I couldn’t persuade Mary to anything so vulgar as to blog, but she wrote a note on thick, cream-colored stationary with a stationer’s watermark and her name embossed in the corner.
By way of revenge, here is the picture I drew of her.
Here is the text of her note.
When I was young, my dear grandmother introduced me to cucumber sandwiches. I loved them then, and I’ve loved them ever since. Alexander, our cook, makes them just the way Grandmother’s cook did, which I find rather extraordinary.
One bakes a loaf of bread, which one slices very thin. One removes the crust.
One makes mayonnaise from fresh egg, some sort of oil, fresh lemon, and other items you’ll have to ask your own cook about. [NOTE FROM MA: Here are my recipes for bread and mayonnaise. So there.]
One pares the rind from a fresh cucumber — seedless, of course — and slices it as thin as onion paper.
One spreads mayonnaise very thinly on two slices of bread, layers some cucumber slices on one, and tops it with the other. [NOTE FROM MA: some dill is good in there, too.]
— Mary Seldon-Hardesty
I count four ones, but I believe you could get by with fewer people than that.
*snerk*
Hop over to My Life Lived Full. Good stuff.
Mary Seldon-Hardesty appears in A DEAD GUY AT THE SUMMERHOUSE, where she indulges her hobby of looking down her nose at people. The book is available through Indiebound and at Amazon in print and for Kindle and free Kindle apps.
A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Who looks down on your main character? How does your MC respond?
MA
Jane
April 15, 2015 at 7:30amLike that writing prompt.
Now, that sort of conflict really does stir the pot in a story!
Marian Allen
April 15, 2015 at 8:58amStir away, and see what bobs to the surface! 😀
Dan
April 15, 2015 at 8:14amUntil I was quite old, I thought cucumber sandwiches were a made-up concept. I really didn’t think they existed in real life. These sound good, but I’m sure I would eat the ingredients before I got them made (crust, rind and all) 🙂
Marian Allen
April 15, 2015 at 9:01amI hear that on eating the ingredients, Dan! Cucumber sandwiches are very nice, but a big fat slice of crusty bread and a bowl of salted cucumber chunks are more my speed.
Stephen Tremp
April 15, 2015 at 9:20amI can honestly say I’ve never eaten a cucumber sandwich.
Stephen Tremp
A to Z Cohost
M is for Movies
Marian Allen
April 15, 2015 at 1:59pmThey’re perty dern good, made right. Soggy messes, made wrong.
Jeremy
April 16, 2015 at 4:58amNever could do cucumber sandwiches, not that they are not good… I have a weird thing where certain foods cannot touch each other. I know some odd phobia that most likely exists. Brumotactillophobia is it, looked it up…
Okay I wanted to stop over and thank you, you know! THANK YOU!
Jeremy [Retro]
AtoZ Challenge Co-Host [2015]
There’s no earthly way of knowing.
Which direction we are going!
HOLLYWOOD NUTS!
Come Visit: You know you want to know if me or Hollywood… is Nuts?
Marian Allen
April 16, 2015 at 7:50amWhich foods touching put you off cucumber sandwiches, Jeremy? I’m guessing mayonnaise and cucumbers? What are some others?
I’m glad to hear there’s a word for that; I used to hate for foods to be mixed. I could tolerate maybe two or three identifiable ingredients. If I had salad, I only wanted lettuce and tomato. No casseroles! No stir-fry!
It’s different now. I still prefer a limited number of ingredients, but that’s because I’m lazy, not picky. lol
Jeremy
April 16, 2015 at 9:05amI think it’s only really been sandwiches, I never like pickles or ketchup on meats… maybe. Though I like a good p and j…
Maybe as a kid I never thought about things like I do now, like jumping into a pile of random leaves… the thought of that makes my shriek.
Marian Allen
April 16, 2015 at 10:21amI used to be a purist about sandwiches, too. Even today, I’ll get any and all toppings on a Tex-Mex thing, but a very limited number of “extras” on a sandwich. And I never did want to jump into piles of leaves or hay. God only knows where that’s been — or what’s in there now!
Jeremy
April 16, 2015 at 10:32amlife is like a pile of leaves?
thought of the day.
🙂
Marian Allen
April 16, 2015 at 12:14pmYeah, Jeremy — What you get out of it depends on what somebody else has put into it! 😉
Jeremy
April 16, 2015 at 2:10pmultimate creepy 🙂