Owens at Home

Abby called from town today, all excited that she’d found the PERFECT prom dress – a red sequined and feathered number that costs (and yes, Daddy – this isn’t a typo) $394. After I pay for matching shoes and assessories, I figure the outfit will cost right about $450 -- which is, coincidently, exactly what the NY Times paid for my op-ed piece.

Oh, well.

As we say around the Owens’ household: The Lord giveth, and the children taketh away.

At the gala in Panama City last weekend, they had a dish similar to this one -- a true southern classic.

Cheesy Shrimp & Grits

2 lbs shrimp, peeled and de-veined
1/3 C butter
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cups Parmesan cheese
Salt to taste

Directions for Shrimp:

Melt butter with the olive oil, and when mixture is hot, add the garlic, pepper, red pepper flakes, and cayenne pepper, stirring well. When the garlic is cooked, add the shrimp and mix well, making sure it is all coated. Add the lemon juice and keep tossing over the heat, then the Parmesan cheese. Cook till the shrimp are bright pink, then serve over the cooked grits, with additional Parmesan sprinkled over the top.

Directions for grits:

Just buy a bag of ready-to-make grits – Quaker Oats or Dixie Lily – and cook according to package directions -- about four cups cooked. For the novice, you find grits on the aisle by the oatmeal, and they’re easy to make; like cooking rice: you boil salted water, then dump in grits and let them cook on very low heat, then pepper and butter to taste. The secret to real southern grits is having the right ratio of grits to butter: roughly enough to make a little pool of melted butter on the top of every bite. Under-butter them, and they’re bland. Over-butter them and – well, there is no such thing. If there was such a thing as butter-poisoning, neither me nor my brothers would have made it this far, and we’re a famously healthy bunch.

Just eat them and be glad.

I’m going to see Mama and Daddy tomorrow so that Mama can teach Isabel how to crochet. I’ve decided to make Daddy a coconut cake, for no good reason aside from the fact that he likes them and I’m a good daughter (and Duncan Hines cake mixes were buy-one-get-one-free at Publix last week and I can’t resist buy-one-get-one-free deals. If they had a pneumonia going around that was buy-one-get-one-free, I’d have to have it.)

Anyway, here’s the recipe, which is simple and wonderfully good. Not too rich; not too boring. It has no name, so I'm going to call it:

Good Daughter Coconut Cake

Ingredients:

1 box Duncan Hines white cake mix
1 tub Cool Whip
1 pint of sour cream
1 tbsp of vanilla
1 bag of coconut

Make the cake mix according to package directions into three layers. While they’re cooking, mix together sour cream and Cool Whip. Add a bag of coconut and a little vanilla and mix into a fluffy frosting. When layers are cooled, fill them with about an inch of coconut filling and put more on top and sides – the more frosting the better. It’s pretty stiff, so the cake will hold up well. When it’s all put together, put the cake in a Tupperware cake-keeper in the refrigerator overnight, and take out just before serving.

The cake is moist and cold; more Cool-whip than cake, really. It’s particularly good with coffee.

I had my usual good time in Panama City, but came home with a bad head cold that I’m having a hard time shaking. I keep thinking that every day will be the last day of the cold, but so far, I’m still having to go around with Kleenex stuffed in my pockets. Wendel suffers mightily from our local pollen this time of year, and has diagnosed my cold as hay-fever. I hope he’s wrong, as his allergy medicine affects me like a dose of morphine -- or how I imagine morphine would affect me: knocks me out. I can only take one every 48 hours unless I intend to stay in bed all day.

But he may have a point, as our twenty acres are indeed about to bloom. The old hurricane-blown live oaks are still bare and sparse, giving the woods a gray hue, but I picked my first azaleas of the season late this afternoon, a handful of white ones – can’t remember their exact name. They bloom before the Formosa, and are smaller and more delicate. My redbud is also abloom, but I’ve harvested so many low limbs over the years for decorations that I can harvest no more, but only admire from afar.

The dogwoods won’t be far behind – will probably burst into bloom after the next rain, and the Formosa after that. But I don’t consider spring to be officially here till the hickory come out, and the pecans. Most natives around here use the pecans as their gauge of when winter is over, but my friend Carole swears by her hickory. Once it comes out, she knows the last freeze is behind us. It’s never let her down.

I’m packing today for another library event – another of my favorites – BooksAlive, over in Panama City. Emily is going with me, and I predict that her luggage will outweigh mine by three to one. But she will look better at the gala and everything about her, from underwear to stocking to shoes and purse, will match.

I’m speaking tomorrow morning at Gulf Coast to an auditorium full of high school Seniors, who have all been given a copy of THE SCHOOLING OF CLAYBIRD CATTS, thanks to the generosity of the St. Joe Realty Company – formerly the paper mill. I’m supposed to talk about being a writer and as tired as I am these days of writing, feel like adjusting the lyrics of “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys,” to “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Novelists.” But I have confidence that the sea air will invigorate me once I get there, and my outlook will be brighter.

I’m speaking for the general public on Saturday (also at Gulf Coast), and hope to see all my West Florida kin there, as long as they sign that waver I always have at the door – the one about not telling Mama or Daddy all the stuff I say about them in my speech. You know: the Non-Disclosure Pact. The one punishable by a switching with a peach switch.

Otherwise, I’d have no peace.

And nothing to talk about, either.

My Times piece ran yesterday, and with the proceeds of the sale, I am buying Abby a prom dress -- hopefully not one that will eat up all my profit ($450 a smack, for the rankly curious, and not bad pay, as it only took about twenty minutes to write.)

I've already had a few responses from the Southern diaspora, one in particular from Julie, a native Floridian, who was kind enough to offer a blog recipe. She calls them "Bill McLearas Greens." I don't know Bill, but it appears that he makes a heck of a mess of greens.

Julie writes:

The following is what I used to bring to the Christmas dinner (12-5-04) and it wasn't enough.

1/4 lb Pancetta, finely diced
2-3 fresh garlic gloves finely minced
9 bunches of greens
3 Kale
3 Collards
3 Swiss Chard (any combination will work but a mixture is the key).
2 ounces of good olive oil
2 tsp salt

Before you do anything else take apart the greens and strip the coarse stems and veins from them all in a sink full of running water. Manually tear the leaves into more or less bite sized pieces. Let the greens sit in the water so any sand will settle out.

In a large pot heat olive oil to just below smoking (medium high) and add pancetta. Saute 2-3 minutes and turn heat down to medium. Add garlic and cook no more than 1 minute.

Grab a hand full of greens from the sink and add to the pot, shaking off only the excess water. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon to mix the pancetta and garlic with the greens. As the greens begin to cook down keep adding more greens and stirring. They will provide enough water of their own and none needs to be added.

Once all of the greens are in the pot turn heat down to a simmer and stir every 5-10 minutes. Check to make sure there is enough liquid but there surely will be. Simmer and stir for at least an hour.

They are even better if made the day before and re-heated. Yum, good luck!

You probably don't need to feed 20 or so people, so you can cut the recipe down accordingly. However, I believe I would use one bunch each of the different greens, as that appears to be key to the delicious taste.
....

Julie also included a comment novelist Henry James once made about Jacksonville -- and I call that a well-rounded psyche: collards and Henry James, in reply to an op-ed piece on the Superbowl.

Sister, you've done us proud.

The storm is over in Newberria, the sky so blue that it defies the skill of even a southern writer to adequately describe. It’s just blue is all.

I’m feeling a little relief from my earlier malaise, as two bits of good fortune have come to me this week. First was a request from the New York Times for an op-ed piece on (of all things) the Superbowl, which will shortly be played up the road in Jacksonville. No one knows less than me about football, but I gave it the old college try, and the resulting article will appear Sunday. I apologize in advance for insulting my Jacksonville readers for letting slip about their moral fiber. It's just us kinfolk around here, so no harm, no foul, I'm sure.

The second bit of good news is that I’ve found the source of the vultures that are circling the property. It’s not, as I feared, the smell of a dead plot that is attracting them, but the remains of a deceased deer that my youngest daughter found on the dirt road and dragged into the yard. She is my budding artist and when she came upon the carcass (that some lazy poacher just dumped) – she decided that she couldn’t live without the skull and backbone. She left them in the ancient old phosphate hole next to our house to get that classic sun-bleached look, where the neighborhood buzzards must have smelled it.

I’m just relieved that it isn’t the new book. I was beginning to think somebody knew something that I didn’t.