Lacking Liveliness

MKR made that observation about her orange marmalade before Martha led her to the discovery of the Seville orange on the grove property. I think she would have found my calamondine tarts lively enough. Guests seem to love them. There are never any left over on the cake stand. The Ruby red grapefruits are ripe now. Slicing into them the perfumy citrus smell wafts through the kitchen. I am thinking about grapefruit marmalade if I can find out what a flannel bag really is.

Collards Redux

Just found out today that Marjorie and I share another love--- etymology. I was reading a scathing letter she wrote to the editor of a newspaper who has panned her short story " Cracker Chittlins." She mentions her love of etymology in the letter.
I,too, love tracking the history of words. When I learned that the word for cooked animal flesh is almost always French( pork) and the animal name itself is Anglo-Saxon (pig). I could remember who conquered whom in the time before Walmart.

On the cooking front, I cooked another collard quiche. This time I baked the potato shell first. It was quite acceptable...crunchy but done. The important part about the collards is the cutting. They must be cut so that they resemble Easter grass.They should also be tiny and new.

I also found a cute picture of MKR for the table on the back of When the Whippoorwill. She looks coquettish and utterly enchanted with a black and white spaniel. It is a person very unlike the stern one on the cover of the literary magazine.

No Fried Asparagus

Was given some gorgeous asparagus and went to CCC. The only recipe is page 61's Fried Asparaus. Nope. I'll steam it and wrap very thin slices of roast beef around two spears at a time. Marjorie would let me get by with this one. I know she would.

The 30 mile bike ride to Baldwin and back was challenging. Saw one snake on the asphalt and one bull with a set of horns wider than I am tall. Two dogs watched as we rolled by. One, a black lab, was obviously playing hookey. The other, a big white dog, look lonely and lost. " Could you be the one who will take me home?" he seemed to say.

About ten miles down the trail, a man on a bulldozer sat and watched a fire on his lot. The smell of pine smoke scented the air.

My Sweet Potatoes in Orange Baskets

There they were. Fat orange blobs at the end of wine colored vines. They did not look like the wire brushed sweet potatoes of my preorganic period. My Urbfarm potatoes looked more like the Elephant Man in vegetative form. Still I plan to mash them, salt them, honey them, cream them, stir in one egg a dash of clove and a bit of grated orange. Then I follow Marjories orange half filling directions and bake. She said, " Handles may be made or orange rind if one wants to be very fancy." I don't.

Cheese Grits Souffle

I did a fairly acceptable immitation of MKR's Cheese Grits Souffle which is found on page 74 of CCC. I'm always nervous about any recipe that has souffle as its last name, but I shouldn't have been. I followed her directions and the result was delectable. The only change I made was to use smoked gouda in the original recipe. Yum.

Had a strange thought while sitting on the porch looking out at the three giant oak trees that border the B&B to the left. These trees weren't much smaller when MKR saw them. Given the very real possibility of her having sat on my porch in the 50's, the oaks were full size then. I know she visited Crawford and possibly discussed her case on the porch. The oak trees have seen much history.

Around 3:00 a neighbor came with a tiny squirrel in a box with fluffy kleenex bedding. It was a baby that had fallen off the power lines and was stunned. The neighbor was going to host a Brownie meeting and wanted to know if I could babysit for the stunned squirrel.

I did.

Cold Bread to Our Enemies

Marjorie didn't leave a recipe for pecan bread, but she certainly used pecans. CCC has recipes for pecan cream torte, pecan patties,pecan pie and pecan souffle. Marjorie spoke of the power of bread quite often. As she said on page 19 of CCC, "Yet a part of the placidity of the South comes from the sense of well-being that follows the heart-and-body warming consumption of breads fresh from the oven. We serve cold baker's bread only to our enemies, trusting that they will never impose on our hospitality again."

At HOCS I bake pecan bread weekly in the bread machine. As someone who came to adulthood with the Tassajara Bread Book where one became " one with the dough", machines are almost sacriligious. Nevertheless, my trusty bread machine can turn out a fine loaf of warm, nutty pecan bread while I am getting a little more sleep. The aroma of the bread is guaranteed to rouse even the most reluctant of guest.

Slathered with Dora clone butter and calamondine preserves, the pecan bread is easy to make. Select any classic white bread receipe from a bread machine cookbook. Substitute 1/4 cup of ground pecan meal for 1/4 of the bread flour. Then bake according to the white bread directions. Yum!

Broccoli A la Hollandaise pg 50

The best broccoli I have been able to grow a la Marjorie was one called Goliath....and it was. I grew one head that was icebox melon size. When FOG met here at the B&B we had broccoli dressed with rice wine vinegar, toasted sesame oil and later brocolii slaw. All of this is a far cry from the Marjorie's classic receipe. I do love the fact that she allows folks to leave the Hollandaise off the fire only as long as it takes to drain the broccoli...not a moment longer.

Shrimp and Grits

Marjorie said cheese grits were a Baskin specialty. This morning I did Mayport shrimp and cheese grits from CCC. I did the grits just as she suggested on page 73. The shrimp I " gussied up" a bit with fresh red pepper and green onions. My Canadian guest liked the dish...alot.

A Plump Impostor

AJ Cronin called Marjorie a plump impostor. He was the author of The Keys of the Kingdom. According to her, he questioned her ability to go off into the backwoods with a Dutch oven and emerge with " an Emily Post dinner for twelve. She said, " if this brutal description were true it would be because of Southern hot breads."

This A.M. I started off the B&B breakfast with Southern Pecan bread. This was not a sweet bread. It was a white bread, bread machine receipe that I adapted. I use a white bread receipe and substitute 1/4 cup of pecan meal for the flour. The effect is wonderful. Folks wake up smelling hot bread which can be used as a transport device for slabs of butter and spoonfuls of calamondine jelly. Oh, excellent.

No Pig's Feet

Marjorie would understand my need for soup. The temperature has dropped below 80. The cabbage still grows on the lawn. I have invested my retirement savings in saffron threads. Mrs. Chancey’s Spanish Bean Soup ( CCC7) is the soup of choice. I will not use the pig’s feet; ham chunklets must do. I will use canned beans. Somehow I haven’t learned how to soak beans so they will soften. I still have beans that taste like buckshot. Finally, I will use organic andouille sausage for the pure Spanish. New Orleans rather than Madrid. Other than that, it is true to the receipe. Yum!

Calamondines Everywhere

Marjorie's recipe for Scotch Marmalade on 208 of CCC intrigues me. I am thinking of making it with calamondines. They grow everywhere here on trees that are barely three years old. I make and incredible calamondine pie by using the quick and easy key lime pie recipe on the Eagle Brand label. It uses condensed milk. No, I don't have Dora, Marjorie's Jersey cow, but I do have Publix.

In the Beginning

Miss Marjorie and Me

The Marjorie here is Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Florida author supreme. In 2002 I started to convert my B&B into a center that stressed local food. It dawned on me that Rawlings was the original locavore. She ate what she could grow, or catch, or kill at Cross Creek. Her cookbook, Cross Creek Cookery is the original place-based eating.

I have decided to incorporate a version of some of her recipes into my breakfast presentations. Since I taught her major work, The Yearling, for over a quarter of a century, I feel like she is beside me in my tiny 1920’s era kitchen. And after all, our lives are somewhat parallel.

She moved to the backwoods of Florida. I spent ten years on Ft. George Island. Her first marriage ended in divorce. Mine did too. She was an outdoorsy individual. I raced barrels on quarter horses and visited the Seminoles with my father on his airboat. She loved to feed folks. So do I. She was a published writer who wrote for McCall’s magazine. So did I. Of course, she won a Pulitzer and my biggest prize was to have my Newsweek article published in a college writing text near Wendell Berry.

Interestingly enough, she was in my home several times. My B&B was formerly owned by one of her attorneys T.G. Crawford, the man who entered the pleadings for her famous Supreme Court case against Zelma Cason. She was introduced to him by her doctor at Riverside Hospital. I found out she had been here when the son of Crawford’s law partner, Phil May, told the Rawling’s Society about her visits. I think he was about six at the time and he remembers her as “ a kind lady.” He and his dad visited her at Cross Creek also.

Her Cross Creek Cookery is both a good read and a wonderful recipe book. While I cheat on some of the Dora’s cream recipes, I think the end result is satisfying. My purpose is to honor Marjorie’s expressed belief in the power of dining , “ The breaking together of bread, the sharing of salt, is an ancient symbol of friendliness.” In my innkeeper experience, the folks who have been traveling in today’s world of airline anxiety or on I-95’s take-no-prisoners, asphalt ribbon, need the genuine friendliness that my B&B breakfast provides.