Countdown

Of all Mother Nature’s gentle and endearing creatures, I most identify with the groundhog. He waits patiently underground all year, feasting on delicacies and delights, only to appear in the gloom of a February morning while all the world waits to discover his secret. Then, in a burst of media attention, his single accomplishment of the year is over in the flash of a newsman’s camera.

For the groundhog, fate balances on the turn of a sundial. If the way is clear, we will throw open the windows and welcome in the twinkling sunbeams of spring. But if the groundhog sees his shadow, he runs to hide his face and we trudge into a tunnel of deep, dark, depressing days, trailing our winter boots and woolen scarves behind us.

I feel the same way when I try on bathing suits.

During the winter months, I while away the demi-days of the season gorging myself on cream-filled snack cakes and marking off blocks on the calendar with a tube of decorator icing. Something happens to me in between the time when the autumn leaves start falling and the spring seedlings begin to sprout. Cold weather brings the opportunity to stir up sweet snow cream and savory soups. Winter holidays that taste of cornbread dressing and pumpkin pie whip past, and before I know it I’m two Ho-Ho’s and a Ding Dong away from fitting into my stretchy pants.

And so, I dig in my closet to the bottom of the pile of Things Left to Die, past the leggings, past the belly shirts, past the sports bra, and pull out—gasp—last year’s swimsuit. It took three paramedics and the Jaws of Life to remove the thing last year, and it will probably take my weight in bacon grease to get thing wretched thing to slide on now.

And suddenly Puxatawney Phil pops up to remind me that the days of carrots and calorie counters are waiting just around the cold front.

And here I am without a recipe for groundhog pie.

A Connecticut Yankee In a Southern Box Plant

I come from a place in the South where grease is considered a major food group, biscuits beyond breakfast are as common as watermelon seeds in July, and sweet iced tea is always in season. I’ve traveled extensively from Macon clean up to Roanoke, so I was convinced that these were universal truths.

That is, until I went to work as secretary in a corrugated container plant in South Carolina, under the direction of the Human Resources Manager, a transplanted career woman from Connecticut who said “car-mel” instead of “caramel” and couldn’t use “y’all” correctly in a sentence, even if I spotted her the verb. This wasn’t just a culture clash. This was culture wearing a striped shirt and plaid boxers with Girl Scout socks and a seersucker blazer.

Our differences stuck out like peanut butter on pintos. I thought UConn was a territory in Canada. She had to read the comics out loud to understand the dialogue in Snuffy Smith. We debated mightily about whether it was proper to flip, flick, cut, or turn on the lights. And although there were many times she was starting, getting ready or preparing for something, she was never, ever “fixing” to do anything.

She ate fried chicken for the first time when she migrated South to study for her Master’s at the real USC. When fall holidays drew near she reminisced about Thanksgivings on Nantucket where they feasted on fresh lobster with drawn butter, and rolled her eyes like a hot dog on the Speedy Mart rotisserie when I insisted that a proper Thanksgiving meal boasted at least fifteen different carbohydrates and was smothered in giblet gravy. When I tried to explain about collards and black-eyed peas at New Year’s, she looked at me like I’d suggested wearing hoop skirts to Yankee Stadium.

Extending the hand of Southern hospitality, I invited her to a fine restaurant nearby to show off the local cuisine.

“Everything here is either fried or covered in gravy,” she announced, wiping a spot of yesterday’s special off her laminated menu and peering across the vinyl tablecloth at my plate of chicken-fried steak.

“That’s not true. Some things are fried AND covered in gravy. Have some cornbread.”

“What’s in it besides corn?”

“Bacon grease.”

“No, thanks.”

We straddled the Mason-Dixon line without serious injury for four years, teaming up on everything from safety promotions to company picnics. I discovered that UConn was a fine educational facility, even if it didn’t have a feral feline or saber-wielding rowdy as a mascot , that I could “turn” on the lights without invoking the mental stress clause of my health insurance, and that lobster is a festive and tasty holiday dish, although it doesn’t make for very rich gravy.

And even though my new friend never learned to fry vegetables or to appreciate the subtle humor of Snuffy Smith, she developed a lasting affinity for iced tea.

Sometimes life’s little victories are the sweetest.

What's Cooking?

I’ve had it the same way every Tuesday night since I got married.”

“Sunday for me. And it’s always the same. Rub it with butter, turn on the heat, and wait til it’s done.”

“If they can show me one new thing to do with a chicken, it’ll be worth the money.” I sighed, peering again into the refrigerator. I’m hanging on the door hoping the Food Fairy has arrived with a creative new dish for supper. My two sisters are there to fight over the wishbone.

“That’s it. Let’s go to the cooking show. What could it hurt? Besides, we don’t have time to cook before it starts, so we’ll have to eat out.”

An hour later, Laudy, Quirky, and I, blotting bleu cheese and bacon bits from our blouses, surrendered three bucks each and filed into our seats. The woman in charge of the cooking show resembled a test pilot instead of a test cook. With that microphone headset she wore I expected to hear “Cheese manned and ready, sir!” any minute. I couldn’t imagine measuring flour in front of 500 women. At home, I can’t tolerate even one living person near me as I jerk open drawers and slam doors looking for the quarter cup. I was there as much to see the kind of person who possessed such bravado as I was to get free food samples. Okay, truthfully I was there for the free food, but there were other important things as well, like discovering new ways to put the “hot” into hot wings and entering the raffle for the free mixer.

The stage was set up with a small kitchen that looked like it was delivered on the back of a pickup truck from Toys R Us. A woman browned chicken with more enthusiasm than most people generally reserve for sex. Another one created a sugar free peach dessert that made an audience full of mid-life belly-roll ladies yearn to rush the stage like it was a Tom Jones concert. Still another showed us more creative things to do with cream soup than I could do with a tub of gelatin and a turkey baster. A woman next to me, who wore diamonds like the rest of us wear polka dots, tucked coupons she found on the floor into her goody bag. Laudy scribbled her phone number on the back of an old recipe for round steak she found in her pocketbook and attempted to sling it on stage.

At the end of the show, we twittered like sparrows in springtime as the hostesses awarded door prizes. A woman in front of me won a kitchen gadget that I had lived 40 years without knowledge of and would probably live my next 40 without need for. Envy covered me like ivy on an outhouse. A middle aged woman, whose striped blouse was tucked into blue polyester pants just under her armpits, won two wooden spoons. It looked like all the good stuff was going first.

Finally, slow as the last hour of work before a three-day weekend, the last name came out of the basket. I was still checking my ticket when Quirky, wearing a smug expression like it matched her pumps and purse, pushed past me on the way to claim her prize. She won an autographed cookbook full of recipes for ground beef. The unfairness of the universe consumed me.

“I thought we were here for the chicken,” I hissed as the traitor squeezed past.

“Oh, rub it with butter,” she smirked. “Hamburger. Now that’s where the action is.”