THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 29, 1995 TAG: 9503290444
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Emma Russell of Virginia Beach writes she ``couldn't agree with me more.''
Now that is the kind of criticism that agrees with me. A sweeping endorsement.
None of this business about ``Good Guy/Bad Guy,'' as appears today among the letters to the editor, as if the disgruntled letter writer is admonishing a dog named Guy.
No, the note from Virginia Beach carried an endorsement up front without any toeing in the dust.
I read to find our mutual ground, and, lo, she continues: ``I surely would never put mustard on a turkey sandwich.''
Now THAT is basic. I'd rather we see alike on the matter of mustard than on the First Amendment.
(Nothing is more tedious than a seminar of journalists discussing the First Amendment. Drive you up the wall. They ought to be out putting it to the test as my colleagues do every day, to the glory of these newspapers. Afflict the comfortable; comfort the afflicted.)
Well, back to the basics.
Emma Russell recommends cranberry jelly with a turkey sandwich. A capital idea!
There is the blandness of the turkey white meat and the delicate, tart touch of sweet of cranberry jelly. Any other jelly or jam would overpower the turkey.
``It's a natural,'' she writes. ``I put cranberry jelly on one slice of bread and mayonnaise on the other. It's great! Try it, you'll like it!''
I will. Thomas Jefferson said that the greatest service an individual could do his people would be to introduce a new and nourishing plant into their midst.
I'll amend that. The best thing anybody can do is think up new fare from common fodder. You can engrave that on marble in the foyer.
It wouldn't surprise me to find that cranberry-mayonnaise-turkey sandwich cropping up in gourmet shops around Hampton Roads.
That cranberry jelly is just the ticket for turkey, light enough, piquant. Anything heavier wouldn't do. Coupled with blackstrap molasses it would become a mess.
The only thing that could stand up to blackstrap molasses would be corn pone.
Long time ago, Margaret Edds gave me a Mason jar of blackstrap from Franklin County, Tenn.
Many a breakfast, wanting a solid foundation, I've poured a dollop of blackstrap over crumbled-up corn pone with a cold glass of milk on the side.
Those molasses were so thick, their viscosity was such that it poured as slowly as warm tar and was just as dark. And sweet! It was strong and unabashed.
If, marching with Caesar, I was told we could have only one meal a week, I'd unhesitatingly ask for blackstrap molasses and corn pone.
Corn pone is one of only two or three things within my culinary grasp. It's fairly simple to fix, a little like mixing cement. It stands by you. by CNB