We are traveling 60 mph on the interstate going home from our Ashland stay. Suddenly we see brakelights four or five cars ahead of us and watch a minivan swerve off to the shoulder of the highway and slide to an immediate    [Continue reading]]]> Fellow blogger Parrot Writes set out this flash fiction challenge for last week:

We are traveling 60 mph on the interstate going home from our Ashland stay. Suddenly we see brakelights four or five cars ahead of us and watch a minivan swerve off to the shoulder of the highway and slide to an immediate stop, gravel flying. A young woman flings open the drivers door, jumps out, runs around the front of the van, and yanks open the passanger door. We were past her before we could see what caused her to stop so suddenly. In 55 words what just happened?

Great FF’s from Parrot, Kathan, Dayner, and Paper Cut Screams. Of course, I’m late with my response, but what the hey…

Unfortunately, the only fictional element of this was actually getting out of the car before the flood. Didn’t happen that way.

**

“Hurry!”

I pulled the door open and Alex tumbled onto the sloping shoulder. He opened his mouth as rivers of Seven-Up laced with popcorn, gummy bears, Milk Duds and stomach bile gushed out onto the gravel.

Independence Day: the movie. Opening day, 1996. Front row seating only. Vacation celebration with best friend.

Never again.

The yoga babes connect and head for the 10:15 ferry, which is currently at the “yellow” threat level, according to TSA. Given how peaceful it is here on the water, I’m inclined to think that refers to the yellow-green pollen, which is coating    [Continue reading]]]> Here’s my Sunday world, in about 25 miles and five hours.

The yoga babes connect and head for the 10:15 ferry, which is currently at the “yellow” threat level, according to TSA. Given how peaceful it is here on the water, I’m inclined to think that refers to the yellow-green pollen, which is coating houses, cars, and the interior of nasal passages with irritating chartreuse dust. We are at the chartreuse threat level. It’s one of the few complaints I have about spring.

White herons stalk and work the shoreline for fish as the ferry pulls out. The birds pay us no mind, acting as if the ferry zips to and from the island on a regular basis. Which it does. Cormorants sit on the channel markers and watch us head off the tip of the island. Later they’ll disappear under the water for way too long, popping back above the surface nowhere near where they dove down. I worry about them down there, but they don’t seem to care. They dive anyway, again and again.

Screaming seagulls follow the ferry, jockeying for thrown food and good camera angles. (Note to tourists: If God had intended seagulls to eat Wonder Bread, the ocean itself would produce that crap. Just don’t do it. Please.)

From the ferry landing, it’s a pretty straight shot: You take the main road (might be the only road) out of town until you come to the “Worms & Coffee” sign (I am not joking) at the little gas station, and turn down the side road there.

Mobile homes, brick ranches with dog pens out back, long dusty driveways. We drive a couple of miles. We pass the Antioch Baptist Church, whose sign warns: “You can spurn the Lord for only so long.”

Soon we pass the Praise the Lord Beauty Salon, a Pentecostal church, and the Midway Gun and ATV Club.

A curve in the road, a “Visitors Welcome” sign and we’re there, at the Thai Buddhist Monastery, Wat Carolina.

It’s Songkran, the Thai New Year’s Water Festival. There are dances, chanting, a dharma talk. I watch; I listen. I don’t understand a word of the various ceremonies that appear to be taking place simultaneously. I eat wonderful food – hot, aromatic, and much of it unrecognizable to me.

I don’t understand a word, but I feel positive energy everywhere around me. We march around the outside of the temple, and I can figure out how and when to shout and clap with the others. I am splashed with water for good luck and prosperity in the new year. Lots of water.

We sit again inside the temple and a man with a huge ball of twine wraps it around us all. I am on the inside of the circle, and for a while I feel like I belong here. I suppose I am a sightseer, a tourist, but I don’t feel like one. I am peaceful. I feel part of this circle. The man unwraps the twine, but I am still part of the circle. Later the monks will wrap prayers into the twine and people will tie the prayer-filled twine around their wrists.

Soon it’s time to leave, and we make our way back to the ferry. We drive, a little too fast the last few miles, and our car is the last one to make it on the ferry before it leaves. We are grateful.

The TSA sign still says the threat level is “elevated.”

Somehow I don’t believe it just now.

Favorite poets, anyone? My favorite is Mary Oliver. She captures the essence of nature and life so beautifully, so simply.  I could stick one of her poems here (like anything from Why I Wake Early for example), but decided instead to share one of my    [Continue reading]]]> I just realized this is National Poetry Month.

Favorite poets, anyone? My favorite is Mary Oliver. She captures the essence of nature and life so beautifully, so simply.  I could stick one of her poems here (like anything from Why I Wake Early for example), but decided instead to share one of my own poems.

A couple of years ago I took a poetry course and had to write poems in the rule-driven structure of a particular form:  ghazal, aubade, sestina.  (Yeah, look them up.  I didn’t know what they were, either.  I majored in psych.)   It was fun in a puzzle sort of way, but I certainly did not produce any literary gems.

I thought I would share the sonnet I wrote back then in honor of the fabulous Orange Oat scones I made this morning (thank you Dayner for your excellent blog recommendation of 101 Cookbooks). I used soy margarine instead of the half pound of butter (!) in the original recipe, almond milk instead of buttermilk and dried cranberries and apricots instead of currants.  The 10 minutes and minor chunks of skin it took to zest an entire orange were worth it — added enough flavor that the butter was barely missed at all. 

So here’s my sonnet:

Sonnet for a Carbohydrate
(with apologies to Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Loaves of bread arranged in rows
From country white to whole grain wheat.
The scent of baking fills one’s nose;
the air hangs heavy with wood hearth heat.
Baskets filled with muffins, bars,
and in the Vulcan, brownies bake.
Shimmering jellies shine in jars
near racks of tortes and chocolate cake.
Congo squares, Boston cream pie;
Oatmeal raisin, snicker-doodles.
For me to shrug would be a lie:
I love them all, I love them oodles.
Mon dieu! Oy vay! – Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the carbs too beautiful this year.

I wanted to show that delicious, healthy food can look just as unappetizing as the artery-clogger I posted on Friday. This is my seitan, right before getting sliced and tossed into a yummy stir-fry. Sorta    [Continue reading]]]> …I thought I’d post this picture of the seitan I made and wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

I wanted to show that delicious, healthy food can look just as unappetizing as the artery-clogger I posted on Friday. This is my seitan, right before getting sliced and tossed into a yummy stir-fry. Sorta like skinless chicken breasts, which also look pretty nasty, especially to chickens.

If anyone is interested in the recipe, leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll write it out for you. I combined a bunch of recipes, added some ingredients, forgot to add some others, and it came out great.

I do have a couple of southern vegan/vegetarian cookbooks: Cookin’ Southern Vegetarian Style and a really neat split cookbook: Hot Damn and Hell Yeah/The Dirty South Cookbook. They are both filled with tasty recipes. Big Bubba Tofu in the Trailer Park Specials section is living proof that grease and salt are not just the provenance of the meat and potatoes set.

But Southern cooking is a lot more than barbequed rodents and chicken-fried tofu. If you drive along a country road in the south you’ll pass cotton fields, tobacco barns, then a Free Will Baptist church. More cotton fields, then the Pentecostal church. Tobacco and another Baptist. And so on.

Southern cooking is covered-dish lunches and suppers at these little country churches. (I know, it’s not just a Southern thang, but since we’re here….)

I got to experience real Southern cooking and hospitality during the middle of NaNoWriMo. It was a glorious clear, warm fall day and my little church choir drove a couple of hours to sing at a tiny Universalist Church that was celebrating its 125 years as “an oasis of liberalism in a desert of orthodoxy.”

What an understatement. In the church foyer, looking like the Smith Bros. cough drop box, hung two pictures of the founding ministers, side by bearded side. One had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, while the other had fought for the Union, indicating from the get-go “the congregation’s willingness to embrace diversity of opinion and outlook.”

After the service, we went out back where picnic tables were piled high with the most amazing assortment of dishes: fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, fried okra, fried tomatoes, succotash, Crowder peas, baked beans, mashed potatoes, hush puppies, fruit salad, collards, green beans, ham, cornbread, biscuits and gravy, all waiting to be washed down with big pitchers of sweet tea.

While we ate, the kids played hide and seek in the ancient church graveyard next to the picnic tables. Birds sang, the sun shone, leaves rustled in the breeze. Time was…timeless.

Then we moved on to the dessert table, and Lordy, Lordy!! Pecan pie, chocolate pecan pie, red devil cake, lemon squares, cherry pie, chocolate cream pie.

Yeah, I had two slices of the made-from-scratch 7-Up pound cake. It was awesome.

And that is Southern cooking. Enjoy, y’all.