stored up for weeks as they basked in the Summer sun. And they make a satisfying "critch, critch" sound when you chew them. We used to have a friend, an older woman who owned a good-sized plantation in the Mississippi Delta. She would entertain with lavish luncheons in her home or out on the shady grounds amongst the magnolias and weeping willows. She always served the same menu: Rosy thick slices of pale pink ham, gleaming with an edge of glistening white fat; Eggplant casserole, a smoky, mideastern-flavored concoction with onions and another whole ham or two ground into the roasted-dark smush of eggplant; Fat green sticks of fresh asparagus with a then-unknown-to-me beurre blanc with minced sour pickles; Perfectly-matched rounds of thick tomato slices, great spirals of them, on cut-glass platters flanked by tall clear compotes of vinaigrette and homemade yellow-egg mayonnaise; Golden rolls already sliced open in the kitchen, a big gob of fresh butter slid in to melt while the bread was too hot to handle. Forty-weight iced tea in heavy frosted goblets with a ring of lemon perched ladylike sidesaddle; a rank of glasses for the several wines offered during the meal; hot and scalding and perfect boiled-pan coffee poured from an immense silver samovar into cups the thickness of an eggshell and stirred with dainty spoons befitting fairy tea. And muscadine cobbler. Though there was a dessert table loaded with ethereal angel cakes on their tall stands, bread pudding with whiskey sauce, and the first and best trifle I ever tasted, a marvel of colors and layers in the transparent footed bowl, the standout dish in Summer was muscadine cobbler. She had rolled the grapes through a chinois to extract the pulp and juice for making jelly, then froze the hulls in little pint tupperware freezer boxes, to mount up over the season into a couple of gallons of sticky, limp, rust-colored deflated balloons. She put the frozen blocks into an enormous stockpot with a couple of bottles of muscat wine, usually from a now-defunct local vineyard we nicknamed the Redneck Rothschilds. The mixture simmered slowly into a seething mass of sugar and grape and flavor concentration unrivaled in cobblerdom. She used the cooking time to make and chill a "REAL shaw-wat crust" featuring several pounds of butter, and plain flour. The grape mixture was poured into long pyrex dishes, topped with a fancy-cut lattice, cream-brushed and sugar-scattered, with little globs of butter between all the frames. When those fragrant pans emerged from the oven just before lunch was served, the entire company followed their noses to the kitchen door for just a peek before we sat down to lunch. Lots of laughing and talking, with keen eyes on the swinging doors toward the kitchen. Big appetites and great draughts of the beverages as the crowd of men consumed their meals; ladies were a bit more delicate in their munching, but in time there came the muscadine cobbler. Huge silver spoons scooped great servings of still-warm pie into wide flat soup bowls; an already-scooped ball of vanilla ice cream was lifted from the great mound of them arranged in a big silver punchbowl, and the lovely fragrance was set down before us. Never before or since have I tasted that particular combination, though we had muscadine and scuppernong arbors on our own lawn. The rusty-brown fruit met their own nirvana in that bowl of warm grapeness, that Summer-in-a-mouthful under the tendrils of melting vanilla. And that's how they eat muscadines where I come from.

Be sure to cc your recipe to the "Gilding the Lily" thread. This one goes beyond gilt and into sequins. Yum.

I want everybody's recipes for all those brussels sprouts and flans and variations of sweet potato things (save for the kebabs with marshmallows---visions of the little white pillows collapsing into sags, then leaking through a grill onto the glowing coals, sending up clouds of badly-burnt sugar fumes to choke and confound the waiting diners). I haven't messed with a Thanksgiving menu in many years, though since it became my own responsibility after we moved far from my parents and other parts of family, the content has changed a bit. Our Thanksgiving was always WAY Southern, with an almost-braised turkey cooked in one of those hightop roaster pans with the little vent doohickey in the top. The bird always emerged very tender, very moist, and so very TURKEY-flavored from its long confinement with itself inside that covered pan with all its steamy concentration. It was almost impossible to remove as a whole entity, with drumsticks languidly slumping toward gravity as it was lifted with the two widest spatulas. Occasionally the entire backbone section would remain in the roaster, as the rest of the bird was pulled upward with a rending, sucking "smock" sound of tearing, meaty flesh. And it always tasted overcooked, in the way a chicken will revert to a too-poultry essence of itself when boiled and boiled by a well-meaning but misled cook hoping for that long-lost flavor of Mom's dumplings or noodle soup. I never tasted roast turkey til I made one myself, in my own home, for an occasion other than Thanksgiving, which was sacred, unchanging, and usually spent at my parents' house. My first in-laws, bless their hearts, also subscribed to the poached turkey method, and the turkey was cooked on WEDNESDAY, pulled into serving-sized pieces, plattered and served cold next day alongside all the requisite sweet potatoes and cornbread dressing and long-cooked canned snap beans from the summer garden, gathered and quarted up with a dash each of sugar and vinegar, and stashed away by the case in the pantry. And the cold turkey was probably a necessity, for Thanksgiving was DEER season, and all the hunters could barely leash themselves long enough to gobble down that dinner with the family, before cramming into pickups with guns and dogs and coolers of food-to-cook at the hunting camp all the rest of that weekend. My dear MIL was known to serve Thanksgiving dinner at the unholy hour of eleven a.m., in deference to her beloved husband's desire to be out and away from such frivolous things as a family dinner which hindered the dash for the woods. Dressing and devilled eggs, gravy and the maroon-jewel cylinder of extruded cranberry sauce, sliced into rounds and lifted with Gran's sterling tomato-slice utensil, all were lost on the eager hunters, whose blood-stir was contained only by their deference to the sensibilities of the ladies present and their regard for the effort and work that had gone into the meal. Why on earth we didn't do the dinner on WEDNESDAY is a mystery past my solving. And now, as for the past several years, we gather at our house, the children and their spouses and some friends, for a slightly-different take on the old favorites, most of which still appear (save for my Mom's traditional spaghetti and cheese and long half-pan of baked beans, brown-sugared to a caramel sweetness, with little rounds of Vienna sausage bobbing here and there). Between the dressing, beans, spaghetti, sweet potatoes, and the fact that the only salads were potato salad and devilled eggs, the entire meal was a plateful of clotty lumps of different colors, all carb-riddled and entirely delicious. Hubby Chris smokes the turkey these days (aside from the epic fried disaster recounted in a thread like I Will Never Again...) and it is juicy and flavorful and fork-tender. We have cornbread dressing, made of unsweetened firm cornbread, mixed with diced onions and celery and tiny bits of fresh snipped sage from the garden, all bathed in a golden broth made by cooking chicken thighs with more celery and onions into buttery, tender smoothness and baked into a crusty, steaming deliciousness. The green beans are still the same, two quarts of home-canned beans from the Summer's bounty, cooked with a hunk of ham and sauteed onion, flavored with garlic and a dash of soy sauce. My dear DIL's famous broccoli/cauliflower salad, brightly garnished devilled eggs in the little nests of Mammaw's own clear hobnail plate, a big gleaming mound of greengreen fresh brussels sprouts with sweet butter and a little sift of lemon zest. A turkey-shaped loaf, complete with proudly-spread tail and beady little eye, shaped and baked by dear daughter at her bakery, gleams in all its egg-glazed glory from the round platter. A tall glass compote of just-burst sweet cranberries, cooked in orange juice and sugar, with little pings of orange zest, alongside the dish of sliced Ocean Spray; a relish tray holding the requisite pickles and olives and long celery sticks; and whatever other dishes are brought into the house and proffered by the loving hands of friends and family present for the occasion. Only the times have changed. The faces are still the same, the smiles and the conversation and the lively banter amongst long-familiar siblings and friends; only a few missing faces, a little change in menu, a bringing-together of my own line, in which I am now oldest. I set out the same dishes, the same foods, the old favorites; nobody is rushing to get to other places, other activities. We reach for each others' hands, bow our heads as my husband offers our Thanks, and agree that we are all each others' blessings. We pass a dish, scoop out a bit of Mother's baked corn from its black skillet, taste and remember.

Quick-thrown-together chicken salad from stuff in the fridge: Two boiled eggs, half a roasted chicken, sliced celery, halved red grapes, with a scoop of Hellman's and a sprinkle of curry powder. Crispy, salty sunflower seeds on top. Wheat crackers and a diet Pepper over ice. Plenty left for lunch tomorrow.

My four-year-old son's first sip of bubbly, icy-cold ginger ale: "I like this!!! It tastes like my foot's asleep!"

We still donate one every year to an October auction for a local Eldercare facility. I do salad prep, chopping, composing, dressing-making, dessert-making, etc., ahead and carry to winner's home or club. Our most requested choices are: Beef Tenderloin, marinated 12 hours in Hubby's secret marinade, then cooked to gorgeous ebony-surfaced perfection falling in melting-tender rosy slices from the knife. He transports one of our Webers, sets it up unobtrusively out of the way in the back area, and cooks it while I do all the kitchen work in their kitchen, and the guests enjoy hors d' and cocktails. The meat rests during the salad and/or a second course of asparagus or pasta or artichokes, then dinner is plated and served. The other favorite is Cornish Hens, stuffed or not, depending on the season and hosts' taste. Sides are seasonal, ranging from good old Southern cornbread dressing, fresh cranberry compote, acorn squash puree, broccoli rabe and red onion saute, to risotto, pilaf, potatoes Anna, or standard mashed potatoes with all the toppings of a loaded baked, along with any green vegetable in any form requested.. Salad course is usually a composed salad, with several prettily arranged components, or perhaps a butter-lettuce, bacon, orange and toasted pecan one with citrus vinaigrette. I'm lucky that DD is a dessert-maker extraordinaire; she can whip up anything from profiteroles to a croquembouche to lemon cheesecake to chocolate truffle cake in a couple of hours, along with carved melons full of fruit, and any kind of decorated cake or torte needed. And your timing is perfect, just right for settling into wonderful Autumn dishes and decorations, with that spicy nip in the air and the colors so beautiful. Your Seder idea is super---I've ALWAYS wanted to attend one.

Chessmen!!! They taste like a crispy, crunchy version of licking the Eagle Brand can lid. And I think Miss Paula makes a Gucci version of Banana Pudding with them, instead of Nilla Wafers. Gotta try it.

Ritz crackers with various toppings, the tablespoon or so left over from making each of the wraps for Daughter's birthday party tomorrow: Corned beef cheese ball with scallions; chicken salad with minced apples and toasted pecans; pimiento cheese. A handful of celery sticks and snow peas. Diet pepper fizzed over ice. The scent of luscious marinated chicken breast hunks stir-frying for a mushroom/chicken/broccoli/bechamel dish.

It has been a delightful surprise to find two old favorites mentioned today---Community just above, and Eight O'Clock in another thread. I've been reading coffee reviews and mentions and diatribes in several publications and online for quite some time, and thought perhaps my plebeian taste would sink me into coffee oblivion, banished from the sipping ranks forever. I was beginning to think that if I did not brew Desiderata #3 or lay my hands on some Earl's Purchase or Komodo Leavings at Sunrise, I had not lived. My own love affair with coffee began at four, when the lovely woman across the street (Mother of four rowdy, loud, elbows-and-fists boys) undertook the task of teaching me to read. I would climb her white stone steps, stand in that fierce Southern sunlight between the fragrant, reaching evergreen shrubbery, and ring her doorbell every day. And no matter what the hour, the door would open upon paradise, the aromas of coffee and old paper, mingled with the wisp-odors of her Kents and cologne. We would read for a bit as the dustmotes danced in the bright sunlight, then she would call out, "We ladies would like our coffee now, Birdie." I could hear the preparations through the swinging dining-room door, as Birdie scooped and ground and measured. Water hissed from faucet to saucepan, clanked gently onto stoveburner. Coffee was scooped in, boiled up, taken off the fire, set on for another bare simmer, then cascaded through a brown-tinged stocking affair into the small flowered pot. I'd never seen this coffee-making before or since, until a few days ago, I channel-surfed through a Penelope Cruz movie, paused for a moment, and there it was, a bedraggled, limp tobacco-brown gauzy bag, through which she poured a concoction of cinnamon sticks, coffee, herbs and perhaps wolfbane, all of which combined in a brew which made whole populations of men follow her down the street. Ours had no such properties, but it was wonderful and sweet with scoops of Domino and richened with cream. It was round and scalding and perfect. It held the essence of whatever the first-planted bean reached for when it thrust its first two little leaves out into that hot damp sunlight. I did not know the words Finish or Depth or Roast in reference to the brew; I just knew it was a wonderful discovery, and I loved it. It's played a part in my enjoyment of coffee all my life, and I'll always remember the dear kind woman who fostered my first steps into good books and good coffee.

Me, Too!! Me, Too!! (frantically waving from the Heartland). Just the pleasures of that porch would suffice, and with your beautiful food and delicious words...what riches. We're having a party here on Sunday, as well, so it's gonna be a great week!!

I've been away for the weekend. There's always something going on when I return, and this time, it was mad-squirrel disease, brain eaters, and lethal persimmons. All within the confines of one thread. Amazing. Never could even WATCH when my Dad fed a tiny squirrel brain to my baby sister. She'd open her wee mouth, engulf the delicacy, and grin as she chomped it down. Not me---I could barely stand to be at the table, and fled or covered my eyes when Daddy extracted the tongue with a cocktail fork and ate it. That's just nasty. Those yellow little teeth, and I always wondered how that tiny mouth was washed clean enough to eat its contents. Definite EEEWWW moments. And I've cooked many a HEADLESS squirrel myself, as my sons were always bringing home game of one sort or the other. The standard method is a long simmer or braise in plain salted water, then a quick dip into seasoned flour and pan frying. Then almost all the frying grease is dumped out, a couple of tablespoons of the seasoned flour made into a nut-brown roux, and the above broth poured in to roil up and smooth out into a nice brown gravy. Though I did not eat that either. I married into a huntin'-fishin' family, and learned to cook anything the guys brought home. So the toxin must be a chemical, not a bacterium---else it would be killed off by such thorough cooking, though maybe with just the frying step, and the heat does not completely cook the well-enclosed little brain. What in the (*&^ am I doing discussing this before breakfast???!!! But persimmons, now, are a different story...they are one of the most beautiful creations ever to hang on a tree. The smooth heavy golden globes catch the light on their skins like no other fruit, and the gentle haze of the velvet only enhances the shine. We had one tree just out from the house, and before the leaves fell, the fruit winked through the green like so many tangerine lanterns; after leaf-fall the hanging fruit was a sharp contrast to the dark, gnarled limbs, like an immense twisted bonsai clustered with jewels. Though I saw this tree later in my life, it was exactly what my childhood imagination had conjured up when Aladdin walked into that cave of treasures. I used to stand out looking at it as the sun set, my twin trails of breath wisping out into the first-frost-coming air, and that stark tree against the rose and gold of the deepening twilight is seared into my memory as one of my most valued picture-memories. And I sometimes imagined that the translucent golden fruit had a glow of its own, shining there on that black outline of a tree. I'd gaze at it til the light faded and the color paled and darkened with the coming of night. And there was always a bowl of the beautiful bounty on our dining-room table, a still-life in shades of orange and deepest yellows and the most indescribable peachy gold. Just breathtakingly beautiful for the few days of their prime, voluptuously resting, then growing weary with the sag of time. I miss those beautiful things, though I could not stand to eat one...sweet, but like flavorless Jello. Just beauty is sometimes enough. edited for infinitives and stuff

It's still rib-grilling weather here, and I can smell the drift of smoke through the open back door, but nesting-in casserole weather is coming soon. The only Campbell's I ever use is Cream of Chicken, and that only in a casserole recipe provided by Hubby's FIRST Mother-in-Law, a spare, sweet woman who graciously welcomed me to the family with several recipes her Grandchildren liked. So I've made it for many years, and especially everytime they're here. And when it's just the two of us, I usually use the last of a Sam's chicken from the day before. (Maybe it's the MSG, but we LIKE them). It uses the soup, chicken, a dab of mayo, garlic, and a couple of cans of Mexicorn, with the nice little pepper bits for flavor. It's mixed with a couple of cups of leftover white rice, crushed potato chips on top, heat til bubbly. The kids love it, and will ask for it even when we're having chicken or turkey as a main dish. And in the South, "white sauce" predates the Cream of Mumble by a hundred years. Little girls learn the two-two-two formula for a standard sauce while they still have to climb on a chair to reach the stove. And Bechamel is still mostly a foreign word. Mention it and the standard replay would be, "Bechamel. Bechamel. Isn't that the young family that lived in the Prysock house for a while?"

OKAY. I surrender. Your browned Miracle Whip trumps my powdered sugar six ways from Sunday. I grovel. I cringe. I slink away.

Lovely thoughts, lovely articulation. We entertain from the downstairs kitchen, which is practically underground, with a 2x1 window high over the sink. Right now it's covered with a gauzy haze of curtain inside, and outside, a climbing wild grapevine which lets in little flashes of gold between the gently wind-swaying leaves. And since the view is over my head, so to speak, I have an ever-changing gallery of watercolor pictures, chosen from my huge "art" closet upstairs...flowers and street scenes and fruit and gentle mountains with cloudhats and shady clefts. But mostly flowers, and all art courtesy of the Goodwill framed-section. And I alternate, as well, between tapes of Jane Austen and Dave Robicheaux, taking my movements from the swaying skirts of Emma and the sisters Dashwood, and my momentum from the dangerous dashes through the swamps and bayous, the Southern backroads and fishcamps in pursuit of blackhats and badmen. A voice soothes, lulls, excites with the words of intrigue and romance, pursuit and languid picnics, manners and mayhem, keeping my mind so enthralled that my hands have swirled and brushed and cleaned and sprayed and wiped all the traces of the party away, started the steady hum of the dishwasher, and turned out the light on another nice evening. I've always loved the preparation, the anticipation AND the cleanup of a party, almost as the actual HAVING of the moments with friends. I like the putting-together of pretty things, of lovely food, of wonderful friends who sit late, feet tucked beneath, wine swirling in the candlelight. And I like doing the dishes. The order I can create and restore the next day when I open the dishwasher door and remove all my lovely dishes and silverware and glasses brings order to ME as well, as I stack them on the table, enjoy the colors, smooth my fingers over a pattern or a relief, and put them back into their places until the next gathering. Or until I just decide to set the table special. Or mostly every day, with plates of every description emerging from cupboards and shelves to make a fiesta, a sushi bar, a pasta party just for us. I wear heavy yellow gloves to do the washing, with the water heater set almost at its limit, and never add cold to the wash or the rinse. And apple Dawn is one of my favorite fragrances.

You must admit all the hot flashes receded a bit. Sorry for all the reactions, but 'tis true. The little teeny tunasalad and chicken salad sandwiches I've spread, cut and served would fill three pickup beds and the trunk of a Sedan de Ville. Hope nobody really fainted. Or gagged. But thanks for the giggles.

Oh, Susanna. Everytime I pass the table upstairs with the stacks of decorating and cooking and art books, and see the one titled "Pleasures of the Porch" I expect to see your name on the spine. Gorgeous. The outdoors seems to be in tune with your pink and green color scheme. Lovely. Our Panera is less than three blocks away. But then, DD bakes glorious, beautiful breads of all kinds and flavors for a living, so we don't frequent the store very much.