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Dear July,

July 10, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner 14 Comments

My friend Sarah Shotts, who blogs at A Love Letter to Adventure, inspired me to write this post Dear July. During the month of July, Sarah is video journaling in a series called Letters to July. I encourage you to check out her blog today. She is doing innovative, creative work not only with her July letters, but also in Project Stir (her global recipe project). Since I haven’t yet mastered the nuances of videoing (aren’t you glad? ha!), I decided to write a letter to July the old-fashioned way with pen to paper (then reproduced here, of course).

So, corny or not, here we go…

Dear July,

It seems as though I saw you only two or three months ago, yet here you are again. Somehow another entire year has passed. I have a confession. Did you know I love and hate you all at the same time? It’s true. I’ve thought about it for a long, long time.

July, you’ve always shown up bringing a bundle of my favorite things…family vacations, juicy watermelon, and a blue sky filled with lofty clouds. Even with all these wonderful gifts, the truth is that sometimes, most times, you are steamy and unbearable and I want you to disappear into a cool autumn breeze. But not this year, not so far, at least. This year I wouldn’t recognize you at all if not for the flicker of lightning bugs outside my kitchen window.

In case you’ve forgotten, today is my birthday. Today I turn fifty-three years old. That’s another reason I’m quite fond of you. Doesn’t everyone love their birthday month?

I’m not sure how I blinked and became fifty-three, but I did. And I’m not complaining. It’s a privilege, really, this aging thing. For whatever reason, many folks don’t get the luxury. Anyway, I thought you should know, I’m grateful for the memories so far—I hold them close and revisit them often like an old favorite book.

If you think about it, we have quite a history—fifty-three trips around the sun together is an impressive distance for someone who doesn’t like to travel all that much. Happy birthday to you and me and cheers to our next journey around the globe. Let’s try to enjoy more of the moments and remember they aren’t infinite. You order up the yellow sunshine (not too terribly hot, please), and I’ll bring the sunscreen.

And wine. There should be wine.

Your friend,

Me.

My 9th birthday. 9 candles with 1 to grow on!

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

[tweetthis]Dear July, Happy Birthday to us! You bring the sun, I’ll bring the wine. @sarahshotts #LetterstoJuly[/tweetthis]

Musical Pairing:

Todd Rundgren, Hello It’s Me

Birthday Girl and the Memphis Queen

July 10, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner 21 Comments

Birthdays are still kinda fun to me, and I’m happy to have another one today. Soon, my mother will call and sing Happy Birthday. I’m lucky that way.

One of my most memorable birthdays was my 9th because my party included a Mississippi River boat ride on the Memphis Queen. Here we are with Nana who always posed like a model and never took a bad picture. My friend Sara, sister Staci, and I are wearing matching Memphis Queen Line berets because we are fun tourists from Arkansas.

I remember being nine years old. The beginning of the Jan Brady years…

I loved Donna Osmond. His life-sized poster covered the door of our bedroom closet.

I played with Malibu Barbie and wanted to be Nancy Drew when I grew up.

Take a look at the party picture below and let’s discuss…

(l-r) Staci, Me, Sara with Nana (Frances Johnson Creecy)

This is the BAT cave kitchen. My mother still lives in this house on the farm. Although much has changed (new floor, cabinets, etc.), the kitchen is in the same location in the house. If that room could talk…

See the expando hat rack on the wall? It now hangs on the back porch, and I’m pretty sure Momma still has at least two of those same hats.

By the time we ate cake, my Memphis Queen beret already hung on the rack. Never much of a hat person, I was over that thing.

And speaking of cake, Nana’s fresh strawberry cake (always my birthday cake choice) sat on the table in front of me, yet Staci somehow ate chocolate?

I wish Momma still had the dinette set. It’s a collector item now.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairing:

Donny Osmond, Go Away Little Girl

How NOT to bake a Strawberry Cake.

May 19, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner 22 Comments

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