Dear Mr. Thornton
(in which Angelina writes a letter to a fictional character)

Dear Mr. Thornton,

I am writing to let you know that I believe there is some proof that Elizabeth Gaskell was completely shnockered when she failed to bring you and I together 150 years ago when she brought you to life in her terribly affecting book "North And South" and instead decided to make you fall for that irritatingly perfect female she called "Margaret Hale". You may not feel that such a terrible mistake was made, but that is only because you have not been made aware of my massive attractions which would most certainly trump Margaret's any day.

First of all, I would like to point out that with me there is no artifice. What you see is what you get: all 225 lbs of me. There's no risk that you will have to watch my wasp waist grow larger every year due to my supreme happiness (and butter), as is inevitable with the younger wives. You won't have to see my waistline disappear because it's been fully three years since I last had one and it's doubtful I'll have one again any time soon. I think you'll find yourself growing fond of my girth in no time at all.

While the permanently blood shot eyes may seem like a detraction at first glance, you will begin to prize how comfortable they make everyone feel around me. Workers in the mill will not strike because they'll know that at heart you are a stand up man with a wife who is capable of working for forty eight hours straight in candle light and therefore is basically just like them. So what could appear to be an unattractive feature will become a real fiscal asset. No one needs to know that I got them from smoking three packs of cigarettes a day when I was eighteen years old.

Secondly, I love cotton. It's my favorite fiber besides silk and wool.

I will admit that our love may face many challenges. My husband is not likely to let me go without a duel. He's not generally a violent man, but I make the best cherry tart in the world and no man worth his salt would let a woman with such culinary skills go without quite a large fuss. There is only a 40% chance that he'll actually kill you.

Margaret may be gorgeous, have clear eyes, and be the sweetest girl in the world, but she's a wuss in the kitchen. She's always making you aspic and probably doesn't let you eat cheese either. She probably makes you suck the marrow from beef bones when you're sick. I would never do that to you.

It is only fair to warn you that you must never (NEVER) wear a mullet or I will withhold all cherry tarts until said hideous hair has grown out. I hate to be all shrewish at the very start but I speak my mind and like all good heroes I know that you prefer your women that way.

For the record I would also like to point out that, unlike Margie, I never once doubted that your habit of darkly brooding from every possible angle hid a naturally good nature. Even when I saw you cruelly beating that factory worker; he was a waster anyway. Anyone could see that for themselves. That incident in no way made me believe you to be unsuitable for romantic meetings at train stations. I'm a steady lass that way.

I think you may be beginning to see what an injustice Elizabeth Gaskell has done you. You may be starting to think she's treated you pretty shabbily. I couldn't agree more which is why I think we need to run off post haste! My plan is to re-enact the train scene over and over again forever. I haven't seen the proposal scene because I missed the fact that it was included on the first disc (which in no way indicates a feebleness of mind) so I may want to re-enact that one over and over too once I've finally seen it. There's no way to be certain right now, though surely you won't mind either way.

I'm concerned that there doesn't seem to be a way to get around the fact that one of the things that makes you so attractive is your steadiness of character (in addition to the brooding) which indicates that you would never commit adultery and if you did it would make you a lot less attractive. I have to confess that I share the trait of constancy and have so far always considered it terribly wrong to kiss married men, especially if you yourself are married.

Please write me soon and tell me how we may overcome the obstacles to our love!

Before I leave you to your very broody thoughts about aspic, let me warn you that there are two women who will be trying to wedge themselves between us. One of them is named Karmyn and she will try to trick you into believing that the child she is bearing is yours, even though you are fictional and she is not, and everyone knows that a union between fictional characters and real people can't produce children and the other one's name is Chelsea. You really need to watch out for Chelsea because she's got light green eyes that will hypnotize you and she can make the Dali Lama fight for one of her blueberry muffins but she won't be constant to you at all. I'm pretty sure she's also got an understanding with that guy from "Horatio Hornblower".

I'll see you soon on episode four in just a few minutes...until then, avoid eating Margaret's hog drippings disguised as "sauce".

Your own,
Mrs. Williamson

Everything Good In One Post
(food, sex, secrets, sarcasm, self righteousness, and fresh mozzarella)

A very local meal: rosemary focaccia with homemade pesto (from the freezer) sauteed onion spinach and mushrooms...all crowned with some local mozzarella which is so good I almost ate an entire expensive container of it myself. This meal is not acceptable for my dieting efforts but is so good I am willing to eat gruel for the next two days to make up for it.

A big question with canning is always whether or not you will eat the things you make. These are a part of the growing collection of empty mason jars that were previously filled with all kinds of good fruits and pickles and jams. If you are not making a dent in your canned goods by this time in the winter then you either didn't can things you actually like to eat, you have no confidence in your canning abilities and are afraid of what's in the jars, or you canned so much that you are going to have to be my canning guru. There are big holes in my pantry now where there used to be tons of peaches, pickles, jam, and marinated two bean salad.

The piccalilli remains untouched as it is likely to do until the end of time. Or until I dump it all out and actually admit I'm never going to eat it because it scares the pants off me and not because I'm worried it isn't safe.

Since starting my local challenge I have had almost no mozzarella and it's kind of hurt. Being left out of mozzarella usage is very sad. We tried the only kind we could find which is made by Tillamook and I hate to report that mozzarella is not something they make well. In fact, it was awful.

These mozzarella curds taste just like the kind made by the "Precious" brand, only better. Fresher! I bought them at the Hillsdale farmer's market. I believe they were made with raw milk and there is a slight after taste that is a bit rangy, the same kind of after taste you might experience from goat cheese if you were me. Which you're not and are probably feeling pretty happy about.

Still no tender lettuce mixes at the farmer's market. Well, no lettuce mixes at all yet. There was one calling itself a "lettuce mix" but it was just baby winter greens like kale, chard, and beet greens. I was fooled into spending lots of money for that mix last time they had it and it was quite tough to chew. We got to the farmer's market early enough to snag some fabulous greens. I got two huge bunches of spinach and three bunches of collard greens. There were long lines at most of the produce stalls and even though it was reminding me of Eastern Europe in the eighties, it also made me excessively happy to see a market so well attended and supported.

I'm sure there is no farmer who would be sad to find themselves selling out of every green thing they grow within thirty minutes. As a farmer I'm thinking you always want to find the demand for what you do growing rather than diminishing.

One lady I waited in line with was asking me about my local eating challenge and raised her pert brows and said "So you're doing an eat local challenge and driving a long way to get your food? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?" Pert ho. Of course it doesn't defeat the purpose! I can drive 20 miles north to the only open farmer's market with a friend (car pooling is good) or I can go to the markets in my town and buy produce that has traveled anywhere from 600 miles to 3000 miles to get to me. That's not difficult math to do.

I'm getting really tired of people who seem to think that if you're trying to make any effort at all then you must make extreme sacrifices. All or nothing. C'mon people, every effort counts. Getting spinach from 20 miles away takes less gas and refrigeration than is used to bring me spinach from central or southern California over 600 miles away. That's 580 miles of gas use saved. (In case anyone had trouble with that math).

Can we please all stop worrying about being purists and just make some effort to make change? If a million people saved 580 miles of road travel buying one bunch of spinach we would collectively be saving 580 million miles of road travel. That's it in a simplified nutshell. You can go make it more complicated and pull this paragraph apart for it's flaws but people are living in this country by the millions, like busy little ants, and if every single one of us made some efforts, even "small" efforts, we could make a huge environmental change.

So all you pert hos and snarky pimps out there just waiting to pounce on anyone who is attempting to adjust their lives into being more thoughtful, I will bite you. (And that means YOU, anonymous commenter on Cindy's blog "Figs, Lavender, and Cheese". You really need to go sit on your own personal trash heap and ask yourself what you're doing to make change and stop heckling people about what they're doing.)

I need to take care of a couple of memes I've been tagged for. I'm not going to reprint the rules or anything like that. I'm very uncooperative that way. The first one is from my new blogging friend Cindy over at Figs, Lavender, and Cheese:

List Five Things About Yourself:

1. I really want to raise quails so I can cook tiny eggs but I'm afraid I won't actually like quail's eggs. But jesus! Have you seen how flippin cute quails are? I've seen a button quail come out of it's dime sized egg and almost passed out from the cuteness. I could have bought some quail's eggs at the farmer's market this week-end but didn't think of it until too late. Perhaps next time?

2. I think bone marrow smells like death. (Thanks, Chick, for giving me the gift of smelling raw bones which I would otherwise be oblivious of, being a life long vegetarian.)

3. The second Mr. Thornton loses his taste for beautiful wasp waisted females and develops a relish for tubby gals with blood shot eyes, my marriage will be in danger.

4. Something that makes me tremendously happy is having my house filled with flowers cut fresh from my own back yard. I get a special delight when most of them are strongly scented roses. The whole happy effect is enhanced even more when the walls of all the rooms in my house are painted the kinds of colors that set my cut flowers off to great advantage. If I could have cut flowers in my house every week of the year I would.

5. I love having philosophical discussions with my seven year old who thinks this whole "God" thing is a fairytale. (I never called it that, in case you were wondering and considering the merits of working up a good indignation about it.)


The second meme comes from my old blog friend Tracey from The Everyday Unitarian:

1. What's one thing you do every day?

Drink 3 cups of black coffee that is 2/3 decaf and 1/3 regular. I am only allowed one cup of caffeine per day because I am a delicate flower with heart palpitations. I've done the stress test for old people (for which you have to sign a form saying you understand that the test can cause a heart attack), I've been shoved in that claustrophobic imaging machine to take pictures of my heart, I've worn the 24 hour heart monitor, and I've seen my heart with ultrasound and while I came to the conclusion that one should never see their own heart under any circumstances, the doctors came to the conclusion that while my palpitations were vaguely worrying, there would be no real answer unless something really bad happened to it to give them more clues.

2. Name two things you wish you could learn.

To be silent once in a while when it really counts
To make my own cheese.

3. Name three things that remind you of your childhood:

Hearing Simon And Garfunkel.
Hearing married people bicker.
The smell of sun ripened blackberries.

4. Name four things you love to eat but rarely do:

donuts
marinated mushrooms
brie cheese
plums

5. Name five things/people that make you feel good:

my family (you knew I'd say that, huh?)
having a waistline (I don't have one right now, sadly)
baking bread and making soup on the same day
snow
my chickens

6. List six facts about yourself:

I love being a housewife.

If I had more kids I'd die.

I love winter best of all seasons even though I like the other three quite a lot too.

I have thousands of half written letters floating around in my head.

I have an unholy love for office supplies. I especially love green graph paper and Papermate "Flair" pens in black.

I am not at all kinky. Not even in my most private fantasies. In fact, I don't have sexual fantasies at all, I have romantic ones. I think this is because sex is a fact of life and it's practical and very nice but romance, to me, is the real elusive monkey. You know the last scene in "North and South", the one at the train station? That would never happen to me. Not only because I'm not a wasp waisted Victorian chick but because I'm very uncomfortable with romantic moments and even when they have come my way in real life I botch them up by making sarcastic comments or delivering a real hit of bathos to the moment. Because of this, romance holds a higher place in my fantasy life than sex does.



There you have it. Does it make me narcissistic that I love these kinds of memes? No, I don't think so (to answer my own question) because I adore it when other people do it too. My favorite of all time is reading people's "100 things" lists. Many of you have not yet done a "100 things" list and I think you should. Just for me. Just so I can sit down with my cup of coffee and hear you deny that you can come up with that many things and then see you totally do it.

Well, I'm off to get a little work done for my part time job. If I don't do some work it will become the no-time job in which I've greatly disappointed my good friend Angela and also failed to make enough money to cover all my garden purchases of roses and fruit. Have a great Tuesday everyone!