I'm Not Late for This Week's Date!

 Hello again! I just received Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date email (it appears she posts it a bit early for the global time zone differences). Since I was late in posting last week's participation, I thought I'd try being early this time! 😊 This post has food and some art.

Dessert first! 😋

I'm a Southern girl. My family roots stay in the South all the way back to the 1640's when 3 branches of my family arrived in the Virginia Colonies from England. My people migrated to Arkansas in the 1830's with the Homestead Act and stayed to farm. My dad moved us down to Texas in 1959 when I was almost 3. And I've been here in Texas ever since. So, I have tasted many a bona fide Southern dish, especially recipes handed down in our family. I was introduced to Lemon Icebox Pie as a small child and loved it. It's remained my #1 favorite with Chocolate Icebox Pie my #2. The family recipe for a no-bake, traditional icebox pie uses raw eggs, and as I've gotten older, the thought of eating raw eggs no longer agrees with me, so I went looking for an alternative. After trying a dozen recipes or so, the best tasting one to me has turned out to be the super-simplest to make, so I'm sharing it today.

NO-BAKE LEMON ICEBOX PIE

It's quite tart and that's what I like, but it's also very creamy, cold and refreshing. So it's perfect for a  summertime dessert. If you like lemony treats, try this one!

You might wonder, why exactly do they call them "icebox" pies? Here's the link to an interesting explanation. It notes that many rural folks did not get electricity until WWII or shortly afterwards. So they continued to use an icebox and the article explains what it is/was. Now, I have a story to share related to the block of ice in an icebox. The year was June-August 1944. My grandfather was postmaster of Conway, AR and my dad needed a summer job after he graduated high school at age 17, planning to enter the Navy and the War the second he turned 18. So, my grandfather hired him, but to avoid any grumbling about nepotism or preferential treatment, my granddaddy assigned my dad the rural mail delivery route no one else wanted, which was the Colored Route right outside town. He counseled my dad to be kind and helpful and polite, just like he would be to white folk, and if he did he would have no problems at all and a happy time. So that's what my dad did. You have to understand that this was my dad's first real interaction with black people due to segregation, so he was nervous. But he soon discovered that the folks on his route treated him like a king because he treated them with respect and good cheer. 

So here's the tie-in with the block of ice. While most white folks in town had electricity and refrigerators by then (as well as indoor plumbing), not one black family on my dad's route did. They all still used these iceboxes and each of them got a block of ice delivered every morning at dawn. In summer the block didn't last long at all, but every housewife on his route somehow managed to save him enough ice to fill a glass of water or iced tea, along with a homemade tasty snack. He was skinny and had to walk the route, so they all worried about him and wanted to fatten him up. In fact, he gained 5 pounds over the summer! Anyway, my dad always told me he was eternally grateful for the lessons learned from that summer. He first told me the story when I was 11 and would be going to school with black kids for the first time, advising me never to say the N word and to treat them with the Golden Rule, like he was taught. Over the years I'd think of that story when I'd hear "icebox" and so these pies have special meaning to me as well as a special taste. 💗

Okay, now onto the art. Rain dedicated much of this week's post to her favorite poet, Edgar Allen Poe. He's also one of my favorite poets and writers, too. He is often credited as the first "real" American author, creating a unique genre that didn't just imitate the British writers. Plus, I find the circumstances surrounding his untimely death to be very intriguing because they are so mysterious. He looks to have been murdered, and there are theories but no one can say with certainty why he was killed. The leading theory is that he was accidentally killed while being robbed of his identity papers on an election day so the thieves could go vote as him for their candidate. Yes, that was done a lot in 1849. I mean, how strange! In Life AND Death! 

Anyway, I don't have any new art to share, but I do have 2 art journal pages about Poe that I can include here. Both are in my Puns & Roses Word Play Glue Book. This first one, above, was a spread I did in 2018, called Celebrating Poe. I like it because it's punny but also because I used a few of Ike's Art images, drawn by the owner, Sweet Sue "Ike" EisenHauer, who died earlier this year. She will be missed. So I'm glad to have her work in my journal. She loved Poe, too. The bust of Poe and Poe holding the candle are her images.

This page was created last December 2021 as a Halloween/Christmas mash up. I just love the rhythmically soothing cadence of The Raven juxtaposed with it's creepy scary subject matter. And the rhyming is quite masterful. The faceless woman in the left background that can barely be made out is, of course, Lenore, her spirit, watching everything. This is the first journal page I made using the Avery label paper and adhering into my journal once finished. That's what I do now for every page in this book. This was the "test run" of the idea and proved to be quite successful.

And I guess since Rain's subject is poetry, I do have an art journal page with one of my short poems on it. From 2009. I was and remain quite pleased with it.

UNSPOKEN

Chemical language can bind us

With feelings of need and desire.

Emotional language can blind us

To Truth that stands straight and tall.

Spiritual language can find us

When we're lost or have suffered a fall. 

Unspoken language reminds us

That it's often the strongest of all.

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for sticking with me and letting me reminisce. Please go over and visit Rain's blog HERE if you have time. She's a beautiful, smart, talented, kind and friendly woman living the rural homesteading life in the Canadian Maritimes. She grows veggies and herbs, makes her own cheese (!) and lots of delicious cheese dishes and breads. She also makes lots of interesting videos about art and gardening. Always something worth reading there. XOX