One-of-a-Kind Flavor

The route home from my new job takes me right by a Dairy Queen. I confess that a combination of nostalgia and relief sometimes causes me to turn into the drivethru. The relief comes from getting through another day at a new job. After being out of work for a few years and working for a friend and taking over a job from my daughter, which she did very well, I am finding this new job a little nerve wracking. Fun and exciting, but also a little difficult. There are lots of new things to learn and a new relationship to forge with an old friend, now my boss. I want so much for her business to do well both for her sake and my own. It is getting easier and orders are coming in. I only work for a few hours, two days a week. So I stop at the Dairy Queen. I usually order a chili dog. A messy choice, but I manage to polish it off at stop lights before I get home. The other day, though, I ordered the chicken strip basket. I had the idea I would share it with my husband when I got home but that didn't happen. I didn't even tell him what I did. I was too embarrassed.

The Dairy Queen nostalgia comes from my teenage years. My father died when I was fifteen. My mother had come home from work every day for many years and immediately started making supper. After my father died, she went on strike for about a year. On the days when she got her hair done after work, she would bring home burgers and fries from the Wide Awake Cafe. Since my father was the only driver in the family and I was a few months short of getting my driver's license, my mother would send a taxi to the nearby Dairy Queen for supper sometimes. Back before KFC and Pizza Hut, we got the chicken strip baskets for the whole family. I am sure the cab fare cost more than the food. It was blazingly hot when it arrived. Four big strips of crispy chicken fingers, thick Texas toast, and fries with a cup of white gravy. Ymmm!

After all these years and in a different part of the country, the flavor was still the same except for the toast which was just regular sliced bread. That got me thinking about how a dish can have a unique taste and texture when a certain restaurant (or person) makes it. A combination of specific ingredients and cooking techniques sometimes creates a one-of-a-kind flavor. That is what makes a special dish special I guess. Good cooks are often accused of holding out a secret ingredient in their special dishes, but I think it is more subconscious than that. Little habits and techniques that are so natural they are not spoken are what make the difference.

Take my mother's country style steak, for instance. I watched her pound flour and salt and pepper into a round steak with the edge of a saucer and then brown it and simmer it with water and onions until it fell apart and produced a rich brown gravy. I have never gotten the same results. My aunt Nellie's pineapple upside down cake was baked in a cast iron skillet and had crispy, sweet, caramelized edges. Mine is always a little soggy. My ex-mother-in-law's yeast biscuits, which I watched her whip together so many times, were baked on a blackened baking sheet coated with bacon grease. She would drag each biscuit briefly through the bacon grease and then flip it over to produce a crispy topped, chewy, but tender biscuit. I have never come close to creating those biscuits. The southern fast food chain of Bo Jangles had biscuits that resembled hers, but they closed the only one near me.

I ate the whole chicken strip basket on the way home. It tasted so good. I even tasted the hopeful excitement of a 15-year-old girl with all of life's possibilities ahead of her and a hot, tasty supper arriving in a paper bag delivered by a taxi driver. My mother eventually started cooking again when my brother and I begged her to. Mom, I miss you.

New Year's Eve

Happy New Year with a little steak and a big baked potato. Merlot with dinner. Sparkling wine at midnight.

Christmas Magic

Coca Cola Santa copied from Google Images

I like the Santa of my imagination the best. I think Santa suffers from over exposure sometimes. Just give me a "Ho Ho Ho" and the sound of jingle bells in the air. A glimpse of Santa on his throne in the mall is fun, but the closer you get, the more jarring imperfections are apparent. Even the most realistic Santa is not the same as the magical elf who appears when you are sleeping, and fills the tree with magical, sparkly packages. Norman Rockwell and Coca Cola images will always define Santa for me.

As a child, the most magical time was the middle of the night when I got up for a drink of water and found the dark room transformed. Once I found a beautiful little dressing table with a frilly skirt. Another time,  I swear I heard jingle bells in the air and the sounds of hoofs on the roof, but when I looked into the dark night, I saw nothing. I don't want weather forecasters telling where Santa is, or phone calls or letters from Santa.

A neighbor decorates his whole house with amazing lights every year. We walk across the dark golf course for a yearly visit with Santa. But wise little Mia told me that is not really him. She thought his voice sounded a little like her Dad. She said, "I don't know why he pretends to be HIM."

My son, Cory, was 9 when we moved for a year to Pennsylvania. He didn't believe in Santa Claus that year until he looked under the tree and there was a toy truck just like his stepfather's big rig. It had little mirrors and all the parts and pieces. He tells me he thought that Santa must be real to leave such a perfect little truck that looked as if it had been shrunk. Unfortunately, he also tells me that he later found the box in the trash. I am so sorry for that. I know my mother would never have made that mistake!

My mother and her sister were raised in a children's home in North Carolina. She says they always had a big tree and lots of presents. I don't really know about her Christmas, but I know she made Christmas truly magical for me and my brother and her grandchildren. Jaime once asked me, as Jill has recently, if I would tell her the truth if she asked me a question. I feared a question about the source of babies, but Jaime said, "Grandma is really Santa Claus, right?"

For me, anticipation is everything. That is why I have always loved Christmas Eve more than Christmas morning. After that, Christmas becomes all about the people, the old traditions, the music, the food, and finding a way to make Christmas magical for someone else. Merry Christmas to all!

I Hate the Crazy Target Lady

Copied from Google images

The crazy Target lady on TV makes my nerves jangle. She represents everything I hate about a grab-it-first, get-something-cheap attitude. A bargain is a low price for something you really want or need, but I also believe it should include convenience and a pleasant shopping experience. I don't mind if the stores open early. Shopping at unconventional times used to be a way to avoid the crowds.

I went once to an annual sale at a posh little boutique my friend and I loved. Unlike our usual delightful experience of browsing and finding unique and beautiful things, eveyone waited behind a ribbon and ran when it was cut. My friend advised me to grab everything I saw and decide later what to keep. That kind of "shopping" tends to encourage people to buy things they don't even want. I hated it.

I have heard that people need to spend in order to boost the economy, but I like the idea of buying only what we really need and can afford, maybe even using layaway as I used to do when my kids were small. My wish is that we can all get what we really want and need this year - at a great price.

Willow Manor Ball - Watching from Afar

Sabrina - Google Images

I just couldn't get myself together this year for the Willow Manor Ball. But I didn't want to MISS it. Just think of me as Sabrina, lurking in the tree in the garden with the full moon behind me and watching all the excitement from afar. Enjoy everyone! I will be loving every detail.

Dresses for the Ball

I am thinking about dresses this morning for the Willow Manor Ball. I don't have enough information to properly credit these images. I just typed "1940's ball gowns" into Google and these images appeared. Fantasy fairy dresses and sleek 40's silouettes fire my imagination. Click on the link and take a look.

I am also thinking about dresses from my real life. They exist only in my memory now.

I never saw the first dress. My mother only mentioned this dress one time. She was raised with her sister in Grandfather Children's Home in North Carolina and she had very few possessions of her own. One day before the school prom, she found a beautiful dress laying on her bed. It was a deep pink rhododendren color and someone had donated it to her. She said it was beautiful and fit her perfectly.

The next dress also belonged to my mother. It was a beautiful golden brown matte sateen, ballerina length, with a wide off-shoulder collar, and trimmed with brown velvet ribbon on the collar and at the tiny waist. I asked my mother to give it to me and she did, though my father objected.

I had only one prom dress but I loved it. My friend found it at a local dress shop but was not able to get it. I told my mother about it and we went to buy it. It was an ivory chiffon column dress with floating ivory panels off the empire waist. It had spaghetti straps and beautiful pale aqua sequins on the top. I wore the dress twice but I don't have even one picture. My friend later borrowed the dress to wear to an event. I wonder if she has a picture.

Willow Manor Ball 2011 - Can't Wait!

I am looking forward to the Willow Manor Ball. This will be the 3rd ball I have observed, but only the second one I will be attending. I had so much fun last year. Now what will I wear? And who will be my date? Check out the link to Willow Manor and scroll down to see the balls of years gone by. Maybe you would like to attend. Everyone is invited.