The Reading Corner....Heartbreak Cafe!

Miss Judy and I were having one of our long phone conversations the other day, when we began discussing our latest reads. She was telling me about "The Blue Bottle Club" authored by Penelope Stokes. It sounded like a book I would like, so off we went to our local bookstore to browse about and spend the afternoon drifting from aisle to aisle until Darling and I both found two or three books a piece. They were out of "The Blue Bottle Club", but I did come across another book authored by this Mississippi-born writer, "Heartbreak Cafe."

It begins by......"There's two things in life a man can't get enough of," my mama told me. "Good cookin' and good lovin'." I was hooked! The story takes place in Chulahatchie, Mississippi with mentions of Ole Miss and flawed characters known as Peach Rondell, Tansie, Scratch, Boone, Fart (real name Theodore) Unger and Dee, the main character. Dee finds herself fifty-one, untrained, a new widow and pretty much penniless. Her life has crumbled before her, but she forges ahead, relunctantly, and falls back on her one true ability, cooking. Hence, the birth of the Heartbreak Cafe, which becomes the meeting place of this group of unlikely friends. There are a few "special recipes" included toward the end which are each inventions of the characters!

Scratch's Comfort Sandwich

With a Nod to the King of Rock N' Roll

This is pretty unhealthy, especially coming from a man who had dreams of becoming a surgeon. But comfort food is all about comfort, now isn't it?

2 slices of white bread

Creamy Peanut Butter

Strawberry Jam

2 Slices of Spam

Spread peanut butter on the two slices of toast. Add strawberry jam to the peanut butter on both sides. Fry up the Spam in a skillet. Lay the Spam on top of the peanut butter and jam and close er' up. Perform a surgical incision diagonally from corner to corner. Good with Milk!

Penelope Stokes was raised and received her formal education in Mississippi. She left the South after graduate school and spent fourteen years in Minnesota, teaching and editing. It was here she began her writing career. "I did a bit of wandering—Georgia, Connecticut, back to Mississippi for a while—but it didn't take me long to realize that my soul's home could only be one place: Asheville, North Carolina, a small city in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains."


Penelope states that being a southern writer is, in many ways, bred in the blood and the bone. "Place is very important to me—not just the physical environment of my home and office and the vistas I take in on a daily basis, but that "sense of place," the internal compass that keeps drawing me back to where I belong, to the connections that nourish my soul."


"Because in the long run, fiction is about people. Not just about what happens to them, but about what happens in them—the spiritual, emotional, and psychological passages that lead people to an understanding of their inner selves, and of one another. I write about the heart, the mind, the soul. I want to write novels that combine authenticity of character with profound spiritual dimension—books that are original, imaginative, and intrinsically true to life. I want to draw readers in, allowing them to perceive a different kind of world—one marked by purpose, significance, and most importantly, hope."


" I believe that ultimately, our character is determined not so much by the certainties we cling to, but by the uncertainties we are courageous enough to face. When we're committed to going deeper, to following the unknown path, our journey can lead us to an understanding of our own inner being, to a connection with a power that is both within us and beyond us. And that understanding, that connection, gives meaning and purpose to our days."

A Final Word From Dell

Right before she died, my mama said, "Dell honey, lemme tell you something. When you come to the end of your days and are looking down the barrel of eternity, ain't nothin' gonna matter in this life or the next, except how well you loved the people you love."

A Dressed Up Oldie!

In medieval Germany, there are references to nuncheontach, a non lunchentach according to OED, a noon draught— of ale, with bread— an extra meal between mid-day dinner and supper, especially during the long hours of hard labor during haying or early harvesting. In Munich, by the 1730s and 40s, the upper class were rising later, and dining at three or four in the afternoon, and by 1770, their dinner hour in Pomberano was four or five. A formal evening meal, artificially lit by candles, sometimes with entertainment, was a "supper party" as late as Regency times.



In the 19th century, male artisans went home for a brief dinner, where their wives fed them, but as the workplace was removed farther from the home, working men took to providing themselves with something portable to eat at a break in the schedule during the middle of the day. In parts of India a light, portable lunch is known as tiffin.

Ladies whose husbands would eat at the club would be free to leave the house and have lunch with one another, though not in restaurants until the twentieth century. In the 1945 edition of Etiquette, Emily Post still referred to luncheon as "generally given by and for women, but it is not unusual, especially in summer places or in town on Saturday or Sunday, to include an equal number of men"— hence the mildly disparaging phrase, "the ladies who lunch." Lunch was a ladies' light meal; when the Prince of Wales stopped to eat a dainty luncheon with lady friends, he was laughed at for this effeminacy. Afternoon tea supplemented this luncheon at four o'clock, from the 1840s. Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management had much less to explain about luncheon than about dinners or ball suppers!

Lunch can be with your best friend you don't see so much anymore, but still treat each other on your birthdays,  or lunch is the quick bite to eat with your co-worker that runs into a second (ahem...) glass of wine. Lunch is three women who are having a "meeting" about the school fundraiser, but talk about everything but! Lunch is MMSM having lunch with me, with her happiest two-year-old sitting between his two favorite women. Lunch is your husband stealing home with a hamburger and fries in a white bag (ugh)!

Lunches are also the gesture you make to take good care of your family. They know "Mom...the heart of the home", thought about them and tucked in an extra cookie!....... Bought that special type of bread they like, remembered that they like tomatoes, but not lettuce.
Took the time to write a little note, or draw a little picture. It's the only way we can send a bit of our "tender loving care" with them for their eight or so hours away from the nest. Send them off feeling like they are most loved!

So.......  The Maine House make lunches!

Estelle's Five Cheese Grilled Sandwich
½ cup of butter salted, softened
1 t. finely minced garlic
¼ t. minced parsley
8 slices sourdough bread
¾ cup shredded Parmesan cheese
4 slices Swiss cheese
4 slices cheddar cheese
4 slices Monterrey jack cheese
4 slices mozzarella cheese



 Combine butter, garlic and parsley in a small bowl. Preheat a large sauté pan or griddle pan to medium heat. the pan should be big enough to fit 2 slices of sourdough bread. To make each sandwich, spread garlic butter on one side of each slice of sourdough bread. Cut the crust off the left and right sides of each slice of bread-leave the crust on top and bottom. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on to a plate, and then turn each slice of bread over on to the cheese so it sticks to the garlic butter. Allow the excess cheese to fall of the bread, and then gently place each slice of bread, cheese side down on to the hot pan. Immediately place a slice of Swiss and a slice of cheddar on one slice of bread, and then place a slice of jack and a slice mozzarella on the other slice of bread. In 2½ to 3½ minutes, when the Parmesan cheese has browned, use a spatula to flip one slice of the bread over on the other, and then remove the sandwich from the pan. Let the sandwich sit for 1 minute then slice it diagonally through the middle and serve hot.

Estelle's Tomato Soup with Fresh Basil

3 tablespoons good olive oil

1 1/2 cups chopped yellow onions
2 carrots, peeled and chopped finely 
1 tablespoon minced garlic 
5 large vine-ripened tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 cup packed chopped fresh basil leaves, plus julienned basil leaves, for garnish
3 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup heavy cream
Croutons, for garnish

Directions
Heat the olive oil in a large dutch oven, over medium-low heat. Add the onions and carrots and saute for about 10 minutes, until very tender. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, sugar, tomato paste, basil, chicken stock, salt, and pepper and stir well. Bring the soup to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer, uncovered, for 30 to 40 minutes, until the tomatoes are very tender. Add the cream to the soup and process this mixture with an immersion blender or hand mixer (I use my smoothie maker). You can discard any of the dry pulp that's left. Reheat the soup over low heat just until hot and serve with julienned basil leaves and croutons.

"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." ~Lewis Grizzard