BUT IT LOOKED LIKE A SALT GRINDER

I'm in heaven in Jimmie Nell's kitchen. She passed on in '07, but her kitchen is in tact here at Uncle Ben's. She loved to cook and has every pot, pan and utensil imaginable, plus counter space for two or more to work at the same time.

Last night I used one of her huge skillets to cook hamburger patties seasoned with Johnny's liquid seasoning. Sliced portabellas and beef stock were added. Looking for cornstarch, I found a tall, slim container with some kind of grinder handle at the top. I suspected it was salt, but had to find out. I thought I was removing the last section of the bottom, but I wasn't, and the whole thing came apart. The kitchen looked like a pre-school experiment. Contents went everywhere including down my front. It didn't taste like cornstarch. I think it was flour for dusting her daily biscuits. A powdered sugar sifter is what I'd use it for--carefully.

Speaking of powdered sugar, makes me think of cake, makes me think of walking for an hour down around and up and over Enid Dam, not with a carrot dangling to entice me, but a piece of fresh yellow cake with chocolate frosting. What I won't do for chocolate.

We ate our hamburger patties with mushroom gravy over rice, had home cooked lima beans, cornbread and tomato slices. The blueberry cobbler was rubbery. Self-rising flour was called for, and I got into the wrong bucket.

Ben got up at dawn, and ahead of the coons, to gather 161 ears of his neighbor's corn. Friday the guys will bring down the grills, fire them up, and so they don't go hungry, as if they could here, they're boiling craw fish with corn, potatoes, portabellas, smoked sausage (Boudan is too expensive) and Zataran. The world really does move on its belly.

Today we make the grocery list for Ben and scour the freezers for squash, beans and whatever else we can cook for the 4th. I saw a bag of pears marked for pie and found a recipe for a French open face. We'll labor all day tomorrow in the kitchen making potato salad, boiling eggs for deviling, a vanilla cream cheese pie, and probably a dozen other foods. I hope Jimmie Nell looks over our shoulders and gives us directions.

2009 Red Convertible Travel Series