I got home around 5:30 today; I'd already missed the first Rachael Ray episode. Tim was grilling, so I sat down with a cup of coffee to watch the second one. (I'd planned to get in a good walk, but on the way home something came over me and I felt awful; this is happening a lot lately.) Anway, I thought the coffee and Rachael would give me a second wind. Three minutes into the episode, she picked up a vegetable peeler and started peeling potatoes with it. Well, I'm sorry, but it was like the fall of an idol or something. She might just as well have opened a box of instant mashed potatoes or hamburger helper as far as I'm concerned. Do real cooks use vegetable peelers. No, they do not. Real cooks use paring knives for peeling. Vegetable peelers are for people who use cake mix and minute rice. I could forgive her for having an extra vowel in her name, but not this.
Life of Pi is getting better and better; the only problem is I am so swamped with work I don't have time to finish it. By the time I finish everything at night and open it, I'm falling asleep. I love the section toward the beginning about his conversion to Christianity and then to Islam the next day (in addition to being a Hindu already). It's good stuff.
Anthony Burger will be buried tomorrow, I think. The e-mail I got last Thursday morning about his death just took something out of me. I couldn't shake the heavy feeling all day. I can't say that I like Southern gospel music, because I really don't. Not the lyrics (most of them anyway) and not the sound. And yet, because it was such a part of my growing-up years, I still keep up with all the artists. My aunt and uncle used to follow them around and one of my uncles sang and played guitar in a gospel quartet. We'd go to hear the Speer family or the Hemphills, and we knew all their songs. Angela and Pat and I would sit right on front and sing so loud they'd call us up to do numbers by ourselves. They'd put us up on a piano bench so everyone could see us, and we'd get after it, singing rounds and parts. We did sound good. Now, when I'm feeling nostalgic, I'll put in a Gaither Homecoming video and listen and sing along. The girls will walk through the room, and I'll say "See that woman? That's Candy Christmas. I sang for her once. She told me I was a good little singer. See that man? That's Ben Speer. I sang for him several times. He picked me up and put me on a piano stool. I sang a song about Joshua and the walls of Jericho tumbling down. He played the piano for me." The girls will say, "Mama, you've told us that a million times."
I'll bet Candy Christmas and those Speer women use paring knives to peel potatoes.
No comments:
Post a Comment