Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Running the Roads

I ran the roads on Tuesday. One of my stops was to ask Mamie for more recipes for the Coker Creek cookbook, but Mamie was also out running the roads. Mountaintop Mary and I met at Jack’s to swap tales with him, literally. We have a system going where Jack writes his stories on his manual typewriter; Richard or I pick them up from him for first reading. I hand them off to Mary who scans them into her computer. She then emails the scanned images to our editor and returns the original to Jack. This requires a bit of back-and-forth to Jack’s, so Mary and I decided to meet there and visit Jack before tearing up the tarmac together.

Mary and I are conspiring to combine our kids and create a “Granny Camp.”Mary’s mountaintop is paradise for her grandchildren in the summers. Richard and I also anticipate many more summers of nieces, nephews, and grandkids swinging from our trees and fishing in our fish pond. Last summer, a friend in Florida, Terry Sue, came to visit with her eight-year-old daughter, Theresa Ann – this was just part of the parade of friends and family members who come to enjoy the cool mountain temperatures.

Theresa wrote that her visit with Jack -- drinking from his spring and typing on his typewriter were two of the best parts of her whole summer. She has since made me a list of suggestions for future fun things to do, including cooking classes, finding gold, and gardening. T. Ann also suggests that she and my granddaughter Sarah set up a shelter for stray cats and kittens. Imagine how ecstatic she’ll be if she gets to bake bread, make paper and pet horses at Ms. Mary’s house!

Josie’s down with her back again, so I delivered red beans and soup to her. Adam can make a pot of rice, after he gets home from being a Sweetwater policeman, if he wants New Orleans style red beans and rice. I also gave them some corn and chorizo pudding; I’m always looking for feedback on my culinary creations.

I really have to take off some flab after all that partying down south; either that or invest in a new Lane Bryant wardrobe. I started the Atkins diet, and I’m eating my weight in eggs. The only diet I’ve ever stayed on is Atkins low-carb plan, probably because it allows me to have all the hollandaise I want on all the fish and beef I can eat, and still lose weight. My cholesterol is also lower on that diet than on any other. Go figure!

Richard baked biscotti to send to Gayle while I was out with Mary and used a number of eggs in the endeavor. Now I have two missions to accomplish at Mamie’s, along with a visit. She will hopefully be willing to lend more of her recipes to the school’s fundraising project, and I sure need some more of her pampered-pet-produced eggs.