Sonker Mania

So, I think I had gone over a week without turning on the oven until July 4th, and even then it was only to make a sonker. "A sonker?" you ask. Mmm hmmm, sonker. Mom says "zonker" with a z, but all the research I turned up has it with an s. It's an odd thing, like a puffy fruit cobbler, specific to western North Carolina, and even there to just a small area - there's even a Sonker Festival (yes, I'm going). If you look at the blackboard picture, you can see the recipe (though the list on the upper left is not part of the recipe...as far as I can recall, a sonker does not require the inclusion of any Miller High Life; also, there is no grapefruit juice involved. The blackboard is Complicated). We used blackberries. Mom said on the phone "now this is Ellen Church's recipe, so if you don't like it you can just blame her." One of the recipe instructions - according to Ellen Church - was "DON'T RUIN IT BY STIRRING IT!" But! There was no reason to take it up with Ellen Church because it was delicious. Of course, it had a stick of butter in it so I don't know how it couldn't be.

The rest of the menu was grilled: corn and chicken. Oh, and watermelon salad. It looked like a magazine photo when it was all put on the platter together. I try to keep food porn off this blog, but I couldn't resist. With the CSA basket starting to overflow now, you're pretty much looking at the menu for the rest of the summer. Poor me.

A Shaved Cat and Something That Scares Me

Absolutely nothing of interest happened this whole livelong week, so now this blog is officially like every other blog on the internet, posting pictures of cats. I went on a pretty difficult five-mile hike with my friend Carol and sort of hurt my foot a little bit. I went to a Slow Food hot dog thing where they were selling crazy artisan hot dogs. I had my cat shaved.



Then I saw this truck. It's been parked in this space for a few days and has tickets on the windshield. I am secretly hoping all the bodies of the Word Championship Barbershop Quartet singers are stacked up in the back, because almost nothing scares me quite as much as a barbershop quartet. And I just found out this very minute that the International Headquarters for that stuff is just feet from my office! What if I run into one of them on the street? Good thing the Supreme Court says I can use a handgun in self-defense. Which I will totally do if I hear any unsolicited four-part harmony.

B-I-N-G-uh-O!

Let's get right to it! On the spur of the moment tonight, my friend Beth Lee called me to go with her to Drag Queen Bingo at a local boîte. For those of you who are shut-ins or Republicans, Drag Queen Bingo is where a drag queen calls out all the letter and number combinations for a few rounds of Bingo, interspersed with some lip-syncing and arm-flailing. She tells filthy jokes and demands cocktails and every now and then awards a prize to whomever managed to decipher the letter/number combinations she apparently yelled out in between filthy jokes. It's free and it's spectacular.

Our hostess this evening was the Pantomine Rage, Miss Bianca Paige. She has a voice that makes Harvey Fierstein sound like Dawn Upshaw...seriously. I waited tables with Bianca years and years ago (she was plain old Mark then) at a dive restaurant and I was flattered that tonight she almost remembered me. We made a lot of money back in the old days at that dump even though all we did that whole entire job was drink peppermint schnappes nonstop. She's now blind in one eye because she was having "safe sex" in her armpit with a gentleman acquaintance who, hmmm, climaxed into her eye and thus blinded her. I'm sure it was awful, but it's a funny story when she tells it, I swear, even though she had to wear an eye patch for like a year. MOM! You can quit reading now!

I won the second game. The prize was two tickets to a Nashville Sounds baseball game. Yes, a Wild Turkey-drinking drag queen awarded me two tickets to a baseball game. I'm sure I'll get called out onto the, uh, mound and recognized. I do like a baseball game, so that worked out. Other prizes throughout the night included edible pasties, Virgin bubble bath ("It grows your lips back together!") and some other borderline filthy items. I was surprised how tense Bingo can make a person. I've never wanted to hear N-41 so badly in my whole life. Also, you got a free beer every time she called out "O-69," which she managed to do about four times every round. We drank a lot of that and also Maker's Mark.


You'll be surprised to learn that this is not my first run in with Drag Queen Bingo. A few years ago, I went to visit my friends Jeff and David in Washington DC, just after 9-11, and we went to some crazy-assed steakhouse where the exact same thing was going on. That night, I won the first game and received a hideous ceramic napkin holder, which I insisted Jeff and David keep. They subsequently moved to Tulsa, where I'm sure it's the chicest thing within the city limits. ANYWAY. Standing date now, anyone who comes to town on a Tuesday: you're going to see a sexually-blinded one-eyed drag queen yell Bingo numbers for a few hours. Consider yourself warned blessed.

(photos: Beth Lee)

Oh God, the Moon Pie Festival

I can't really explain it. Really. Just put all these words in your brain: Moon Pie, RC Cola, Goo Goo Cluster, Holy Grail, Wading Pool, General Hospital star Lane Davies, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Queen Bowel-ina, Mother Goo, and Jazz Hands. Now: mix them up and try to come up with a plot for it all. No matter what you invent, it will never approach the sheer insanity of the Moon Pie Festival.




Here I am! I'm the one with the shapely legs!


World's Largest Moon Pie. Bigger than it looks.


A woman dressed as a Goo Goo cluster, frolicking in the Holy Grail with two shirtless teenagers. You know: the usual.


RC and Moon Pie: 2gether 4ever!



Jazz hands.

Garden of Eden

I went out to lovely Bon Aqua yesterday afternoon to my friends Suzy and Jason's farm to celebrate the birthday of Jason's oldest daughter Kelsey, who lives in Australia now and looks just like Olivia Newton-John, which she didn't like me saying over and over. Jason has struggled for years getting the garden to really work. He's on the road a lot being a rock star, so a lot of the work is left to Suzy to do and well, sometimes things get away from her.

For the past two years, though, Jason designed the garden as a series of raised boxes. And it's perfection - there's landscape cloth down under the entire garden and then each box is filled with produce of various sorts. Not a single weed. It's surrounded by a mildly-electrified fence to keep rabbits and raccoons out. I wish I was a better picture-taker, because it really does look like a magazine layout. Jason built all the out-buildings from scrap lumber, including this little garden shed. It's the sort of garden I always thought I could handle if I could ever figure out how to do.



By the way, the Americana Music Association is honoring Jason and his band, Jason and the Scorchers, this year with a Lifetime Achievement award. It's a big deal.

Kitchen Update

I know. You're on the edge of your seat. But we selected the tile for the backsplash and it's on the way. Zen Moonlight. that was almost a dealbreaker, that name. Not stupid expensive, $15 per square foot. We don't need much...somewhere around 25 square feet. Should be here next week.

Blackboard Bungle

So! Making a chalkboard wall is easy. But messy! I looked like a dalmatian when it was all over, desperately looking for my parents, Pongo and Perdita. Also? Putting a vase of sunflowers in a room makes everything better. We're waiting on backsplash tile samples to arrive but I think it might be a combo of clear white and grey, but I can't say that out loud or Sister Meg will choose the pink.