Poor Richard’s Life of Leisure

All the greens we got from Mamie’s and all the turnips given to us by Deborah had to be cleaned and cut. I had packing to do before we head down south for a family wedding, so guess who had the job of cleaning and cutting? It was my job to season and sauté -- since I’m substituting healthy ingredients for hog jowl or ham, attempting to duplicate the southern soul food flavor without cardiac arrest. Now, Mamie can tell everybody that I not only had Richard do the planting and weeding, he also had to be my prep cook. I’m so spoiled.

Jack will receive a sampling of this fare. We’ll also share this vegetable wealth with Mamie, Josie, Adam, Deborah, and Charlie; and give some to our across-the-hill neighbors. The rest we’ll freeze for the hoards descending during the Christmas holidays.

Poor Richard; I really don’t think he knew what he was signing on for when he said he wanted me to bring “life” into his house. Richard had lived a life of solitude for forty-six years before I came along. Once I entered with my family and friends, solitude was not an option, and neither, I feared, would be his sanity.

It wasn’t enough that we spent our first ten years together with a revolving door of bawling babies, breastfeeding moms, and disillusioned dads coming through our home and eating at our table. His retirement years have only served to increase the amount of time allotted to nurturing “life” in our homes. I say homes because circumstances beyond our control led us to several moves. The first being when he became disabled enough to need a heart transplant.

The disability leading up to the transplant also transplanted us. I did allow him a small reprieve for his heart transplant, but our retirement home on the lake drew guests like fish draws flies. There seemed to be a party every week-end, and we still had a constant flow of the aforementioned babies, mothers and dads. I was in heaven; Richard was in shock.

Hurricane Katrina gave him his best opportunity to reclaim some semblance of solitude when the mermaids claimed our home for their underwater playground -- if he had only agreed to live in an RV. Now, I do understand that living in a thirty-four by twelve foot space with my mouth could be a bit confining, but at least it was just the two of us.

He said he was afraid that I’d start letting the grandkids have the RV beds, and he’d be sleeping outside in a tent if we didn’t move into a house. When we have guests, it’s true that we move out of our bedroom for them, but we don’t have to move into a tent because we have our RV “apartment.”

Now that we have a house in the holler, I’m thinking of having Richard install a revolving guest door -- but not until we finish harvesting and cooking turnip greens.

Small Town Food and Friends

Coker Creek isn’t big enough to be called a town; it’s really only a hamlet in the woods. We’re barely big enough for a public elementary school, and the students have to go “off the mountain” to Tellico Plains for high school. But if you want to feel a sense of community, Coker Creek School is fairly bursting with civic pride.

For the last few years, a major PTO fundraiser has been the November turkey dinner in the school cafeteria. Attending for the first time this year, we were served generous portions of turkey, cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, roll, tea, and a variety of cakes and pies -- and it only cost six dollars per person. It seems that every family in Coker Creek came to get some of this good grub to either eat there or take home. Betty ate there and bought a second dinner to share with her dog later in the evening. Her dog always gets some of whatever Betty eats.

Richard asked Greta how the PTO could make any money serving such a large meal for such a small price. Greta told him that most of the food is donated by local families. We sure enjoyed our share. I wish we knew who donated the food; I’d love to be able to thank them.

Adam and Josie ate with us, and Adam tried to swap the cake he got at the dinner for last piece of Richard’s caramel cake, which was at our house. He didn’t seem at all impressed by the fact that we were down to one piece because we had shared the cake with so many friends. We declined that deal, but we are trying to entice him and Josie to attend the upcoming Ruritan supper to try the chocolate malted cake that Richard will be presenting.

Mamie came in with her daughter Jean who, I’ve been told, was a wonderful quilter. Since Jean is beginning to divest herself of some her seventy-five years of accumulated possessions, I’m hoping to purchase some of her quilt tops to use as tablecloths. I reminded Jean of this, and she told me to stop by anytime. I'm looking forward to getting back from my trip, so I can sort through Jean’s work.

We also ran into Anita and her Italian mom, Evie, who makes the world’s best biscotti -- which we usually swap for some of our Cajun roasted pecans and bourbon balls at Christmas. Come to find out, Evie is going to celebrate her ninetieth birthday this spring. I’d better get on the stick and take her up on her offer to teach me to make biscotti. Times-a-wastin’ for me to learn all the secrets of these wonderful pioneer women.

With full stomachs, we went to Mamie’s to divest ourselves of our full trailer of Nancy’s gift of garden gold. After accomplishing this task, we harvested lots of turnip greens to add to the turnips from Deborah. And Jack wants us to come get some of his pumpkins before our trip. We may never get rich in money, but with our wealth of friends, I’m fairly certain we’ll never be hungry or homeless.

Living Large

The word is out that Richard and I collect other people’s poop – not from them, from their horses. Nancy called to give us the opportunity to collect her garden gold. The day dawned bright and beautiful, so we took her up on her offer.

On the way to Nancy’s, we dropped by our across-the-hill neighbor’s house to drop off dirty rice stuffed peppers and noodle pudding. Their granddaughter Cassie was being motivated to clean her room by the prospect of going to Nancy’s to help scoop the poop. Now, that’s a new one on me: If you clean your room, you can go clean poop out of a pasture. Whatever works; Cassie showed up at Nancy’s in short order.

We could have spent the entire afternoon strolling through the woods to enjoy this perfect weather, but we chose to get up close and personal with nature. Richard and I had a little system going. He’d hold the snow shovel while I raked the meadow apples into it; empty and repeat. Two and three quarter hours of walking and talking while shoveling shi_, and the pasture was almost feces-free. Richard commented that the horses must feel really important that four people were so interested in their droppings we spent a whole afternoon collecting them – by Richard’s estimate, about two thousand pounds of poo-poo.

Because we so enjoyed the barbecue shrimp and cakes the night before, we wanted to share the experience with more friends. We had packed leftovers for Nancy and Jim, for Deborah and Charlie, and for Jack. When we finished loading our trailer, we began to make our meals-on-wheels rounds. Nancy agreed that it was a pretty good trade: predigested food in exchange for what her ponies had already processed. Deborah traded fresh turnips and Jack gave us a head of his home-grown broccoli for our leftovers.

Deborah had also asked me to share my wing-it secrets to creating a flapper costume, as this was my attire for last year’s Halloween party. Since Deborah is so tiny, she’d fit on my jeans pocket, she certainly can’t simply borrow my costume. We spent a little time discussing options and trying on her pieces of potential costume pieces. Richard and I were pretty happy with our afternoon’s activities.

Dusk was settling by the time we got to Jack’s, so we sat on his porch a while and enjoyed the mountain vista. It was such a perfect ending to our day that we decided to put off spreading the garden gold until the morning. As Richard is fond of saying, “A great pig like that, you don’t eat all at once.” We’re retired; it’s about taking time to smell the roses -- and the fertilizer they grow in.

We hardly had to dirty our kitchen to enjoy a feast of steamed broccoli, leftover salad and re-heated barbeque shrimp before collapsing on the couch for a bit of TV before bed.

McGruff, Mary, and Mamie

The day started out at Coker Creek Elementary School to see Adam as Officer McGruff. Although Adam is one of the least gruff people we know, he somehow got selected to be the canine crime fighter at the health and safety day at the school. They sure didn’t create this much excitement when I was in grade school. Every community hero group and their equipment, from a fire department ladder truck to Tennessee National Guardsmen in uniform were available. I learned more than I hope to ever need to know about meth from a presentation shown on a huge inflatable movie screen in the school gym. Josie was in attendance take pictures. We got to talking about marrying some of her photos to my blog and creating a book.

Richard and I have been talking about having Mamie to our house, and Adam had been asking me to cook some Cajun shrimp for him. Mamie’s ninetieth birthday will occur while Richard and I are out of town, so it semed fitting to have Mamie, Josie and Adam over for dinner before we leave town. Upon my arrival home from the school, I found an email from Mary me with an invitation to stop by her place for some of her apple rum cake.I called and invited Mary and Don to join us for dinner. They agreed.

Teamwork prevailed. Richard drove to Tellico Grains for great bread, baked a caramel cake, made salad, and set the table. Adam and Josie chauffeured Mamie, and Josie presented me with a sampling CD of her Coker Creek photos. Mary and Don arrived with Mary’s apple cake.

In honor of Mamie’s birthday we began with an appetizer of banana peppers from Jack’s garden stuffed with a taco stuffing that Richard had made for Bluegrass. We followed this with Richard’s remarkable salad, served tableside by its creator. The main dish was New Orleans style barbecue shrimp which are traditionally served with the heads and shells intact, but I removed all but the tails because serving food with eyes and whiskers seems to freak out inland dwellers. We served the shrimp over warm bread from Tellico Grains, and accompanied it with Cajun dirty rice and some of the maque chou that my followers have read so much about.

Mamie commented that she should have known something was up when I asked about her favorite cake and invited her to dinner. The truth is that we had already invited her and Richard had already begun baking a cake when it occurred to me that we’d miss her birthday. This was a spontaneous celebration, but I am known for being the “wing it” queen.

We added ice cream to the dessert menu, and after singing “Happy Birthday” to my mountain mama, gorged ourselves on two homemade cakes from two different kitchens and Mayfield vanilla ice cream. Mamie’s twinkling blue eyes began to droop, so Adam and Josie departed with the guest of honor. Mary and Don sat to chat a while before their departure.

When the guests were gone, I was tempted to turn the lights out on the mess, but I had no good excuse to be such a slob. Mary had rinsed the dishes, so I put as much as I could in the dishwasher and retired for the night -- with great memories to relive as we face tomorrow’s kitchen clean-up.

Driving Ms. Mamie

Mamie’s been having back trouble, but Mamie isn’t one to take pain pills, or to take pain lying down. She says that, in the morning, she can’t straighten up. Since she’s already walking humped over, and she has to bend to make her bed, she makes her bed while waiting to straighten up. Now, that’s a “can-do” attitude. She figures she can work through most of life’s adversities, but she has seen a doctor about this back problem. The doctor prescribed physical therapy and a bone density scan.

Junior used to be Mamie’s chauffeur and companion for these appointments. Since Junior’s death, she’s been driving herself to therapy. But she agreed to let me drive her to what she thought would be a doctor’s appointment with her bone scan – only because she says that, with her poor hearing, she may not be hearing everything the doctor says. I arrived at the appointed time, and she wasn’t quite ready because she had already had two visitors and had made and canned a batch of muscadine jam. She gave me a jar of jam, and she was right; it was a pleasant color.

When Mamie was ready, she handed me the keys to her new car; she had her whole route mapped out. We’d go to the bank to deposit a check, and then we’d have lunch. Her choice of lunch venue was a place where we could get “something light” -- Captain D’s – where she insisted on paying for my meal because the bus driver is supposed to eat free. I guess in some universe fried fish and hush puppies are light – as long as you have slaw instead of fries.

After lunch, we swung by Wal-Mart for me to pick up a few things, since we had time to kill. We then headed for the clinic. Upon arrival, Mamie realized that we had a half hour before her appointment, so she had me backtrack to the post office to mail payments for her bills. This mission accomplished, we went back for her test. After her scan, she wasn‘t happy when the doctor didn’t have time to burn off a skin cancer while she “was there anyway.” Before she left, the clinic did give her an appointment for this procedure to be provided in a week, closer to her home.

We now had two choices: home or another adventure. Mamie had read in the Co-op newsletter about the biggest vineyard in Tennessee, which happens to be between where we were and where we were going. We detoured to check this out, and Mamie noted their methods of pruning for use on her grape vines.

One last stop at Dollar General in Tellico because they “have nice birthday cards that are less expensive than anywhere else.” Mamie was appalled that the price had gone up to a dollar from fifty cents, so she only bought one instead of the two she’d gone in for. She says she’ll write her own verse in a plain card for her second birthday buddy. She doesn’t like that prices keep climbing in this bad economy. Mamie raised a family on hard work, frugality, hope, and prayer. She knows a thing or two about making ends meet.

I told Mamie that I intend to spend a lot of time with her so that she can pass down to me all the knowledge she’s amassed over her almost-ninety years. And since she’s still acquiring wisdom, I may have to become her permanent chauffeur.

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?

Porch Potatoes

Will I ever get finished pampering these potatoes. Sweet? -- my hind leg! Our Irish potatoes know how to behave. We dug them when we were ready. With very little dusting off, we put them in mesh bags on a lower shelf in the kitchen. Here, they patiently await our dining pleasure. And there are so many ways to serve potatoes of the Irish variety. I can think of less than a dozen ways to fix these roots. Why can’t the sweet potatoes be as versatile and well-behaved as the Irish spuds?

First, the little darlings can’t stand to have soggy vines left on them after the first frost. Then, they demand that we pull them up in short order or they’ll spoil because they don’t like wet feet. Of course, they didn’t like being covered in wet clay out of the ground either. We carefully separated them into trays that allowed air flow for them to dry. Apparently, they found the temperature and barometric pressure in Mamie’s garage to be less than ideal. When we started moving them to Mamie’s laundry room, we found that many of them had already rotted. Oh joy! Another opportunity to interact with our “sweet” spuds.

I hauled our share home -- residual mud, rotten babies and all. I sorted them, yet again, into edible versus compost-ready. The still-good potatoes, I laid out on our metal mesh table in the sun on the porch. Hopefully, a little sunbathing will get them ready for their long winter’s nap. I didn’t know where they’d go after that, as the root cellar is too damp for them.

Mamie suggested hiding them below our bed, but the jams have claimed that space. I told Mamie that I was reluctant to move the jams for fear that they were the origin of our sweet dreams. She reminded me that these potatoes are, after all, sweet potatoes, so I should move the jams to the RV and allow the potatoes the under-bed option. Mamie also reminded me that I could go ahead and cook and freeze them for later consumption. I’d love to do this, but then I’d have to invest several hundred dollars in another freezer to store several dollars worth of potatoes.

Very few of our crop made it to the big-boy stage, which greatly disappointed Mamie. I told her that we shouldn’t be too worked up over this, as there was a real market for fingerling potatoes in gourmet foods. Crop failure is probably what led some genius to create demand for “baby” vegetables. If only we were raising potatoes for sale, we may have made out better this way. Even with all the waste, we did end up with several bushels of sweet spuds, fingerling and otherwise. Shirley gratefully accepted some, as did Leal when she dropped by for a chat.

Having washed, peeled and prepared the damaged potatoes that had some salvage value, I must admit that whipped with a little syrup, butter and cinnamon they were quite a nice accompaniment to our pork chops and mixed greens.