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Eons ago when I was attending the University of Denver, fresh from North High School, one of my classmates was a heavy, much older woman who was working on her master's degree. She had written a dictionary of cooking terms which was used in schools all over the country -- or so she said -- and was hard at work on an encyclopedia of cooking. She was also one hell of a hand in the kitchen. It pained her no end that my vast lack of knowledge regarding the world's culinary delights was nearly total. My father, bless his soul, was one for plain eating. He was a pure-food nut long, long before that was the in thing, insisting in his mild way on low-fat meals, homebaked bread, low salt, lots of veggies, and so forth. You get the picture: dull. Therefore, we had lots of New England Boiled Dinners, something I have never eaten since. He liked hominy -- not grits, which are really wonderful with butter -- but big, yucky hominy! He adored creamed asparagus, a horrific thing to do to that delightful green spear. He brought home half-gallon bottles of vegetable juices he picked up on his downtown mail route from the Home Public Market, combinations such as beet and carrot or turnip and celery. He would pour me a huge glass and watch fixedly as I glugged it down, grimacing and wincing. "It's good for you -- drink it," and I did. Something else I never imbibed again. Give me pure unadulterated orange, tomato, grape, or anything normal anytime. My mother baked spectacular bread and pastries, and my father probably never knew that the wonderful texture of the bread and the lightness of the piecrusts were due to the lard she used, as did every really good baker in those days. Other than that, she cooked his meals as he liked them. But back to my college day's chef, having been brought up to "use your noodle," I learned quickly that the surest way to get a wonderful feed was to say whenever Kay commented on some food or other -- and she tended to do that a lot -- "Gee, I've never had that. Is it good?" Worked like a charm. There was no end to her skill and none to my willingness to try anything at all. The whole point of this is to explain the sandwich I fixed for myself after talking to Whitey on the phone. Does the idea of grilled peanut butter with pickle relish give you a turn? Well, it shouldn't -- it's thoroughly delicious. You take two slices of bread, spread peanut butter -- the natural kind, mind you; not this stuff to which all sorts of junk has been added -- on one slice, spread sweet pickle relish over the other, clap them together, butter the outsides, and grill the sandwich just as if it were a grilled cheese. Try it -- you'll like it, assuming you like peanut butter to begin with, of course. If not, forget the whole thing. Anyway, I was doing just that in my kitchen when I remembered I hadn't thought to ask Whitey about the dog they found standing guard underneath the body. The papers had played it to the hilt, that the authorities had to use a tranquilizer dart on the dog who was ravening and doing his level best to protect his friend, long since needing no further protection from anything or anyone. Of course, there's a problem there. If the dog was so protective of this man, how was someone able to beat him up, tie the hoist chain around his neck and then lift the body to the place where it was discovered? All I could reason was either the dog was not in the garage when it happened, or else he knew and liked the murderer, thus unable to do his job in his understandable confusion. That latter thought was certainly an unwelcome one, at least where Manny was concerned. That peculiarity of the dog’s reaction added just one more bit of circumstantial evidence to the other items the cops were apparently considering to fit Manny for a cell or a chair. Fuzz had quit dancing his jig which he had begun when I had first opened the jar of creamy peanut butter. As I removed the hot sandwich from the skillet, he was pretending massive indifference to the whole thing. What he wanted was his own dollop of peanut butter, and preoccupied as I was thinking of the other dog -- one whose head probably weighed more than Fuzz' entire body -- I had neglected him, a fact he thoroughly resented. That shortcoming on my part was easily rectified. Have you ever given a dog a portion of peanut butter, say a thimble-sized glob on the end of your finger? He loves the stuff, and licks it right off. The problem is, it adheres at once to the ridges in the roof of his mouth, and the fun begins. The eyes glaze over in the concentrated effort to remove it, and his tongue will extend much farther than you'd ever believe possible, straight out the front of his muzzle like a pink tongue depressor. Rather than this being an upsetting experience, he will immediately beg for more once this dollop is finally down the hatch. "Here you go, little buddy," said I as I let him lick about a teaspoonful of sticky stuff from my fingertip. That was plenty for such a little mouth. Both of us enjoyed our plebeian lunch, but my facial contortions as I ate were hopefully not as excessive as his. I had stalled about as long as I could, avoiding the call I felt I had to make on Manny. Who knows? Maybe he's still mad and I can simply straighten my halo, vowing I've done all I reasonably can do to help. I know, it didn't convince me either. Three steps down the stairs to my garage, the phone rang. I might have just let the machine get it if I hadn't still been reluctant to confront Manny a second time in one day. As it was, I backtracked to the extension in the kitchen, and had the first really good news of the week. George! "Hi, Babe." "George! Where are you calling from? When do you get in -- or are you here already?" "If you'll let me get a word in, answering your nosy questions in reverse order: No, I'm not here already. Sometime over the weekend. I'm calling from Cheyenne. That all you want to know? If so, I'm hanging up now." "Don't you dare, particularly since I had almost decided you really weren't coming this summer after all." "Well, a few things came up, and I'll tell you all about them when we get there." We? "Okay, George." If he thought I was going to ask him, he should think again. Silence. "Well, if that's it . . ." Silence. A happy thought bounded into my head. "You said you were going to buy a female Chihuahua for Fuzz; did you do that?" Was that the we in we? "No, not yet. Thought I should wait a bit on that." More silence. "Well, okay, George. Ring me when you get to Denver, okay?" "Sure thing, first on our agenda." Our, is it? And I couldn't resist adding, "Fine, George. Ted will be happy to meet you, I've told him so much about you." There, now -- how do you like that? Of course, my young helper Ted had never so much as heard the name of George Halley, but I could fix that quickly enough. I had the nastiest suspicion that I heard muffled baritone laughter in the phone, but before I could ask any more nosy questions, George said, "Okay, Sheila -- see you very soon. Love to the mutt," and he was gone before I could take a deep breath. Well, now, wasn't that fun? I felt like an idiot, doing all sorts of daydreaming all spring about the arrival of the first possible candidate for the position of "man in my life" to come down the pike in years. Talk about counting your chickens! What did I expect? We'd no more than barely survived our adventure in Shearwater Beach when he'd had to return to Portland to finish up his last stint before retirement, and I had to get back to Salt Lake City to pack up for my move to Denver. All those girlish dreams of getting together and seeing where it might lead were apparently just that -- dreams. If we wasn't George and a dog, it must be . . . Manny, here I come, and I'm in no mood to take any of your shit! Watch it! |