racheld

I forgot to mention Mrs. P's mother, who lived with them for a great part of the year. She would smash a "sacca-reen" tablet between two spoons and stir it into her tea. It was "for diabetics" and thus would negate all the sugar content.

Until you mentioned work being done by traveling tinkers, I had forgotten the little battered top-half-of-a-double-boiler with its little metal elbows for handles, given me by the daughter of a childhood next-door neighbor. It has a tiny washer-arrangement in one spot, inside and out, with a wee smitch of cracked black rubber beneath each. EVERYTHING was re-used, repaired, re-modeled in her lifetime, I suppose, mostly by the traveling folks with the big old panelwagons (descendants of those creaky wagons with all sorts of metal utensils swinging clank-in-the-wind on the outside). The tinkers came through town every year in Spring, and ladies (or their kitchen help) came out to meet them, bearing their broken or dented items, or great sheaves of knives and scissors for the attention of the wizened little gnome manning the spinning sharpening stone. The men would fix or polish or sharpen, whilst the women of the group shopped in the little stores on Main Street. The children were interesting and were welcomed onto our swingsets and sandboxes, and later on in life, I remember a quite dashing young man in an embroidered vest. I wonder how many of us town girls dreamt of that gleaming smile and cascade of dark hair. But the neighbor's little pot was used exclusively for making good ole 40-weight Mississippi Iced Tea. She would put the big white "kittle" on the burner, toss a good handful of Lipton leaves into the small pan with a mountain of sugar, and then pour on the boiling water. (Her borrowing of a great quantity of tea from my Mother and paying it back by putting a box into Mother's basket whilst they were in Kroger--that's another story). The tea "steeped" the required time, was strained into a pitcher of ice and water, thence poured over more ice in big clunky goblets too heavy and round for my hands. And she put LEMON in it. Nowhere in my house was ever a lemon for tea; my Mother shuddered at the thought of any kind of sweetener approaching her tea, thence lemon was deemed unnecessary, save for the odd icebox pie, to take "the fish smell" off your hands and kitchen utensils, and perhaps a hair-rinse now and again. Mrs. P's tea was nectar for whatever gods graced that hot, steamy Delta we lived in. It was almost syrupy-sweet, extra-flavorful from the unaccustomed lemon, and just the best thing this side of a cherry Coke at the local drugstore. I would lift my half-full goblet, swig it down, then wipe my lips of all traces, fearful that my clean-fanatic Mother would know that I had been sipping something made by a woman she considered just this side of "trashy in her ways." Not in a moral way, but in housekeeping and yard-tending. And I did love that tea, and so inherited the little pot when Mrs. P. broke up housekeeping to move in with her daughter. The little round silver discs will spin on the wee knob-ended pin which keeps them captive, the memories flood in, and the little pan is never used except for remembering.

I've had luck with freezing the center in the molds, then dipping. Your flavor seems quite apropos, and should be easy, considering all the champagne centers out there. On another note: Hubby's homebrew library yielded a chocolate-flavored beer (along with garlic and chicken flavors. Never mind).

Thank you, Robyn, for that wonderful recounting of what had to be a long, grim journey. And not just the voyage---the arrival (alone at 13??!!) into that stormy, moving mass of people moving along in line after line like cattle, having their belongings seized and their bodies deloused and their names changed to suit the interviewers' interpretations. And just the first step out into a strange land. If you'd care to share more----it's a beautiful, scary story, and a part of the heritage of most of us. I'm kind of one of the "been here forever" group---arrivals in 1700's of most of one side of my family--just hop off the boat and grab a shovel. This tale and your telling of it really touched me, and the stark, battered lines of that cup and its history will remain in my memory for a long, long time.

Glorious keepsakes/heirlooms/pieces of your rich history. By the sewing of the spoons "to use" did that mean she left her family behind, and braved the new country alone? Can you tell more about her arrival, the life she made for herself, etc.?

I knew some scientific study or some great institution would get around to it. And now it's happened!!! This Hallowed Hall of Culinary Excellence has made the final breakthrough---linking a man's car to his preferred chickenpart!!! Film at eleven. Symposia at Harvard.

Every year when my children were small, we invited all their friends from church to a "cookie house" party on a Sunday before Christmas. Like gingerbread, only cardboard shapes, glue on cookies with cake frosting, etc. By the time those kids had licked and plastered and eaten cookies and candy and frosting and jellybeans and all that sweet junk, they practically DIVED into the gallon bowl of homemade dill pickles that I set out. One year, we had 15 kids, and I had to open the THIRD half-gallon jar. One of my favorite memories of my Dad is the afternoon we sat on the patio, waiting for my husband to come home from work. Daddy was having his usual five p.m. Scotch, and wandered out of the house with a quart of home-canned dilled cauliflower and a tiny cocktail fork. We opened, pried out salty, briny-crisp cauliflower, ate, talked, dipped some more. We came in for more Scotch, ate a few more of the cauliflower, discussed important subjects and abject silliness. A trip into the house for a longer fork, munched some more, solved the problems of the world, then dumped the leftover picklejuice over into the viburnum bushes. One of my last memories of him, and one of the very first when I was was maybe four: the rich salt taste of olives as we sat on upended Coke crates outside a little country grocery store...the tall thin bottle of olives caught the sunlight as he dug out one for him, one for me, with his pocket knife. It came full circle with a totally unhappening afternoon, a pickle jar, and a memory I'll have always.

There's someone for everyone. At last---a role model for Paris Hilton.

I got so carried away making jelly up there, I forgot to mention the butter dishes with covers---one has a groove all around that you pour cold water into. The lid sits in the water, ensuring that no stray ant or other marauder can get into the butter. With these came the butter paddles, two hand-worn flat brown wood things like flat spoons; one side of each flat is smooth, the other crosshatched with tiny carved incisions which were used to maneuver blobs of butter into golf ball-sized individual "pats." Butter consumption was taken seriously in those days. I can see my Mammaw now, making those paddles move faster than knitting needles, flipping and rounding that glob into a perfectly round, checkered ball which could have graced the tables at Versailles. I never DID get the hang of that trick, but I was allowed to pack the drained butter into the two-piece wooden butter mold. A little wooden handle like those on a darning egg had a flat round "stamp" on one end. The handle was inserted through a hole in the bottom of a wooden bowl about 5" across and 2" deep. The bowl was then packed with the soft butter, and placed upside down on a saucer. Handle was pushed, butter emerged from bowl with the nice grooving from the bowl sides, plus a neat raised picture of a cow on top, courtesy of a carving in the "stamp" part. And I DID learn to milk. Well, sort of. I was determined to learn, so I would sneak out to the one remaining cow, my short little five-year-old self with my long braids. I would push the cow over to the high wooden fence, then butt her up against it with my head, holding her there while I held a pint jar in one hand and milked with the other. Then I'd give the proceeds to the cats so no one would know what I'd been up to. Continuing the theme: One milk can, the kind so popular on porches or as mailbox stands the past few years; one 3 gallon churn, with lid, (dasher lost to time, but I DID churn out quite a few pounds of butter with it when I was young). We used it for pickles or kraut for several years...today it's on the patio, under an octagonal marble slab on which summers our biggest fern, which went outside just this morning. Several small cut-glass salt dips, only one wee corroded spoon remaining. One fancy high-footed china cup and saucer, deep burgundy with flower paintings inside and out, one of a set of six different flowers and colors, ordered from Sears in the Fifties for $1.00 a set. One each alloted to my Mom, my aunt, and us four granddaughters. Mammaw had a way of making what we referred to as a "walk and pat" will. For YEARS before her death, she would take each visit as a chance to walk around her house, pat an object or two, and name the person for whom it was intended on her demise. And when the time came, we all spent a couple of days cleaning out the house, reminiscing, dumping past-their-prime fruit jars, and taking home exactly what she had intended, down to her reading glasses, of which she must have had twenty pairs, all from Woolworth's, and which we children had delighted in wearing while prancing round her lawn. Looking through those things made you step around in a hilarious manner, and it was one of our favorite games. (Besides, by the time of her death, I used a 1.25 myself). Lots of embroidered tea towels and cup towels (difference subtle but definite, known to every Southern housewife); tablecloths and napkins worked in cutwork, lacework, embroidery and tatting; several lovely old mismatched silver serving spoons that I have used daily for years; her wonderful old gray crock which held exactly two boxes of Morton's salt. It sat inside the bottom cabinet, and she could reach in, grab a handful, and season four pots on the stove without bending down again. A strange old green-painted metal contraption (promotional giveaway from the local Gas company, on years they did not give out wall calendars, flyswatters or flue covers) which hung beside the stove. It held one big box of matches and dispensed them out a little lipped cup in the front. A long open slot on each side allowed striking of match against box. Her kitchen clock, a yellowed white octagonal Bakelite one with red hands and a little red circle in the middle which clicked open when the power was interrupted. We'd come home or get up in the morning and she'd say, "Current's been off!!" and pop the button on the clock back to white. The cord will probably snap in two if I handle it one more time, but last time I plugged it in, it ticked away to itself, little red button shining...current had been off for probably ten years. Knives, all wooden-handled, honed half a century on my Grandfather's stone to the thin rippling configurations of a warrior's kris. Spoons and the red-handled potato masher and a long-handled round-headed meat pounder which she used by scrupulously putting a sheet of Cut-Rite waxed paper over the meat. I just wrap it in Saran, way up the handle, and pound away. Her gold-rimmed, floral-painted Homer Laughlin pieplate with a chip out of the rim. I serve in it proudly, though I wouldn't put any other chipped dish on the table. Her hefty solid-maple rolling pin, though I have not the touch for rolls or cut cookies, and all my piecrust is courtesy of Pillsbury. Saucers and salad plates and her "best china," also Homer Laughlin, with all the gold scrollwork faded to shadows on the glass. Wearever pots and lids---they turn out incomparable potroasts, steak 'n' gravy, and most recently, hundreds of pounds of homemade fudge every Christmas. The "devilled egg" tray, a heavy clear hobnailed one which is used often. The egg beater, which was used to beat even just one egg for a child's breakfast. It was kind of like it was the law...beat eggs--have to use the beater. Mammaw had a "magic teapot" which amazed and confounded us all with its ability to keep pouring, round and round the table, with sometimes ten of us at Sunday dinner. I have not to this day figured out the secret. She would scoop a handful of Lipton leaves into the squat, eggplant-colored pot, a store premium from McCormick Tea Co. In went a potful of boiling water from the kettle, and she somehow poured directly onto ice in the big old heavy grape-etched goblets without getting a leaf into anyone's glass. And everyone got a refill. Same pot, same tea, no more boiling water required. It went round as long as the dinner lasted, and there was no explanation. We were all married, had children and homes of our own, and STILL we homekeepers with our OWN teapitchers to maintain could NOT figure out how she did it. It's still a family mystery to this day. My Sister got the pot, but I have its twin, from an antiques store, just cause I wanted one like it. And the magic was not inherited. Nobody got the table forks, I guess. Every single fork in the house had three regular tines and one short one, courtesy of Mammaw's mayonnaise-making. She could grab an egg, some vinegar, oil and a dinner plate, and beat up the fluffiest mayo on the planet. But it sure took a toll on those forks.

In the Southern Food Culture section, there was just recently a thread on preserves---I posted a bit about them, and though I didn't mention it at the time, I thought fondly of my Mammaw's Chinois (though neither she for all of her 79 years, nor I, until the past few, had ever heard it called that--It was the jelly drainer, or "that cone thing" for all those summers we picked plums and grapes and all kinds of berries, peaches and pears and cherries, all from our own fields and trees). We would head out in the relative coolth of the dawn (85 degrees or so by 6 a.m.) and brave the thorns and snakes of the blackberry ramble, or the wasps' proprietary interest in all the plums and cherries. Later in the season, I would climb the peach trees, one after another, giving each rosygold velvet bubble a gentle fingersqueeze to check its readiness as she awaited below, holding a wide basketful of field grass to gently receive and cushion the fruit. No peach ever bruised in our care---we treated those miracles of juicy sweetness with the softest of touches, and besides, the time from tree to jellypot or cobbler was far too brief. For jam or jelly, the berries and plums and grapes were all crushed and sugared, to sit for a while in the porch shade until they gave up their fragrant juices. A white-rimmed-in-red enamel dishpan was set on the kitchen counter, the silvery cone thing set sturdily on its three rocket-feet in the center. The heavy, pointed wooden pestle (called a "maul" by Mammaw) was pressed and turned steadily until the rows of holes gave up the rich nectar, like hundreds of small faucets pouring forth melted jewels. I loved being allowed to "turn the maul" and became quite proficient at quite a young age. It was lovely to see the pulp dropping into the whiteness of that shiny pan. A further squeezing in cheesecloth was necessary to make jelly, but jam went straight on the stove for cooking. So now I have it; it hangs in my pantry on a hook, with the maul in a neat cloth bag. I walk beneath it every day, though I use it seldom in winter, save for soups or ricing potatoes. Summer is its season, though summers here are a pale version of the burning, steamy days of those Mississippi summers of my childhood. But the Farmers' Market provides plums (though not the small golden ones which made Mammaw's jelly famous far and wide) and cherries and blueberries and all sorts of fruits of the season. They've all passed through that old jelly drainer at one time or another, and soon it will be time to take it down again, to smell the sweet juice cooking, and to remember.

Rattlesnake burger. Plain ants; no chocolate. Bear potroast. Pig ears with dumplins.

From what I have read (and vaguely remember from my grandmother's farm) is that a superfresh just-killed chicken won't be any good. You need to let the meat rest (I think about 24 hours is right), for all the normal dead-thing stuff (maybe it's rigor mortis, maybe some other enzymatic action) to work its magic to transform the meat into its tastiest. I remember reading on another cooking board (gasp!) that someone made chicken within a couple of hours of killing it and it was tasteless and the texture was off, too. I'm trying to find that thread that had a great response by someone quite knowledgeable about offing one's own meats. ← Wonder if anyone told that to all those last-generation cooks who went out at 6 a.m., stalked a nice fryer with a hatchet, and had it in the pan before 9 so as to get to Sunday School on time.

WONDERFUL writing, L4D!!!! Conjures, conjures. My first MIL taught me to fry chicken---black skillet (parted with one of her own slow-cured, crusty-bottomed ones in the name of love and authenticity), Crisco from a can, flour, salt and pepper (S&P were the ONLY two condiments in her quite considerable kitchen cabinets---if you don't count the cinnamon which she saved for sweet potato pie. And she was a GLORIOUS cook. Her chicken was a model, the essence, a very paragon of fried chicken, to be held up as the zenith to which we could all aspire. Her biscuits and cornbread (also black skillet) were tender, crusty marvels of breadhood. And her desserts!!! She had a way with piecrust and cake batter that would make Betty Crocker hand over her apron. My soul still longs for the long-lost recipe (confiscated by a VERY quick, very sneaky SIL the day before the funeral) for her famous caramel cake, a tendercrumb, buttery, meltingly delicious golden poundcake with a poured icing which, coincidentally, had been cooked ditto black skillet. She could take the last smitch of flour in the bag, the crumbs of sugar left in the bowl, and the lid off a dried-out vanilla bottle, and turn out a dessert fit for royalty. One of the funny memories of her wonderful chicken dinners is that the chicken was the STAR, and the rest just add-ons...That platter of golden-brown, crusty delight would be set down before family and company alike, accompanied by the most featherlight rolls, a can of heated Schoolday English peas, and a can of heated Pride of Illinois corn. (and don't forget the drained pineapple rings, topped with a coronary-busting tablespoon of Blue Plate and a big pinch of hoopcheese). The chicken and the dessert---that's what you came for. So I learned, those days of Delta heat and no A/C, in that kitchen with one window over the sink, 10 square feet of counter space, and a yellow dinette set buttbumping you every time you moved toward the stove. I sharpened the knife, washed the carcass, cut it into fourteen pieces, (count 'em---2 legs, 2 thighs, pulley bone, two breasts, stripped of two small sections of boneless meat, neck, back-cut-in-two, 2 wings. I soaked, I dredged, I carefully measured quantities and seasonings, heated the pan of shortening til it "browned a cube of bread" and laid in the carefully floured pieces (always the dark meat first, legs turned to fit against each other "saves space," with the bony half of the back in the same pan, with the liver tucked carefully beneath---livers have a way of choosing their moment, and it would blow skyhigh at the exact minute you took off the lid if you didn't capture it under that handy ribcage). White meat came next, and was lidded, turned, uncovered, crispened, and set on a great mattress of "Scotch towls" to drain. It was wonderful chicken, tender and crisp and salty and just right. And I still cook it just like that, same skillet, same method, in a place faraway and a time so different. My husband gets out of the car, comes into the house grinning. "I smelled fried chicken all the way out into the yard!!" All's right with the world.

Rude is one thing; tacky, another. Bumbles and mistakes and egregious errors are understandable. Stingy and greedy rear their ugly heads, causing pain and hunger and embarrassment to bystanders and victims alike. Well-meaning flops are endearing and memorable. Kitchen-proud idiots abound, thrusting their "specialties" and their "best-in-the-world's" upon friends and colleagues. We can laugh later, and grumble to ourselves and others later; we can put that story in an anecdote file, to be dredged out as "worst of" and enjoyed for the sheer tackiness of it. But a person who will stint and conserve, scraping all the flavor and tradition off of THANKSGIVING, both literally and figuratively, all in the name of HEALTHY, a person who will inflict a tasteless, Spartan regime on helpless family and guests, all of whom are expecting at least a modicum of the holiday's rich heritage of flavors---a person who would adhere so strictly to one rigid regime to the dismay and detriment of her guests, ruining an event which comes only once a year, a person who blithely tramples on memories and expectations--THAT person has no soul.

Lovely!!! Now I understand what you mean by sexy. rachel

When we first moved up here, we lived in a small apartment until we could decide on our living quarters. I had brought just service for four of most items, a few pots and pans, and some "make-do" items of a really pretty pastel plastic, including several very large bowls which could be called on for lots of uses. One afternoon I made a pot of tea, turned off the stove, set the kettle on a burner other than the hot one, and unthinkingly moved one of the big bowls onto the still-almost-glowing burner as I neatened up the kitchen before going to sit down with my tea. Immediate smell of burnt chemicals, even faster POOF as the entire petroleum-based pink of the bowl burst into flames...I don't think a match could have combusted more quickly. It flamed toward the ceiling, with big floaty bits going off in several directions. I grabbed the extinguisher (first time I ever had to use one) and I KNOW I aimed it directly at that bowl. But somehow it shot the stove, surrounding cabinets, all cannisters, appliances and curtains full of the chokingest white powder in creation. Man, it poured out of there like a firehose. It went EVERYWHERE. It took DAYS to get it all out of the kitchen, off the top of the fridge, out of drawers which had been closed during the spraying. The bowl itself was reduced to a tiny knob of pinky-gray gunk which immediately hardened down into and over the spiral of the stove burner, but it popped up with a little "smick" when I pried at it after it cooled. And messy as it was, it was not the worst. Just a few weeks later, same apartment, same kitchen---and at the HEIGHT of Desert Storm, and just a few blocks from the huge Army base just down the street---on the very night we were watching all the people in Israel having to wear their gas masks at all times, we began to smell an odd, chemical odor in the living room. It grew worse; we looked at each other in dismay and beginnings of fear---there WAS that huge military base so close and all. We opened the doors and sniffed the outside air---nope, it was US. We opened the oven, checked the burners, and the smell grew even more pronounced. Open windows---open doors---we were choking. Our fellow tenants began to gather, wide-eyed and apprehensive, thinking Doom was come upon us. The smoke alarm was Wheek-Wheek-Wheeking, neighbors were gaping in the doors and windows, and we were dashing teary-eyed around that very small space in search of the source of that acrid, suffocating smell. Hubby opened the dishwasher, and there was the culprit, a steak knife astraddle the heating coil in the bottom. Just the blade was left; the rest was a puddle of plastic in the bottom. Everyone laughed in relief, and we all stood around talking in our pajamas. We really began to get to know our neighbors that night, but I wouldn't recommend it for an ice-breaker. And once I burned the tips of the pretty meringue on a lemon pie. I picked off the burnt parts and put it back in the oven to finish browning all over. This time, one of the children needed me for a moment, and I returned to find the pie a flaming, blackened mess. Hubby said I was probably the only woman in creation who could burn the same pie twice.

] I can imagine that some place will put something that exotic on the menu, but where on EARTH would they get enough of something that small? Is there a swan slaughterhouse somewhere we know not of? Whole ones--that's understandable, if off-putting, but GIZZARDS?? And how is it listed on the menu, and how were they cooked? And by "large plate" do you mean a dozen or so? Where are they GETTING all these birds? Just think of how many of those lovely, ethereal creatures it must take to supply that one very odd dish....yuk. And shudder.

Dishes required for all self-respecting Southern meat'n'threes (rotating basis, Meatloaf Tuesday, etc., quite acceptable): Fried Chicken Chicken Livers Chicken and Dumplins Meatloaf Country Fried Steak A big ole pink ham for Sunday Dinner, cloves optional Whole Turkey Breast, sliced into the gravy Mashed Potatoes Gravy Mac N Cheese Butterbeans Fried Okra Snap Beans w or w/o Baby Potatoes Candied Sweet Potatoes Squash smothered with Onions Cabbage with big ham hunks Greens, any kind, every day (NOT spinach) Blackeyes or Crowders or Purplehulls Potato Salad Slaw Kidney Bean Salad Pea Salad Devilled Eggs Combination Salad (Iceberg, tomato chunks, cucumber, bell pepper) with choice of 1000 or Ranch, or sometimes already tossed, with just mayo and salt Three Bean Five Cup Jello Cubes (NOT blue) Congealed Salad--Crushed pineapple and KoolWhip stirred in before jelling Cornbread---any version, including jalapeno and sour cream; sticks, wedges, squares or muffins, but they better not APPROACH it with the sugar bowl unless they're north of the Tennessee/Kentucky line Rolls Light Bread Biscuits Coconut Cake Chocolate Cake PIES: Chess Chocolate Lemon Icebox Karo Pecan Peach Cobbler And our good fortune: though we live in what my husband calls the "Northernmost Southern State," we have at least three places very close by which serve exactly the above menu, done in exactly the way you'd find it in Natchez or Nashville or Atlanta.

And don't forget the Breakfast Special at the Raleigh Y: Three hotcakes, two bacon, one egg, juice and coffee---all for 35 cents. And on Friday nights: Tapioca!!! Just tell 'em Barney sent you.

I've made Southern preserves for many years in my home kitchen, and the only type of fruit I ever have the too-syrupy phenomenon with is pears. I follow my own Mammaw's recipe for all jellies, jams and preserves, and it's a simple one---in her words, "Mix your fruit payound for payound with sugar." Strawberries, blackberries, dewberries, blueberries--all these weep their essence into the sugar in a very short time and peaches and other stone fruits require only a few hours "setting" to release their juices. Pears, however, are traditionally cut into little wedges, mixed with the sugar and a sliced lemon or two (add a can of crushed pineapple if you're fancy) and left in an enamel dishpan, overnight at room temperature, covered with a tea towel. Lifting the towel the next morning reveals a great pile of vastly-shrunken pieces of pear afloat in a clear sea of syrup. Cooking converts the pears into rosy bits of heavenly, almost chewy essence-of-pear worthy of any gold-lettered confectioner's shop in Paris. As the pan bubbles away, the syrup thickens, but not to the point of gelling---that's not the desired result. What you want on a big ole buttered Martha White biscuit is a spoonful of those deliciously peary pieces and a dripping, syrupy runoff which will require a spoon to scrape up the last Summery sweetness. As for figs, there's a difference between fig preserves and preserved figs. The preserves require smushing and chopping the figs a bit, as well as cooking them down into an unctuous, golden-brown mass which will heap on a spoon or a waiting biscuit. Preserved figs, however, are whole figs which have been simmered delicately in a simple syrup for the amount of time it takes to render them gently quivering bubbles which are lifted by the stem (if you're lucky and it doesn't break loose and leave you with a sticky face or shirtfront) and placed in an eager, open mouth, to be tongueburst into a cascade of figgy sweetness. They are amber jewels of great worth, situated just SO in the mason jars, and given front-row prominence in the family's larder of hard-won, heat-seared, homecanned delicacies. Of course, for Preacher-visits, they are served stems-up in the prettiest cut-glass bowl, and everyone must make do with a spoon. All berries, peaches, plums and pineapple preserves just cook right up into a slightly-thickened fruity concoction which WILL spread on a hot biscuit, but won't promise to stay there when the heat hits it. Thick syrup, the true taste of a fruit that stays close to the color God made it--those are the hallmarks of a good batch of Southern preserves. Just like my Mammaw's.

This weekend took us to Cincinnati on Friday, with a downtip ending in Louisville for the night. The scenery was a marvel of cloudpuffs echoed by the round whiteness of blossoming fruit trees. We rode and looked our eyes full; we strolled the gravelheat of outdoor fleamarkets waking from their hibernation. We bought a weeping willow from a vendor at one market, scooching its ten feet of fragility oh, so carefully into the hatchback, ending with tickling tendrils on our arms and faces when it would spring loose from the intricate weavings we had architectured to hold it fast. A trip to Home Depot for a new shovel also brought us a box of four varieties of grapevine, snugged into a fourpack illustrated as nicely as the label on any bottle. We've taken out the ferns and cacti, showered and watered and misted and soaked the housebound, Spring-hungry plants with great gushes of cold hosewater, and now the grill is sending up lovely aromas of two yard-lengths of baby ribs. Two artichokes to share are simmering in a lemony bath; a hefty, broad-shouldered sweet onion is chilling, awaiting the slicing and anointment with Blue Plate mayo, a sprinkle of salt, and the nestling between two cushiony slices of Wonder Bread. We don't live in the South any more, but we create our own bubble of it and find it where we can.

Our white T-Fal Vitesse 1.7 liter has made LOVELY tea , cocoa and French-Press coffee for almost a year now. The clear window indicates both water level and vigor of bubble, making it easy to pour just at the right moment of boil. It sits on a round thin pancake of a base, begins a throaty purr at the touch of a button, shuts itself off automatically, and did not suffer any performance damage when I dropped it onto the slate floor, save for a tiny chip out of the lid---a purely cosmetic injury, and who among us is aesthetically perfect? I had watched Nigella reach for her "kettle" frequently during almost every show and meant to buy one; this kettle of our own was a birthday gift, and I would recommend it to any tea drinker.

Do the greens come dressed or with dressing on the side, just so it's definitely recognized as a side salad? Is it directly on the plate, or in its own separate container? From my own past experience, I would think most people have an aversion to any wet greens leaking onto any kind of sandwich. As above asked, are customers meant to dress their sandwiches with the greens/tomato? (I can't imagine prying a nicely-melted crispy cheese sandwich apart to add anything). I never order one in a restaurant, but our home accompaniments are either homemade peach jam for dipping, or fresh fruit chunks, either as kabobs or a salad. The salty/buttery sandwich seems to need a slightly sweet counterpoint; maybe it's just a family taste. And a cup of soup seems perfectly matched to a crunchy-crusted sandwich oozing creamy, melted cheese. The temp is dropping outside; I know what's on our menu tonight. rachel

Somewhere between Escoffier and "say-eeve the liver!" came that bumbling, knowledgeable, endearing, what-the-hell cook-chef-comedian-ambassador who was Julia Child. She took life by the scruff and shook it, hugged it, savored great bites and swallows, and served it up with a delicious sauce and a kind word. Our pre-VCR PBS Saturday afternoons were spent in rapt attention, hurriedly writing down the recipes and the steps, pretending that we could FIND fresh cepes and four black truffles at Safeway. Instead, we sometimes repeated a former success, a steamed broccoli with sauteed crumbs or a sole Veronique. My children are now all wonderful cooks; one is a pastry chef and another does all the cooking for his family. We copied bechamels and souffles, we chopped in the correct fashion, we folded and sifted and dredged. We marveled at the pastry case as she effortlessly rolled and folded, pushing those big hands into that fragile dough until it yielded to her mastery, becoming a neat container as surely as if she had stitched up fabric on her Singer. All toques doff, and a 21-cork salute. We'll never see her like again. Thank God for reruns. rachel

Asian Chao---it must be a chain---there's one in a mall foodcourt here, as well as at the airport. It's a counter-only, plastic-everything quickwok place with a heavenly Bourbon chicken. Tender chunks of sweet/soy grilled chicken, with sides ranging from the obligatory fried rice, lo mein, a VERY good stir-fried julienne of three veggies, or: Absolutely perfect , crispy-fresh whole green beans, quickly stir-fried with garlic and salt. This was our dinner last week at the airport, as we watched the board slowly postpone our visitors' flight from eight to midnight. Not PFC's, but quite good, considering the hour and the location.