I am an eater, and my people are eaters. We are not epicures or gastronomes. We’ll eat the hell out of some spam — or whatever the tofu equivalent is for me these days. As a matter of fact, I used to eat a fair amount of olive loaf growing up. Let’s just consider the name for a second: olive loaf. Loaf of what? I know, I don’t want to know. Olive loaf was good though. When one of my people comes to visit, it is my first inclination to feed them.
So a hippie cousin on Mama’s side was in town to drop her boy off in the Valley of Love and Delight. That’s pretty cool because she lives up in Ken-tuck where there is a similar institution of higher learning, and it was this institution that made me think the VoL&D would be a good place to go to school. Circle of life and all that crap. She had to leave her baby boy and came over to our house to cry it out for a while.
I, natch, fried some okra. One of the advantages of being married to my Sweet Lady is that she does not eat crappy food like olive loaf. I am the one who cooks the majority of the time, so I have had to learn a few things. Fried okra is one, as are roasted potatoes, corn on the cob, and fresh biscuits. I’m a regular Barbara Kingsolver over here. That’s some damn good food. It took a while to pull all of that together.
As I cooked, we talked about their day. Turns out, cuz done et only about 3 hours ago. She was not so hungry. I was well into putting this food on the table when she got a call from the boy and it was time for them to run on to Wal-Mart for some ice and an extension cord. That was fine, actually, because I think she got what she needed from our house, that is, she was able to separate if only for a little while. Plus there was more okra for me.