I’m writing this ode to summertime while being serenaded by lovely summer music – an orchestral enchantment of a summer thunderstorm. We’ve been dry down here in Dixie and every little drop is a blessing. Fill our cups please!
Peas, purple hulls to be exact, sunflowers, peaches, butter and snap beans – all coming in with gusto from our farms and gardens. Mimi’s favorite thing is to shell peas, and after a myriad of places, we finally tracked down unshelled peas for her pleasure and leisure.
“So many places sell them shelled... I just want to sit and shell peas all day.” Mimi.
The nerve of us buying shelled peas – that would be robbing our grandmother of a blessing! Shell away Mimi…shell away! My grandmother’s delight I count a richest gain, for all I have to do is eat the peas. For there again is a favorite pastime of our matriarch – cooking peas. Alas, I shall resign my attempts and glory in the pot liquor of Mimi’s peas.
“I eat my peas with honey; I’ve done so all my life… I eat my peas with honey, so that they stay on my knife!” another Mimi-ism.
It’s amazing that some can go through an entire detective novel or TV series without eating. I’m not talking about readers or Netflix viewers; I’m referring to the characters, for whom the ratio of meals to angst seems to be inversely proportional. The band of agents in Criminal Minds has stopped to eat, by my count, just twice in seven seasons. The Bones team, however, logs almost as many hours in the diner as in the lab. The biggest mystery of the show is why Booth doesn’t weigh 350 pounds.
The first is 
and it's subtitled "a bulging little book for the truly epicurious." Can I just say if there is anything more irritating than someone using the word foodie, it has to be someone using the brand name epicurious as if they made it up. It's a website, ok? Despite the annoying title, the book is a lot of fun. It's filled with little tidbits of information that you will either find essential or completely trivial but either way it is equal parts entertaining and informative. Do you know how mustard got its name? What to savor in Franche-Comte? What and who inspired the famous blue Le Creuset? What season to eat fresh lotus flower root? It's all in there and then some. It's not a book to read cover to cover but it it enjoyable nonetheless.
ANJELICA HUSTON
', the scene where Joyce Redman and Albert Finney eat Lobster....
' where Daryl Hannah attacks the shellfish in the fancy restaurant mermaid-style and the scene in '
' where Tom Hanks razor nibbles the baby ears of corn the way a kid would. In character, ingenious, and hilarious in both instances.
LYNDA RESNICK
' when Jane serves her sister's lunch under a silver salver that once open, reveals a rat, it is kind of heart stopping. To this day when I see dinner being served under those shiny domes I hold my breath until the contents underneath are revealed by the liveried footman. Not an everyday occurrence for sure unless you are as devoted as I am to Downton Abbey.
'.
A first serial excerpt from "Rubies in the Orchard," Lynda Resnick's autobiographical, how-to marketing gem. A road map for anyone who's trying to do anything in business or in life. 