If there’s one thing Southern gals know how to do, it’s gab. Silly or serious, all it takes is a glass of iced tea and time. Pull up a chair, kick off your shoes, and make yourself comfy…get ready to dish!
Battle of the Bulge
My grandmother was a formidable Southern woman. She was the kind of woman who would rise well before dawn (she was a farmer’s daughter, after all) and get to work, put in a full day of driving, entertaining, cooking, baking, running the family business, and what have you, then repair to her room to freshen and change before my grandfather strolled in. After he retired from his salesman’s job, she kept much the same schedule, substituting work at the the church for some of the salesman’s wife niceties. She wasn’t tall....
read moreMy Labyrinth Moment
One of my many faults is that I’m an out of sight, out of mind kind of girl, which explains why the closet in my teenaged bedroom is still packed full of junk. This hasn’t been an issue until lately. Miss Carolyn, however, has decided to downsize, trading the 4/2-and-a-half with pool for a neat condo not too far away. The house is now disarrayed–boxes and piles and bags everywhere–but that bedroom closet sits, undisturbed, like a time capsule from the early 80s. I poked my head in today to get the lay of the land....
read moreFashion Failure
Sometimes I wonder when the nice people from the hospital are going to call and tell me that there’s been a terrible error and that they gave me the wrong baby. I mean, Frack is a straight-up fashionista. She’s had an innate sense of style since birth and has always had strong opinions about colors and styles, not to mention the ability to throw things together that shouldn’t belong and end up with an amazing outfit. I, on the other hand, have a hard time with this. My style leans toward comfortable. And although I have a...
read moreDear Manuscript: It’s Not You, It’s Me
This was a painful week, one that had been brewing for longer than I’ve been willing to admit. This week, I broke up with the baseball book. I love so many elements about this story: a heroine finding herself after a painful divorce, a couple of excellent sidekicks, a hunky guy who restores houses, and baseball (of course). It was a NaNoWriMo book that I enjoyed drafting. The revising? Not so much. Despite excellent input from some savvy and intelligent friends and guidance from Dream Agent, the baseball book can’t get the bat off...
read moreCast Iron Chronicles: Greek Pasta
One thing about keeping your cast iron handy is that it’s suddenly easier to make dinner. Here’s a dish that takes two pans and about a half an hour. Plus, it’s vegetarian! This a great one to fix if you’re incorporating Meatless Mondays into your routine and you’re too tired to think about cooking anything complicated. Greek Pasta 1 lb. penne pasta 1 can cannellini beans 1 can Italian-style tomatoes 1 9-oz. bag (6 cups) fresh spinach 4 oz. feta cheese 1 small onion, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced oregano...
read moreJane Austen, Fanny, Emma, Elizabeth Bennet, and Me
Today marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice. Originally titled First Impressions, it was the first manuscript Jane Austen wrote, but not the first to be published; the first edition title page reads “by the author of Sense and Sensibility.” When I was in college, my fabulous advisor, the inimitable Dr. Jim Skinner, was the departmental expert in all things Austen. At the time, I wasn’t interested. I’d had a bad run-in with Victorian novels in high school (Thomas Hardy’s Far From...
read moreI’ll Make Me a World
One of my father’s favorite books is James Weldon Johnson’s poetry collection God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. The whole collection is gorgeous, a tour-de-force of imagery, theology, and culture. Johnson is better known for “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” adopted by the NAACP as the “Negro National Anthem,” but Daddy’s favorite and mine is the first poem of God’s Trombones, “The Creation.” It opens: AND God stepped out on space, And He looked around and said,...
read moreCast Iron Chronicles: Rescue
Despite growing up in a very Southern household, I never developed an affinity for cast iron cookware. (Don’t revoke my Southern card just yet.) My mother, like many women who married in the ’60s, received a full set of Revere Ware, so most of my childhood kitchen memories involve copper-bottomed steel rather than iron. My grandmothers used iron in the usual ways–to fry chicken or bacon–but it was my mother-in-law’s cornbread pan that I coveted. Mr. Man knew it, so one day came home with a 10″ Lodge pan he...
read moreThirteen for ’13
Fresh starts are always so enticing, like the smooth surface of a brand new jar of peanut butter (or better yet, Nutella). There’s something so peaceful and calming about them, and yet you know that you can’t get to the good stuff until you dig in and get messy. So it’s in that vein that I submit this list of things I’d like to accomplish in 2013. Establish an accountability system for writing. Revise and submit the Hell’s Belles series to Dream Agent. Draft the proposal for the first Arden Grove High book....
read moremimi’s Black Magic Chili
Tonight is the church’s Halloween Hoedown and the return of the church-wide Chili Cookoff. If there’s one thing that’s pretty certain in church-related cooking contests, it’s that the Bero/Gaston women will do very well. Mama, aka Miss Carolyn, is famous for her homemade soups and ridiculously good pecan shortbread, while middle sis, Cigi, makes a chocolate thing so good it ought to be illegal. I’ve managed to take prizes in a choir-sponsored lasagna throwdown (Chicken Marsala Florentine Lasagna), a...
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