Family Life

"Felicity in family matters is as rare as hen's teeth,"

I once read.

I tend to think of myself as the keeper

 of the family happiness,

but is that a thankless task,

or even possible?

I am like the self-appointed shepherd

of a small, ornery flock

who only want

 to be left alone

to go their own way.

My idea of a blissful family day is a pub lunch,

all of us together, 

followed by a long walk afterwards.

Only rarely is this wish indulged,

because one person doesn't like to eat out

and the other doesn't like to walk

and the third wants to listen to a radio programme

instead.

Let's go to Combe Gibbet, I said.

High upon Combe Down

is a long chalk pathway

with incredible views

of Berkshire and Hampshire,

and maybe even Oxfordshire.

I remember reading about Combe

in  A Genius in the Family.

In her memoir about

the intense love and rivalry between sisters

Hilary du Pré says

that her famous sister, Jacqueline

described Combe as "the top of the world."

Jacqueline du Pré took her husband

Daniel Barenboim

up to the Combe Gibbet.

She loved it; he loathed it.

It is a wild, beautiful place

but a little haunted.

This is a two-person gibbet, apparently.

George Broomham and Dorothy Newman

were hung in this place in 1676.

For crimes against family: adultery, which led to murder.

I wonder if the sky looked as ominous

on that day.

The day was full of clouds and intense, muted sunlight.

Against this backdrop,

even the haystacks look a bit menacing,

and lonely, too.

And yet, unexpectedly,

the sun will sweep across

the landscape.

Family life is like that, too.

 Here we go

over the stiles,

one after another.

Sometimes with a helping hand,

sometimes entirely alone.

These oak trees have endured

who knows what.

They seem to have grown together.

I think that can happen in marriage, too

if you are fortunate.

If there is anything that makes me happier

than seeing my children happy, together

I can't think what it might be.

A little more about me

Since it is my birth-week,

I am going to indulge in the pleasure

of talking about myself!

Did anyone else have this book as a child?

I think that blogging must be

the grown-up equivalent.

Blogger Interviews have been making the rounds this week. Two of my favorite bloggers, Willow and Elizabeth, have both participated . . . and so I have slightly deviated from the rules of the game by asking them both for a few questions.

Willow's Interview

Elizabeth's Interview

We all drop bits and pieces of ourselves into our writing . . . and it is interesting to find out what blanks someone else might want us to fill in.

How did you manage to end up in the UK from deep in the heart of Texas?

In the spring of 1992, I was a graduate student at Rice University in Houston. With some misgivings, I allowed myself to be set up on a blind date with a “charming English man.” I had three pieces of information about him: he was a great cook, he wore old-fashioned pajamas and he had a “cute accent.” (Two of the three turned out to be true.) Not only was Sigmund witty, charming, thoughtful, intelligent and gainfully employed, but he also wined and dined me. The first year we were dating, he took me skiing, to Paris and the Loire Valley, and all over California. It was heady stuff. By the end of 1994, I was married, pregnant and living near Reading.

Tell me about the lovely barn, pictured on your sidebar.
The Barn is your typical two-hundred-year-old Money Pit. Although it was originally a barn, it is quite unlike most dwellings of that former usage. More than one person has described it as a “Tardis.” It has always been lovely from the outside, but it was hideous and dated on the inside when we bought it. We had two very small children at the time and I really, really didn’t want to take on a fixer-upper, but luckily Sigmund persisted. (At the time, he thought it was great value for money. However, we have lavished so much money on it that I’m not sure that is still the case.) We renovated it for a year, lived in it for a year, and rented it out for five years while we lived in Houston. When we moved back to England in 2005, we started renovating it again. In fact, I spent two hours this afternoon meeting with the people who are going to replace about half of the old wooden windows. (That should be fun!)

The first 12 years of my oldest daughter’s life we moved almost every year – the one exception being the three years we spent in Trinidad. We are planning on putting down some roots here now, mostly for the children’s sake. It is a good house for childhood. The walls are thick, there are lots of bedrooms (seven) and strange little cupboards, and it has an eccentric floor plan.

Which three books do you think have affected your life most?
This is probably the most difficult question to answer, as I have read so many books!

Inevitably, I turned to childhood and adolescence for the answer – mostly because that was the time in which my tastes started to form. First of all, I am going to nominate Helen Corbitt’s Cookbook. I developed a taste for cookbook reading at approximately the age of 10, and this book was my favorite. Corbitt was a larger-than-life character who worked at the Houston Country Club, the Driskill Hotel in Austin, and Neiman Marcus in Dallas. She liked food to be lavish, wholesome and beautiful. Her recipes were accompanied by all sorts of colorful anecdotes, and her writing had a very specific, very charming “voice.” (Later, when I was 23, I discovered Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking and it had that same combination of food and memoir, except with less of the former and more of the latter.) Cookbooks are the bridge between my two greatest loves – cooking and reading.

My second book has to be Charlotte Brontë ’s Jane Eyre. I did a book report on it in the fourth grade – (How did I even know about this book? Where did I get it from?) – and I clearly remember my teacher telling me it was an “inappropriate” book for a 10 year old. I’ve read it so many times that I cannot properly recall that first-time readerly impression – but I do know that it kicked off my lifelong love affair with English literature, not to mention my keen interest in inappropriate books!

After much hesitation, I’m going to pick Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 as my third book. I read this one when I was a senior in high school, and unlike all of my other “favorites,” I haven’t reread it. I would describe it as influential, though, in the sense that it opened up my brain to a whole new world of narrative possibilities. It took the linear plot structure and reliable narrator that I was familiar with and turned them on their heads. And speaking of heads, it examined all sorts of big questions whilst still having emotional and psychological acuity in terms of the protagonist. I also remember this book for its mordant humor – something that I particularly enjoyed in The Confederacy of Dunces, a favorite from the same reading era. (I keep trying to sneak in other favorites!)


Apart from your loved ones, what is your most treasured tangible possession? I’m not very good at choosing just one thing! I have three most treasured things, really: my sapphire and diamond engagement ring (which I was given), my diamond drop necklace (which I inherited) and my desk (which I bought for myself). They are all so special to me, in different ways, but the desk is a kind of promise to myself.

What skill/ability/characteristic would you love to have? I have always wanted to be a jazz singer. I think that being able to express your emotions in that way would be the biggest kick. (Before blogging, what, if any, was your main mode of personal expression?) I’ve never thought of myself as a creative person, and I actually think that I lacked a meaningful mode of personal expression. Blogging has allowed me to express myself with writing, and it has also exposed me to so many creative people – and that in itself is most infectious!

If anyone else is interested in being interviewed, here are the rules for the game.
Instructions:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick the
questions).
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview
someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Interviews:

Audrey at Multitude

Su at Travels with Charlie

Anne at Beyond Ramen

Black Cake Redux

If you are just now tuning in to the Black Cake saga,

you might want to visit my first Black Cake post.

(I'm sure that just exiting never crossed your mind!)

Just getting started: Burning my sugar

"Betty suggests putting a pound of brown sugar

in a heavy skillet with a little water

and boiling it gently until it begins to turn black.

You do not want to overboil.

It should be only slightly bitter, black and definitely burnt.

(Home Cooking, p. 179)

The fire alarm is now going off,
and the kitchen is filled with smoke

It might be burnt sugar, but it sure isn't the "essence"
It hardens into something akin to pahoehoe lava

I end up playing something like

the paper-scissors-rock game:

heat hardens sugar, water melts it.

It took a LOT of hot water to melt this lava.

I'm not sure if I've actually made Black Cake yet, because I never did manage to burn any sugar properly.

For my first round of cakes - half a recipe, as per Colwin's instructions in Home Cooking, makes a big cake and a smallish cake -- I finally got fed up and used molasses. I wouldn't have done this under my own steam, but Nigella Lawson recommended precisely this course of action in HER homage to Black Cake. Unfortunately, at this juncture in the Black Cake making, it was approximately midnight and I had ten people coming for dinner the next day. Black Cake was meant to be the Christmas Cake -- in other words, not only the dessert, but also the symbolic crowning of the occasion. I couldn't afford to be picky or authentic.

The next morning I put a nice thick layer of marzipan on the big cake, then laid down a smooth sheet of roll-out Royal icing over that. Some Christmas trees, cut and dyed from the Royal icing, completed the whole and gave it that Christmas Cake signature look. (I would have taken a picture, but what with decorating and mince pie making and producing a large roast dinner, my back was against the wall, rather.) I did save you a slice, though.

A piece of the "first" Black Cake

The crowd's reaction: Despite my many disclaimers, which made the guests a bit nervous, the cake was fairly well-received. My daughter and sister-in-law, who don't like chunks of dried fruit, preferred it to the normal sort of Christmas Cake. Everyone else liked it well enough to have a slice -- and we all agreed that it tasted delicious with a large dab of brandy butter.

But here is the strange, deja vu moment: upon tasting the Black Cake, Sigmund and I realized that we had eaten some of the stuff when we lived in Trinidad. After all of these years of mythologizing Laurie Colwin's Black Cake, I realized that I had eaten it at least a decade ago! And it made no impression on me! Well, I was left with some impression -- and this Sigmund verified. I remember Trinidad Black Cake as being sort of damp, gummy and gelatinous -- and extremely rummy. I remember not liking it much.

After the month of marinating my fruit and dreaming about my Black Cake to come, it was a sobering moment. Rather than discovering the lost chord of Colwin's cake, I felt like I had lost it even more completely. It turned out to be nothing but an over-stimulated dream -- some Xanadu or Camelot or equally lost magical kingdom! On the positive side, Sigmund - who does not lavish praise - said he actually preferred my cake to the one he tasted so long ago.

Not to be deterred, and since I still had half of "my fruits," I wrote my friend Debski -- who is an expert on things culinary and Trini. She sent back the following advice:

Never, never use molasses. The flavour is too strong.

The cake needs to "rest" three days minimum.

Traditionally, Trinis do not ice their cakes.

Feed the cake with a couple of tablespoons of rum/cherry brandy while it is warm, and then another tablespoon after it cools.

The cake MUST stay in the tin while it is being fed and rested.

Oops. I didn't do ANY of these things. Perhaps this is why my cake was merely nice as opposed to epic?

Not long ago, I finally put a stat counter on my blog and I was AMAZED to see how many people had found me through a Googled Black Cake search. I'm assuming that most of these people have been beguiled by Colwin's recipe, but confused by her lack of specificity on certain points, because they asked exactly the sort of questions which Debski answered for me. Without a true Trini to refer to, we having been baking in the dark.

Debski also shared another interesting tidbit with me. Apparently, instead of messing about with burnt sugar, many modern Trinis use browning (yes, for gravy) to achieve the proper shade of blackness in their cake. WHAT?! I could only think, "ew, gross."

Second round of burning sugar: I was determined to cook it slowly. I had my pound of sugar and I added a bit of water. I stirred and stirred. It became grainy; it turned into sugar again. I added some more water. It became grainy again; it blackened only slightly. And on and on like this for 45 minutes -- at which point I gave up again. I salvaged a bit of this sort of burnt grit for my cake and I moved on. Next year, I'm going to ask for a burnt sugar tutorial. (There must be a secret to it!)

This time, I followed Laurie's recipe and Debski's instructions. My second cake is now resting, having being fed with the prescribed rum. I will leave it to sit until New Year's, and then I will present it to my old Trinidad crowd for a test taste.

The Black Cake saga continues . . .

but still a question remains in my mind. Could it be that Trini Black Cake is different from the recipe that Laurie Colwin got from St. Vincentian babysitter? Can this lost cake EVER be recovered?

Black Cake: First you take a bottle of rum . . .

I've just emptied a bottle of rum and one of sweet wine . . . and no, I haven't taken to drink. Actually, I'm soaking my fruit.

After this fruit macerates in its 40% proof bath for a month or so, I'm going to make my first fruitcake.

Fruitcake: a word that conjures up myriad responses.

In America, fruitcakes are mostly mocked.

• "Nutty as a fruitcake . . ."
• The Christmas gift that keeps getting re-gifted.
• A relic that only the older generation -- those same quaint folk who used to get an orange and a couple of nuts in their stockings -- actually like to eat.

Indeed, my paternal grandparents were very fond of fruitcakes; memorably, they even sent me one when I was in college. They liked the pecan-laden version from the famous Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas. (I believe that they started out with the Deluxe, but switched to the Apricot Pecan version in later years.) According to their website, Collin Street Bakery ships to "196 foreign lands." I'm not sure exactly how many foreign lands there are these days, but that would seem to cover most of them. Clearly, somebody out there is eating a lot of fruitcake.

In England, fruitcake has always been popular -- so much so that it makes the festive rounds at birthdays, weddings, and especially, during the Christmas season. Unlike the American fruitcake, which features red and green glace cherries rather heavily, the English fruitcake is dark and boozy. Rum, sherry, ale, brandy, whisky: they all get their chance. Perhaps the English fruitcake has never fallen out of favor for precisely this reason. American fruitcakes are still suffering from Prohibition.

I've had a yearning to make my own Christmas cake (ie, fruitcake) for a few years now. Although this seasonal ritual never would have occurred to me in America, it is all part of my English acculturation process. It is not unusual, in my little corner of the countryside, for women to say something like: "I iced my Christmas cake today." This year, I am going to be one of those women! Marks and Spencer will still be selling Christmas cakes, but this year, I won't be buying.

I'm not just making any old fruitcake, though . . . I'm making Black Cake.

I first read about Black Cake in 1991. My friend Martha Smith gave me a copy of Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking and said, "I think you will like this." Never mind "like"-- that insipid, lukewarm word -- I loved it. Indeed, I am evangelical on the subject of Laurie Colwin. I spread the Word whenever and wherever I can. If I meet a fellow Laurie fan, I am instantly convinced of this person's inherent likeability and good taste. It is like skipping the first six months of getting-to-know-you and cutting straight to the chase of true friendship. More food reminiscence than cookery guide, Home Cooking is for people who like to read about food. Laurie Colwin writes cookbooks for people who are interested in the role that food that plays in our lives. "Dinner Parties" or "Repulsive Dinners: A Memoir" are typical chapter titles.

The final chapter in Home Cooking describes an exotic mixture called Black Cake -- which is, apparently, the Caribbean version of fruitcake. Colwin describes it thusly, in the following oft-quoted lines: "There is fruitcake, and there is Black Cake, which is to fruitcake what the Brahms piano quartets are to Muzak. Its closest relatives are plum pudding and black bun, but it leaves both in the dust. Black cake, like truffles and vintage Burgundy, is deep, complicated and intense. It has taste and aftertaste.

Who wouldn't want to try this gorgeous-sounding stuff? It seems entirely appropriate for me to make -- as my first fruitcake -- this Caribbean/American/English hybrid.


Black Cake
(from Home Cooking, by Laurie Colwin)

Part I: The Fruit

1 pound raisins
1 pound prunes
1 pound currants
1 pound red glace cherries
3/4 pound mixed peel
1 bottle Passover wine*
1 bottle dark rum (750 ml)

Chop all of the fruit extra, extra fine and put in a large bowl.

My reflections: Unless you have a posse of friends with you, and you are drinking margaritas and chatting as you do this extra fine chopping, I would advise a food processor for this task. Be sure to pulse each fruit carefully, and one at a time, or you will get mush -- particularly with the raisins and the prunes.

Add the wine and rum and stir the mixture together. Marinate at least two weeks, and up to six months. Colwin advises a "crock" for the marinating process; Nigella Lawson suggests a large tupperware; I'm using a large plastic bottle which I use (only theoretically) for lemonade in the summer.

My observations and shopping feedback: First of all, English people who work in grocery stores have no idea what "passover wine" is. One kindly man tried to fob me off with ale, as he claimed that this is what the locals are using for their fruit cake. I was pretty sure that passover wine* is a sweet, cheap red (and subsequent Internet research has revealed this to be the case), but I wasn't convinced that the truly fortified stuff (sherry, Madeira, port and the like) would be quite the thing. In the end, I decided to use a bottle of Vin Santo that I happened to have lying around . . . waiting for that moment when I might make cantucci. It is a sweet wine, much lighter than Madeira, and I liked the fact that it has a "pronounced scent of toasted almonds and dried apricots." Nigella claims that Madeira is best, so you will have to use your own judgment on this one. As for the rum, try to get one from the Caribbean. I used one called Lamb's Genuine Navy Rum, but as long as it is a dark rum, I would go with whatever is on special offer. Having already invested in the fruit and spirits, I have to say that "Homemade" is not the cheapest way to go. I find it somewhat worrying that Tesco's can sell small fruitcakes for just a few pounds.

And another pertinent thing: You will be amazed by how much rum can be drunk by this fruit. I expected a watery mess, but actually the fruit will be thick, albeit liquid, by the time you give it a good stir. I had a taste: Delicious! Just as well, because by my kitchen scale's reckoning -- and depending on how heavy your container is -- you should have about 7 pounds of highly alcoholic fruit.

Part II: Baking the Cake

Before you read the following list of ingredients, you might enjoy Laurie Colwin's words on the subject: "It is a beautiful, old-fashioned recipe . . . (which) comes from a time when cakes were cakes and no one bothered much about using a dozen eggs at a shot."

Laurie herself points out that you could halve the recipe, but why then go to all the bother? "The spirit of this recipe is celebratory, lavish and openhaded. It seems the right thing to make two and give one to someone you feel very strongly about." My plan is to make one big one, and then as many small ones (using a small loaf pan) as I can get out of the left-overs.

1 pound butter
1 pound dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 dozen eggs
1 pound plus 1/2 cup flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 pound burnt sugar, or 4 ounces burnt sugar essence*

1. Butter and flour two deep 9-inch cake tins and set aside. Preheat oven to 350F/175C.
2. Cream butter and brown sugar.
3. Add the fruit and wine mixture.
4. Add vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon.
5. Beat in eggs.
6. Add flour and baking powder, and then burnt sugar. Mix well.
7. Bake in cake tins for 60 - 75 minutes.
8. When cake is absolutely cool, wrap it in waxed paper and let it sit until you are ready to ice it.

My reflections: The mixing order of this cake is rather unorthodox. The recipe for Trinidad Black Cake suggests a more typical order of events: first creaming, then adding eggs one by one; then dry ingredients; and finally adding the fruit mixture, to which you have added the vanilla and burnt sugar. Even though I want to stick with Laurie as much as possible, I think that I will probably follow this latter instruction when it comes to mixing up the batter.

Notes on burnt sugar: In Nigella's version of the recipe, on pp. 250-252 of How to be a Domestic Goddess, she substitutes molasses for the burnt sugar. I am very opposed to this substitution: it seems to be against both the spirit and the letter of the recipe.

I'm planning on making my own burnt sugar, which is probably a necessity since I don't know of any West Indian grocery store nearby. (If you live in, New York City for instance, you might be able to buy the essence.) Colwin's instructions for making your own burnt sugar are a kind of vague hearsay: "Betty suggests putting a pound of brown sugar in a heavy skillet with a little water and boiling it gently until it begins to turn black. You do want to overboil. It should be only slightly bitter, black and definitely not burnt."

Still on the subject of burnt sugar, I found other words of guidance from this recipe: Put brown sugar in heavy pot. Stir, letting sugar liquefy. Cook over low heat until dark, stirring constantly, so sugar does not burn. When almost burnt, remove from heat and stir in hot water gradually. Mix well, let cool, and pour into container for use in final cooking.

Laurie Colwin freely admits that she has never made a black cake herself. Well, I haven't either -- yet -- but I feel confident enough about cake baking in general, and the capacity of my Kitchen Aid mixer in specific, to suggest making up this cake batter in two batches. Those of you with large commercial mixers may do as you like!

Part III: Icing the Cake

Laurie Colwin is a bit vague on "icing" instruction. She suggests that you use "the simplest white icing made of powdered sugar and egg white with the addition of half a teaspoon of almond extract."

Nigella Lawson takes the Black Cake down a traditionally English path at this juncture: a thin coating of marmalade goes on top of the cake, to be covered with marzipan, and finally a thick crust of Royal icing -- that ready-to-roll white fondant which can be purchased in blocks in any English grocery store.

In this New York Times article, they leave the cake un-iced.

I will probably opt for an English version of the icing, as that is what my audience will expect. Pictures to follow in December!

But why stop at Black Cake? While I'm charting unexplored food territory, I may just venture further into the English culinary landscape. Today I lay down my fruit; tomorrow, there are new food worlds to conquer. Chutney! Pickled onions! Canning jars at the ready!

Who me? A Blogger??

Life is, as we all know, unpredictable.

One short month ago, I was ignorant of the ways of blogging -- and not just ignorant, but oblivious and indifferent, too. I pretty much associated the whole phenomenon of blogging with a geeky person (probably a boy, in my mind's eye) who was attached to his hand-held device and had intimacy issues to boot! In the sake of full disclosure, I am a sad Luddite -- too pathetic to even want to change -- who still needs her 13 yr old daughter to load her IPod.

However, life (as mentioned) is unpredictable . . . and I certainly never imagined that I would be living out some of my finer years in the English countryside! I like margaritas, Tex-Mex, good hamburgers, Shipley's doughnuts, movies, buttered popcorn, Coke icees, bookstores, outdoor tennis courts, and blue skies . . . none of which (well, almost none) can be found in West Berkshire. I do NOT like mud, drizzle, the color gray, dogs, horses, hunting, shooting, did I mention mud? Of these, the countryside has plenty. Indeed, I went to a dinner party not so long ago and almost the entire conversation revolved around shooting, English country-style. You might think that a Texan would be entirely at home in a conversation about shooting, but nay -- as a small child I couldn't stand the sight of the bloodied dove my brother laid so casually on the kitchen counter, and I haven't altered in this opinion.

I already did my time in a small town -- Temple, Texas (for the record) -- and I am like an escaped prisoner who can still feel the phantom chains and never, never wants to go back. Some of you may remember the classic Talking Heads song Once In A Lifetime. If you went to high school in the 80s you will undoubtedly remember the accompanying video in which lead singer David Byrne repeatedly slapped his forehead open-palm style, wildly rolled his eyes, and questioned: Well . . . How did I get here? When I was a high school senior, my late great friend Andrea Jarma and I used to go around imitating David Byrne and feeling rather clever and certainly to-the-point. It is a phrase that has resounded through my mind more than once this last eighteen months.

So, you may think high school reminiscences (from a time when MTV was the new thing and we were all making cassette tapes for our boom boxes) are a tad digressive from the subject of blogging . . . but let me assure you, it will all come together. The truth is: I can live without a good margarita, even though I may not like it and will certainly feel my life to be impoverished by that lack. HOWEVER . . . what I cannot live without are the good conversations/lively banter/sympathetic ear/enjoyable bitch-sessions which accompanied the margaritas. And this is what I've really been feeling short of these days. I have lovely, lovely friends in England . . . but they aren't doorstep friends. They aren't "let's meet at the Taqueria" friends, or let's catch a movie friends.

I've always had good luck meeting like-minded people . . . maybe not LOADS of them, but always enough to satisfy. For some reason, my luck seems to run out; I just haven't been to convert any of my new acquaintances -- some of whom are perfectly pleasant -- into true friends. Although my husband "Sigmund" is a good sort with many fine qualities -- let's face it, he's a fairly taciturn fellow who will never be able to meet my chatting needs. My two daughters are wonderful chatters -- but conversationally, it's still a one-way street down a cul-de-sac with them. They have their own tribes, and that is how it should be.

So, loneliness established: One frigid morning in late January, I decided to google Laurie Colwin, one of my favorite authors . . . and I ended up reading this essay. I felt such kinship with the author of the essay, that I ended up reading her blog . . . and then writing her a fan letter. This lead to other blogs, which lead to emails, which lead to blog-posting, and on and on. I remembered that my friend Jenni had give me Julie & Julia (about a Texan living in NYC, who starts a blog and changes her life) and thus discovered another kindred spirit. Suddenly I had friends in New York City! Well, perhaps I exaggerate . . . but still! It was empowering; I realized that I could just go into cyberspace and FIND those like-minded friends! There actually are people who want to talk about Laurie Colwin or gingerbread or how to make a good biscuit or Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf. Maybe not in Berkshire . . . but somewhere! I needn't be limited by what chatting at the school gates threw my way. It was an exciting process because it reminded me of the buzz I've always gotten from making friendship discoveries; it also reminded me of the joy that I used to get from writing. I've always been good at enthusiasm with that little frisson of euphoria . . . feeling it again made me realize anew how much it had been missing in my life.

It is difficult to keep in touch. I send this out to old friends with the hope that it will be a way of keeping a fresh conversation open. I also send it out (with a fervent belief in serendipity) to the Great Internet . . . in the hope that it may bring a new friend or two into my life.

Please feel free to comment!

Last thought: Please check out some of the blogs I have listed. They are my first favorites, but I'm sure -- now that I've become addicted -- I will be finding new ones, too. All of you Texans MUST check out Homesick Texan. It is a treasure-trove of recipes -- whether or not you live in a place without Rotel.