Mary Kay Andrews

Now that winter’s finally upon us, I’ve been struck with a frenzy of soup and stew making. Like my mother, I hate to waste left-overs, and soups and stews are so good for this. Last week, I made chicken tortilla soup using the frozen chicken stock I’d saved after making chicken salad for a bridesmaid’s luncheon in December. I just picked a recipe at random from Epicurious.com, and it turned out great. The nice thing about the Epicurious recipes is that you can read other cooks’ comments about what did or didn’t work with a recipe. Another night I made chili, using half ground chuck and half ground venison from Boomerang Boy’s deer-hunting efforts. Tonight’s efforts were the best of all, I thought. Black bean soup. Mmmm. I was trying to use up a lot of holiday left-overs, and I had this humongous ham-bone from Honey-Baked Ham. Did you know you can go to one of their stores and buy a ham-bone for five bucks? And it has tons of ham still on it, since they spiral cut their hams. Literally, enough for a week’s worth of sandwiches off one “ham-bone.” I started out using a recipe from Paula Deen’s cookbook, but then I switched it around so much, Paula would probably never recognize it. So here’s a rough description, but remember, soup-making isn’t so much a science as it is an art.

Coarsely chop 1 onion, 1 cup baby carrots, 2 stalks of celery, 2 cloves of garlic.
Saute these in approx. 3 Tbsp. olive oil in a thick-bottomed soup pot, until veggies are softened. Throw in your left-over ham, ham-bone, or any other random pork type products you have taking up room in the fridge. Rinse and drain 3 cans black beans, and add to pot. Yes, I know you could buy dried beans and soak overnight, but I never think that far ahead. I added two cartons of chicken broth, and brought it to a boil, then covered and turned the heat down and let it simmer for a couple hours. At that point I added a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes with chiles and lime and cilantro, and let it simmer another hour. Then I took my immersion blender and let it puree all the beans and veggies and ham bits. The soup was still a bit thin, so I let it simmer for another 45 minutes, and it reached a perfect consistency. Serve hot, with dollops of sour cream and chopped green onions. I usually put out some sherry which you can add to the soup at the last minute too, but tonight we had a big crowd, and anyway, the soup was perfect without it. We had a wonderful salad of chopped romaine, pink grapefruit sections, red onions and avocado with a vinaigrette dressing. Oh yes, and I used up the last of the left-over dinner rolls from New Year’s Day by making a bread pudding with bits of apple and dried cranberries. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

Some random resolutions–besides the perennial one to lose weight and get organized.

1. Make the printed New York Times bestseller list with the publication of DEEP DISH. To do this, I need all my precious readers to scamper out and buy DEEP DISH the very nano-second it’s published–on Feb. 26. They only print the top 15 best-selling books, so that’s what we’re aiming for, folks. Also, the way the list works, it’s really based more on velocity than volume–so we need a lot of books sold in a very short amount of time. That’s where you all come in.

2. Hire an office assistant and get my taxes and paperwork un-snarled.

3. Keep my website constantly updated, with new pix and fascinating content.

4. Ditto for this blog.

5. Walk more, veg less.

6. Learn to use Microsoft Publisher so I can do more nifty things on my computer.

7. Be nicer.

8. Write a kick-ass new book, THE FIXER-UPPER, and hand it in on deadline.

9. Get family photographs in one place, so Katie can make me photo albums–which is what I asked for for my birthday, Christmas, anniversary.

10. Read more, especially the books chosen by my book club.

It really is a low-down dirty trick to lure readers to your blog with adorable puppy pix. That said, I’m not above it. Weezie, unlike myself, is extremely photogenic. Plus, while she’s awake, she pretty much takes constant adult supervision. Even as I type this, she’s managed to unravel the rattan binding on my office lounge chair, chew the edge of the oriental rug, and confiscate the blue fur Christmas stocking I got at a book club meeting. And we won’t go into her regrettable bathroom faux pax(s?). So here are some shots from the last few days: Weezie and Wyatt sharing a chair, Weezie peeking out the French doors to my office, and a random shot of the house fixed up for the Christmas home tour. Notice the shower curtain fashioned from an old chenille bedspread–by my very own not-so-nimble fingers. Also the tree in the bathtub. Boomerang Boy was not amused. “Why is there a friggin’ tree in the friggin’ tub?” he asked. When told it was whimsical, he could only shake his head. He doesn’t really get middle-aged whimsy. So. The Christmas is all packed away and the tree has already been carted off. My sister-in-law Jeanne and I got a little nutty while watching MIRACLE ON 34th STREET the night after Christmas, and we ended up throwing all the dried-out holiday greenery into the fire. What a merry little time we had. Now we’re preparing for our New Year’s Day open house, where we serve my fabulous grits n’ greens casserole to around a hunnerd or so folks who drop in for the roast oysters and collard greens and black-eyed peas, not to mention the big-ass ham. After the holidays I intend to stay in bed for one full day. Really. I wish the same for all of you. A day in bed where you’re not sick. Just lazy.

In light of the fact that I have totally lost my mind, I decided to add to the insanity that passes for my life by adding a puppy to the household mix. So.
Please meet Weezie. She is an eight-week-old English setter. Mr.Mary Kay has been talking off and on for some time now about getting an auxiliary dog to supplement the head dog around here, which would be Wyatt. And because Mr. Mary Kay truly is a man who has everything–as I constantly remind him–I was stumped about what to do for Christmas this year. I mean, beyond the standard sweater, fishing stuff and golf shirts. In my quest for an even more complicated life, I called the friend who’d given us Wyatt and asked his advice. One phone call later, I was looking at the website of the kennel where Wyatt’s mother had come from. I thought, for about a hot minute, about surprising Mr. Mary Kay with a puppy on Christmas morning. Thankfully, that thought passed. A puppy, after all, is not quite like a shirt that doesn’t fit, or a set of golf clubs that doesn’t pass muster. So I inquired about whether a puppy would make a nice Christmas gift. Next thing I know, we are loaded up in the Yukon–with Wyatt in one crate, and the guest crate beside it, and headed for Biscoe, North Carolina. A six hour drive. Wyatt must have sensed the gathering storm, because he was uncharacteristically fussy for the first half of the drive. When we got to the kennel, he jumped out of the Yukon, took one look at all the dogs and puppies, and decided to take a dip in the duck pond. We browsed puppies. We looked at bitty puppies, bigger puppies, and mid-sized puppies. We debated color. Wyatt is actually a Llewellen setter, and his coloration is called lemon. We’d thought about branching out to a black and white or even a tri-color. We’d agreed that we might like a girl this time around. But all the tri-color and black and whites were boys. And there was this little lemon gal who kept flirting with my husband. And so it was done. I cradled Weezie in my lap for the six-hour drive home. Wyatt snoozed in his crate. Back at the ranch,the two of them sized each other up. Weezie seemed intrigued, Wyatt seemed indifferent. We think he views her as an attractive nuisance so far. As we’d done with Wyatt when we got him as a puppy, we girded our loins and put Weezie in her crate, on the towel we’d carried her home in, and went to bed. Weezie was not a happy camper. She whined, she whimpered, she wailed. We tried to turn a deaf ear. She persisted. At 3:30 a.m. I tiptoed downstairs, took her from the kennel and settled on the living room sofa with her stretched out on my chest like a colicky infant. She settled down again, and 40 minutes later was asleep. I put her back in the kennel. You know the rest. There was not much heavenly peace around here last night. But on the bright side, she really is adorable, inquisitive, funny. So far we’ve made all the potty breaks outside. And she’s asleep at my feet in my office. I think it must be cocktail time. Oh yes, here’s one more picture–Boomerang Boy, Wyatt and Weezie.

Movie–WHITE CHRISTMAS. I even have a copy of the Mrs. Santa dress Rosemary Clooney wears in the final number of the movie. Oh, how I’d love, just once to experience a post-card snowy Christmas like that one in Vermont. And oh, how I’d love to have that fabulous strapless black velvet evening gown Rosemary wears when she does her night club song, “Love, You Didn’t Do Right By Me.” Of course, you’d need the body she had at the time…

Song–CHRISTMAS (BABY PLEASE COME HOME) Nobody does it better than the amazing Darlene Love. Every year I try to stay up long enough to hear her sing it on the Letterman Show. This year, alas, with the writer’s strike, I’ll have to make do with the Youtube video of the ’06 performance. Which, in itself is pretty great, what with the full orchestra and back-up singers and that great Wall of Sound. Coming in a close second is that achingly sad HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS Judy Garland sings in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS. If you know the movie, you know Judy’s family is about to be uprooted from her beloved family home in St. Louis because her father has taken a job in New York. Been there, done that.

Food–Hmm. I love it all. But my neighbor Debbie Johnson usually delivers a batch of her homemade fudge which is too scrumptious for words, and Mr. Mary Kay’s annual roast ducklings which he serves for Christmas dinner are out of this world.

Gift–I don’t ever remember my father buying Christmas gifts. That was my mom’s job. But one year, for reasons I’ve never known, Daddy went out and bought antique gold lockets for my two sisters and I. He was so proud of himself. I still have mine, and treasure it.

Christmas Ornament/Decoration–The first year we were married my mother-in-law made me a green velvet stocking in the shape of an old-fashioned high-button shoe. She filled it with sewing notions because she hoped I would become as accomplished a seamstress as she. I never had her talent, but I still sew a little, and that stocking hangs every year on our mantel–this year for the 31st year. My favorite decoration is a sort of wreath my mom gave me. She had two gay friends who were antique dealer/decorators, and they made it out of an antique ship’s wheel, to which they attached all kinds of vintage kitchen gadgets. It always hangs in the kitchen.

Childhood memory–Going to my grandparent’s house and being allowed to choose a gift from her bottom dresser drawer–which was where she stashed all the goodies she’d been given for gifts by my aunt’s beauty parlour clients. Gram was the receptionist at the shop–it was called The Allura–and those ladies plied her with gifts because they knew she was the one who booked their standing appointments. After leaving Gram’s house, we’d go to Midnight Mass at Blessed Trinity, our family church in St. Pete. I still remember coming out of church to the trumpet strains of Hark, The Herald Angels Sing.

Adult Memory–It’s a tie between the first Christmas we spent in our house in Atlanta, and the most recent, when we spent our first Christmas back in Atlanta in our new old home. That first Christmas Katie was only ten months old, and my parents and my mother-in-law came up to spend the holiday with us. We had a bitterly cold ice storm, but Dot insisted we had to take Katie to Midnight Mass so she could show her off. We came home and went to bed, and discovered the next morning that the pipes in our 75-year-old house had all frozen and burst. The kitchen floor was covered in water. Mr. Mary Kay spent half the day under the house trying to fix the pipes with a borrowed blow-torch, and we ended up washing the dinner dishes in the bathtub. Last year was a wonderful but bittersweet homecoming. Christmas Eve we went to the children’s Mass at St. Thomas More, and I got teary-eyed at the sight of those precious little pre-schooler’s solemnly processing up the aisle in their droopy white angel robes, cardboard wings and crookedy tinsel halos. The next day we spent time with old friends, and had a full dinner table with our family and neighbors, but it was the first year I realized that both my parents were gone, and I was truly an adult.

How still we see thee lie…
I have to keep reminding myself that really, this is what Christmas is all about for believers. And I count myself a believer, through it all. A faltering, deeply flawed believer, but a believer nontheless.
So…
We have Frank on the CD player, singing mellow Christmas tunes, but we’re not so mellow. Here’s the by-the-numbers countdown to tour day, which is tomorrow.
1…The number of stopped up toilets discovered this morning.
2…The number of times I’ve actually cooked in the past week.
3…The number of times the Christmas tree has fallen down.
6…The number of decorated Christmas trees in this house.
7…The number of decorated wreathes I’ve created or bought.
28…The number of silver candlesticks Susie’s mom Muvvy polished for me.
1200…approx. the number of Christmas lights on all the trees.
1million…The number of nandina berries rolling around the kitchen floor.
Gabillions…Amount I’ve spent getting this house ready.
*
*
*
Priceless….The feeling of sitting in our living room with the fire burning, seeing the lights of the tree twinkling, sipping wine, enjoying the fruits of our hard labor…waiting for the tree to fall again.

Or as the spelling disabled say–Wah-lah!

The dead mouse under the stove has been evicted by Mr. Mary Kay. Boomerang Boy is off in the woods stalking deer, and when he returns he’ll be farmed out to spend the night at his best buddy’s house. Wyatt, better known around here as Mr. Barky Von Schnauzer has beens sternly warned about lounging on Boomerang Boy’s freshly-laundered coverlet. My punch list of last minute tasks has been reduced to one page.
So, this morning, after I finish making a shower curtain out of a vintage chenille bedspread for the upstairs bath, I am making a pilgrimage to the holiest of holy places for junkers–Scott’s Antique Market, with the other apostles, er, posse members, Jinx and Susie. Oh yes. I’m going to my happy place. Well, my other happy place. Number one happy place is Target. I was trying to explain this to a young male neighbor the other night. “I love Tar-jay,” I said. “It’s almost always open when I need it. It’s warm and bright. Everything glitters and beckons. Even the toilet brushes are stylish looking and beautifully merchandised. The bathrooms are clean, and I didn’t have to scrub them. They have coolers of cold Diet Coke at the entrance, they sell chocolate and they sometimes sell my books, along with the interior design magazines I crave–Country Home, Cottage Living, Mary Englebreit’s Home Companion, Veranda, like that.” He shrugged. Boys don’t get Target. At least, not most straight boys. Ah well. One of life’s imponderables.
Check out the AJC article and picks of the house!

We did it! Working like crazed cleaning/decorating monkeys, we actually got most of the house ready to be photographed by 2pm Sunday. It was a herculean effort, believe me. We only stopped work last night to go to a Christmas party–which we actually attended solely because we could eat for free. Got to bed at midnight, was up at 6:30 a.m., at Kroger at 7 a.m. At one point today, I looked around and counted the elves who were scurrying around: me, Tom, Andy, my friend Marie, who is a professional decorator, Jinx and Ellen, who are members of the posse and Ellen’s husband Joel, who made the mistake of stopping by to see how we were progressing. Of course we put him right to work. The house does look beautiful, if you don’t look too close. If you look closely, however, you might catch a glimpse of the peanut-butter baited mousetraps under the kitchen cabinets. Ooops! Or the basket of dirty laundry in boomerang boy’s bedroom. Double oops. Or the floor lamp in Tom’s office that didn’t quite get a lampshade. Should you manage to shove the laundry room door open, you would get an eyeful. Ditto Tom’s closet. Ditto the back mudporch. But really, mostly it looks beautiful to me. And the reporter and photographer, who are more used to documenting the mega-mansions of rappers and professional athletes, seemed to appreciate all our hard work. When the got here, Tom and I were still in our grimy sweats. But all is well. I’ve had a nap, and a hot bath and some cheap chardonnay, and tomorrow I plan to use that gift certificate for a massage that I’ve been hoarding. And perhaps a manicure and pedicure. And then it’s back to work. We still have more fluffing to do before the tour on Sunday.

Okay. This is me not panicking. In between signings this week–did you forget to run over to the Kroger in Alpharetta for my signing earlier tonight?–I’ve been intensifying the clean-up project. This morning I actually IRONED. Yes. I ironed the antique linen pillowshams for the upstairs guest bedroom, and the duvet covers. Also stripped the slipcovers from the dining room window-seat cushions and washed them. Wyatt loves to lounge on those cushions because he can look out the windows and plot his revenge on the squirrels and chipmunks outside who torment him on a daily basis. Unfortunately, Wyatt is frequently muddy and stinky. Fortunately, I made sure everything he might decide to lounge on around here is washable and bleachable. Bob the Builder showed up this morning and started to install the gorgeous oak cupboard he made for the kitchen. It looks even better than I hoped, and I promise I’ll post pictures once Roz, my painter, gets it stained. I had to make a run to my favorite hardware store to get brass hinges and pulls for the cupboard. Eugenia’s Antique Hardware in Chamblee is an absolute treasure trove of gorgeous vintage hardware, lighting and kitchen and bath doo-hickeys. Nothing there is repro, and the brothers who run it took over the business from their dad. If I were ever going to panic–which I’m not, it would have been today. I got an email from a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They’re going to run a little piece about the Avondale Home Tour, and they wanted to know if they could come over and take pictures of my house in all my holiday finery. EEK! So far, there is no finery. There is only paint cans and ironing boards and tarnished silver and giant piles of stuff. However, we have a plan. All the curtains that I’m having made should be ready to start being hung on Friday. The window washers are coming Friday. Tom and Andy bought our Christmas tree tonight while I was at my signing, and I’ve made them swear by all that’s holy that they’ll put said tree up tomorrow, and that Andy will start ferrying the Christmas cartons upstairs from the basement. I may have to call in the posse to help me get this thing decked out….stay tuned…

Less than two weeks til the Tour of Homes. Our house looks like something exploded. I keep trying to clear clutter from all the rooms, but all I seem to be doing is shovelling it from one spot to another. Take the upstairs guest bedroom. Boomerang Boy has annexed it into his own personal closet/laundry area. So I’m dealing with that. For months, I’ve been eyeing this tattered cardboard file box. Sunday it was time to deal with it. Chanting my new mantra…”letting go. this is me letting go,”
I lifted the lid of the box. Inside were several years worth of my old life as a newspaper reporter. Before switching careers in mid-life, I spent 14 years as a journalist, the last ten at The Atlanta Journal Constitution. One of the things you do as a journalist is save your stories, or clips, as they’re called in the biz. This box seems to have clips from the late 80s. My intention was to just dump the whole box in the fireplace and toss in a match. But then I looked at the item on the top of the stack. It was a story from 1987. Apparently I’d interviewed Pat Boone for a story about his taking over hosting duties on the PTL club, after the scandal-plagued Jim Baaker had been forced out. I totally had NO memory of ever talking to Pat Boone. I sifted through more pages. And the thing was, since my stories generally played on the front of the AJC’s features section, my stories ran right alongside the column of Celestine Sibley. If you never read Celestine Sibley’s column, which ran for more than 50 years in the AJC, or read any of her wonderful mysteries, novels or collected essays, you’ve missed a rare treat. Celestine was an Altanta, even a Southern institution. She died in August of 1999, and the AJC has never been the same since. I met her when I went to work at the AJC downtown in 1983, and despite the age difference–she was literally old enough to be my grandmother, we became fast friends. We both loved covering crime stories, which we’d both done earlier in our careers. We loved antiques, and gardens, and cooking, and writing. When I decided to try to write a novel, ‘Tine cheered me on. When my son Andy was born, she wrote a column about racing back from her second home on Dog Island, and stopping along the way to buy him a baby gift–a pair of Blue Willow cups and saucers. She knew I collected Blue Willow, and, as she wrote in that column, she wanted him to have those as a gift from her–to him and his future wife. I still have that clipping, pressed into Andrew’s baby book. When I’d only written five chapters of EVERY CROOKED NANNY, ‘Tine hand-carried it to her longtime editor at HarperCollins, and pestered Larry until he read–and eventually bought and published it. When NANNY came out, she wrote another column telling the world what a good book it was. My career as a novelist was officially launched. I have that column too. When the old downtown Rich’s Department Store closed, shortly before I left the paper, she took me and another friend to the Magnolia Tea Room, which was another Atlanta institution, for one last lunch. Or rather, I ended up taking her. As so often happened, when ‘Tine opened her billfold to pay, she was flat broke. She’d probably handed her last five dollar bill to one of the bag ladies who regularly visited her in her office at the paper, or to a wino, who waylaid her on her way to the office from the Five Points MARTA station. It didn’t matter. The old-timey staff in the Magnolia Room recognized her as soon as we arrived. At the time, the store had a baby grand piano in the restaurant, and the pianist came over, introduced himself as a fan, and asked what she’d like to hear. Show tunes, ‘Tine said, so that’s what we listened to with our chicken potpie and iced tea. Show tunes. Rich’s is gone now. They bulldozed the old building years ago, and a couple years ago, the corporate suits at Macy’s decided to do away with the Rich’s brand altogether. Celestine, as I mentioned, passed away in the summer of 1999. This past year, the AJC, in all its wisdom, downsized and forced most of its veteran reporters into retirement. Time marches on, right? And I still have that cardboard box of bylines and memories. So maybe I won’t let go just now.