Thursday, November 5, 2009

Baskets for Our Babies

Baskets and that dead space that kitchens used to have above the cupboards and below the ceiling – now I know what they’re for. All these years, I’ve saved baskets for the occasional use as a substitute for a potato chip bowl or for use as a cute bread basket. I can’t even count how many women I’ve known who’ve gone ga-ga over Longaberger Baskets. And Ken and Kat Dalton of Coker Creek are world renowned for their basketry work and classes. Mostly, I just looked at baskets as kitschy kitchen décor – something else to dust -- and something to store between holidays.

I have no designer baskets and have come very close, on several occasions, to throwing my baskets into the waste basket. Couple this with the fact that many modern kitchens now have cupboards all the way to the ceiling, and I could have missed out on the perfect storage solution for our sweet spuds. Instead, I now have decorative storage for our sweet potato babies. I’ve already used the tops of our cupboards to display the butternut squash until we use it. Now, I’ve added baskets of sweet potatoes to our kitchen décor. And we’ll still have sweet dreams on our jams under the bed.

One of our neighbors returned home after several weeks in the hospital following a stroke. I brought the family lasagna and red beans. Upon returning to our house, I was pleasantly surprised to find an order for Jack’s books on my email from the Coker Creek Welcome Center. This quickly became two orders when Richard remembered that Designs by Baerreis had asked him to relay the message that they needed more books. Looks like Jack and I will cover the cost of my last overly enthusiastic order before Christmas, after all. Needing Jack to autograph the books before delivery, it was time for a trip to Jack’s house.

Charlie and Deborah live on the way to Jack’s, and they hadn’t experienced Muscadine Madness yet, so I dropped some of this scary jam off to them. I then headed over to get Jack’s signature on the ordered books. I caught Jack returning from the spring with two buckets of drinking water. He teased that if I’d shown up just a couple of minutes earlier, he’d have had me go fetch his water. I reminded him that according to Mamie, “We’ll help,” means I’ll send Richard, and let him know that I’d have been happy to send Richard to tote Jack’s water up the hill. He signed the books and offered me some pumpkins which I said I’d pick up in a day or two. Then it was off to the welcome center, where I spent my share of the book profits on small pieces created by local artists to give as Christmas gifts.

Mamie lives in Murphy’s Corner, where the two shops needing books are located. After making my deliveries, I stopped at Mamie’s for some of her wonderful free range hen eggs. She looked so much more chipper than she had since Junior’s death. I think a few days of sunshine have been good for all of our moods.

To cap this happy day in the holler, Richard and I enjoyed a delicious dinner beginning with Richard’s salads. Our entrée was salmon with a mixture of leeks, fennel, ginger and peppers that Richard put in the freezer before harvest season. We accompanied this with butternut squash that we found in the field while pulling up sweet potatoes. How good will that be -- baked butternut squash mashed with margarine and orange juice, seasoned with orange zest and nutmeg – alongside salmon with aromatic vegetables?