Fresh Produce ::

I stopped by Sparks Farm yesterday morning to see what they had to offer this early in the season and, unfortunately, it's still a week or two early. They had a few different varieties of squash, some cucumbers, and a few tomatoes. Apparently the okra should be ready in the next couple of weeks, but the silver queen corn crop was almost totally lost to the drought conditions earlier in the year. I hope that all growers did not suffer the same fate with their corn since I usually put about 15 dozen ears in the freezer each year. I should be picking up a bushel of okra next week from another grower that I deal with each year. That will pretty much kill an entire day getting it ready for the freezer.

I'll leave you with a recipe:

Canteloupe Cream Pie


Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
2 t. flour
3 eggs‐beaten
2 cup pureed cantaloupe
1 teasp vanilla
2 t. butter
1 baked 8” pieshell
1 cup whipped cream
Combine sugar and flour in saucepan. Cook over medium heat. Add eggs, mix well. Stir in pureed
cantaloupe. Cook 8‐10 minutes stirring constantly until mixture boils and thickens. Remove from heat,
stir in vanilla and butter. Cool. Pour into pie shell and spread with whipped cream.
Chill and serve.

Having given you this recipe, let me say that there are few things I refuse to eat and canteloupe is one of them. Beets, I'm not gonna eat a beet! And liver, unless it's in Rumaki! I don't eat eggplant not because I don't like it, I do, but eggplant does a serious number on my stomach! We'll leave that at that.

Kathryn Tucker Windham ::

I just read the news that Mrs. Windham has passed away. I always loved listening to her stories on the local NPR station at 9:30 am each Monday morning and I can't imagine anyone ever being able to fill her shoes!

Kathryn Tucker Windham, a journalist and historian whose later-in-life storytelling career turned her into an Alabama legend, died today. She was 93.
Mrs. Windham died in her Selma home surrounded by family and friends after a year of health problems, said her daughter, Dilcy Windham Hilley.
Mrs. Windham shared that home with a ghost named Jeffrey, she said, a spirit that in the late 1950s made his presence known and launched her on a storied path.
She and folklore teacher Margaret Gillis Figh published "13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey" in 1969. It was the first of a number of books about Southern ghosts, and it led to an acclaimed career as a storyteller on stages around the country.
"She was an absolute legend," Wayne Flynt, an Alabama historian and professor emeritus at Auburn University, said today. "She was certainly the premiere storyteller in Alabama, and maybe one of the premiere storytellers in the South ... And, of course, she was a bang-up good journalist."

The entire obit can be read here.