Family - grace grits and gardening

How High’s the Water Mammaw Ruby?

June 13, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner

Most of Mammaw Ruby’s customers lived in Victoria and Luxora. She even sold Avon to the gypsies living on the edge of Osceola. On Saturday, I helped her with deliveries. Her car was crammed with white sacks filled with lipsticks and lotions and rose-scented perfume. She said while we were out, we needed to see how high the Mississippi River had risen with all the recent rain, in case Papa Homer needed to build an ark.

morgueFile

Mammaw Ruby wasn’t known for her driving abilities.

Driving to the top of the levee, she hogged the entire road. I held my breath and prayed no one was speeding up the other side.

As her car straddled the levee, the river roiled only inches away lapping against the asphalt.

A tree floated by.

“I’ll swanee! We’re stuck!” Mammaw said in a panic. “I can’t turn around.”

“Let me out. I’ll walk.” There was no way I was going to drown in Mammaw’s car when she plunged over the edge. Even though I was a good swimmer, the current was dangerous. Daddy said if we EVER swam in the Mississippi River, we would surely drown.

Before I could escape, Mammaw reversed the car and backed down the levee the way we had come. The motor moaned. My knuckles cramped and clutched the door handle as I prepared to jump.

Later that night, I relayed the story to Momma at the supper table. Momma promised we would never again ride with Mammaw Ruby. Momma forgot all about that promise the next time she needed a free babysitter.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairing:

Johnny Cash – Five Feet High and Rising

Riding with a Farmer

June 8, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner

We were driving to church for my cousin’s wedding when Daddy pulled off the highway and stopped the truck. “What are you doing?” Momma asked, even though she knew the answer. Riding anywhere with a farmer meant factoring in lots of extra time. Daddy drove slow enough to watch cotton bolls open from the highway.

“We’re gonna be late,” I moaned and applied another coat of strawberry lip gloss. I hated to be late for anything, plus I was in charge of the guest book.

Daddy grabbed his hoe from the back of the truck, ambled across the shallow ditch, and waded through rows of knee-high cotton. He wacked down the annoying weed wearing his new sport coat from Westbrook’s.

Momma sighed.

All the Tate girls had been trained to scan the horizon for johnsongrass. Teasing and waving in the breeze, the offensive plants were easy to spot, a different shade of green standing taller than the crop.

Daddy had some of the cleanest fields in Mississippi County. Everyone agreed.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairing:

Lord I Hope this Day is Good, Don Williams

How NOT to bake a Strawberry Cake.

May 19, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner

We have many traditions in our family including Nana’s strawberry cake recipe. Since my birthday always happened during our Fourth of July trip to the lake, Momma (or Nana) baked a fresh strawberry cake at home to carry with us. (No one wanted to do real cooking at the lake.) Even after driving through the Ozarks, waiting in line at the ferry, and stopping in town for groceries, the cake was dreamy and luscious. We gorged on it all week.

This weekend, (daughter) Kelsey and I messed with tradition. For (son) Tate’s twenty-first birthday, we decided to tweak the recipe. Since we both love to cook, we thought it would be fun to try something new. We researched on-line recipes. Only a 4.5 star recipe would do.

Clearly, we weren’t right in our heads. Why mess with perfection? (Our excuses—I’d been cooped up too long in the house writing, and she’d just finished law school finals.)

The recipe we selected looked wonderful. It contained strawberry preserves and fresh strawberries and cake flour and vanilla bean paste. Plus there was buttermilk. Buttermilk means serious baking, y’all.

And oh my goodness, the batter. We licked the spatula and most of the bowl. Best batter ever. Light and fluffy.

We were feeling smug about our new and improved strawberry cake right up to the moment we tasted the finished product.

What a complete waste of calories. The cake was dense and flavorless, more like a bad grocery store bundt cake than fresh homemade cake-cake. The frosting was all wrong and not sweet enough.

It wasn’t Nana’s cake.

Not even close.

If Nana was watching (and of course she was), I’m sure she was thoroughly entertained by the whole birthday cake tasting debacle. The birthday boy pretended to like it. The rest of us gagged a few bites down. Kelsey had to cleanse her palate with a plain strawberry. (It did leave a strange aftertaste.) My sister’s boyfriend said it tasted like Nestle’s Quik strawberry drink from back in the day.

Even with a less than stellar cake, the day was a success because it was spent with family. We’ll be laughing about our cake experiment for a while…

Luckily we still have Nana’s 5-star recipe. And with my birthday only fifty-two days away, I know we’ll get the real thing soon enough at the lake. Momma will see to it.

Nana – baker of the best strawberry cake…

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

P.S. Today as I went back to review the recipe we used (trying to decide whether or not to call it out on my blog), I realized we chose a 2-star recipe! Not sure HOW that happened after reading so many 4 and 5 star recipes. Like I said, we weren’t in our right minds. This whole thing would have been avoided had we read the reviews. So be sure to never make the Country Living Fresh Strawberry Cake. It’s anything but.

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” ― Julia Child

Musical Pairing:

Carry on Wayward Son