6 August Saturday

A kitchen inventory has been taken. All is well, it’s not as bad as I feared. Instead, a menu for Sunday. A friend and I will eat the end of the chicken with one more swipe at dumplings, using yet a third recipe. Even though I made the chicken several days ago, it has kept, nay, improved with each serving. This will finish it off. Also included will be a salad of fresh corn, cherry tomato, scallions, and lime. Finally, a strawberry meringue cake.

For the cake, I am adapting a recipe from Ms. Bevelyn Blair’s Country Cakes. This plastic comb bound book was a gift from a friend who like myself lived in the South for many years. Bevelyn wrote herself a cookbook which the same friend Louis insists is one of the best baking books ever. I have made a number of recipes from it over the years, and he is not wrong. I especially remember a lemon pudding cake that was truly spectacular.

The photograph of Ms. Blair has her sitting on a stool with an enormous slice of frosted layer cake on a plate in her lap. She has a pleasant half smile which made me wonder if she finished proofreading the draft the day of the photo shoot. Her dedicatory note to all the little girls who grow up dreaming of being housewives shoveling cake in the their boys insatiable maws seems dated somehow. But boy, can she write a recipe. What a sweet tooth! What fearless embrace of flavored Jello packets and Dream Whip! What old fashioned values! Her cake is her pride and joy. And ours. Apparently, she has had quite a career as a cookbook author with TV appearances, a Twitter account, and everything.