(photo courtesy of Jackie Thompson Reagan)
AKA Sean Dietrich. One of my heroes. I feel as if we are long lost cousins or I am his long lost aunt. I consider him and his wife, Jamie, my dear friends although I have never met them. We send messages. I've begged Jamie for recipes and she has grudgingly given me a couple. I've written about him before. And here. I kind of accidentally stumbled across his writing a couple of years ago and I used him (with his permission) as a guest blogger. Sean gets to the heart of people. He champions the underdog. The people who aren't glamorous, who live in trailers, who work two or three jobs just to provide (barely) a living for their kids. My people. Someone recently was ugly to him in the comment section after one of his Facebook posts. Seems the fellow did not believe what Sean had written. Sean's rebuttal was priceless. As were the faithful followers who called the jerk out. Me included. Sean is a writer (although he was told by a teacher once that he his writing would never amount to much- I am paraphrasing here), a musician, a dog-lover, a real human being. This article in an Alabama newspaper gave me more of an insight into his life. He routinely gives his books away for free on Amazon. I have been known to fuss at him for this. (And I have downloaded them... and bought a couple as well.) He overtips waitresses. He admits to having a soft spot for them and if you read about his mom you will understand. I fell for him when I read a column he wrote about women. He did it again today, so I am sharing it. We are all beautiful in our own way. As a middle school teacher, I worry about girls and the pressure they are under to be perfect physically. There is no perfect. We all come in different shapes, sizes, and hair colors. How boring life would be if we all looked the same. Thank you, Sean, for reminding me. Even at my age, I need it most days.
If you don't fall in love with him, well, I am not sure you would like me much either.
I’m sorry. That’s what I want to say to any woman reading this. I’m just flat-out sorry.
The world is trying to squash you like an albino cockroach, and you deserve an apology.
The world is trying to squash you like an albino cockroach, and you deserve an apology.
Today’s modern female is expected to be a walking-talking industrialized domestic machine.
If she’s not busy bathing toddlers, dropping kids at soccer, or changing her own transmission fluid, she’s supposed to be planning a three-course supper, scrubbing dirty underwear, learning a foreign language, or making her living room fit for HGTV.
She must be a certain size, weight, width, she must have a gym membership, a midsection stronger than most outboard motors, tight underarms, young-looking hands, perfect teeth, slender necks, soft-spoken voices, no gray hairs, no eye wrinkles, and the amiable disposition of Princess Grace of Monaco.
I’m even sorrier for young girls.
Not that it matters what I think, but I believe television and magazines are trying to ruin females.
Take a gander at the magazine racks in the Piggly Wiggly. Half-naked bodies on magazine covers. Pop-stars dressed like senators from Planet Krypton. Reality television hosts with plastic hindparts.
Anyway, the reason I am writing this is because of my friend’s daughter. Her name is not important. But let's call her, Little Miss Alabama.
She is in seventh grade, top of her class. An athlete, a social butterfly, a horseback rider, fluent in Spanish, math wiz, funny, kindhearted, and well-loved.
Miss Alabama has dreams of attending Auburn University, she wants to study zoology, she is pretty, has brown hair, blue eyes, flawless health.
She has aided in the birth of exactly three colts. She can spit farther than any boy, and cook just as well as granny alive. I know this; I have eaten her biscuits.
And she hates herself.
Well, not her SELF, exactly. But she hates her body. She thinks she’s too fat, and she's disgusted with her own reflection.
Well son of a biscuit.
Who told females they had to be USDA-approved and ninety-eight percent lean? Who in the H-E-Double-Cuss said beauty had anything to do with dress sizes?
Look, I have no right to talk about things I don’t understand. I’m not a woman—you might've noticed. But do I cry at “Steel Magnolias” so hard I have to pause it after Shelby’s funeral. And that counts for something.
And, I am a person, by God. I don’t like what people are doing to other people.
I don’t like underwear commercials. I don’t care for celebrities that People Magazine says I should care about.
And when I hear about my friend’s thirteen-year-old girl who believes herself to be—in her own words—“ugly, and fat,” it is an affront to my human-hood.
The voices on TV are too loud. They tell girls who they should be, what they should do, how they should think, what their den should look like, how their waistline should appear, what they should eat, and what they should feel.
There are too many voices talking to our women.
So here’s one more:
This world owes you an apology.
If she’s not busy bathing toddlers, dropping kids at soccer, or changing her own transmission fluid, she’s supposed to be planning a three-course supper, scrubbing dirty underwear, learning a foreign language, or making her living room fit for HGTV.
She must be a certain size, weight, width, she must have a gym membership, a midsection stronger than most outboard motors, tight underarms, young-looking hands, perfect teeth, slender necks, soft-spoken voices, no gray hairs, no eye wrinkles, and the amiable disposition of Princess Grace of Monaco.
I’m even sorrier for young girls.
Not that it matters what I think, but I believe television and magazines are trying to ruin females.
Take a gander at the magazine racks in the Piggly Wiggly. Half-naked bodies on magazine covers. Pop-stars dressed like senators from Planet Krypton. Reality television hosts with plastic hindparts.
Anyway, the reason I am writing this is because of my friend’s daughter. Her name is not important. But let's call her, Little Miss Alabama.
She is in seventh grade, top of her class. An athlete, a social butterfly, a horseback rider, fluent in Spanish, math wiz, funny, kindhearted, and well-loved.
Miss Alabama has dreams of attending Auburn University, she wants to study zoology, she is pretty, has brown hair, blue eyes, flawless health.
She has aided in the birth of exactly three colts. She can spit farther than any boy, and cook just as well as granny alive. I know this; I have eaten her biscuits.
And she hates herself.
Well, not her SELF, exactly. But she hates her body. She thinks she’s too fat, and she's disgusted with her own reflection.
Well son of a biscuit.
Who told females they had to be USDA-approved and ninety-eight percent lean? Who in the H-E-Double-Cuss said beauty had anything to do with dress sizes?
Look, I have no right to talk about things I don’t understand. I’m not a woman—you might've noticed. But do I cry at “Steel Magnolias” so hard I have to pause it after Shelby’s funeral. And that counts for something.
And, I am a person, by God. I don’t like what people are doing to other people.
I don’t like underwear commercials. I don’t care for celebrities that People Magazine says I should care about.
And when I hear about my friend’s thirteen-year-old girl who believes herself to be—in her own words—“ugly, and fat,” it is an affront to my human-hood.
The voices on TV are too loud. They tell girls who they should be, what they should do, how they should think, what their den should look like, how their waistline should appear, what they should eat, and what they should feel.
There are too many voices talking to our women.
So here’s one more:
This world owes you an apology.
Jamie’s Pound Cake
makes 2 loaves or one bundt cake, but Jamie recommends the loaves
makes 2 loaves or one bundt cake, but Jamie recommends the loaves
I have blogged about this cake before and made it a couple of times, playing around with the flavors each time. In the South, we sure do love our pound cake.
For the cake:
3 c. sugar (this time, I used 2 cups granulated white sugar and 1 cup Turbinado cane sugar)
8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
3 sticks + 2 T. butter, room temperature (2 T. are for buttering the pans)
3 c. all purpose flour
3 large eggs, slightly beaten
1 t. each: vanilla extract (this go around, I used 1 tsp. vanilla extract, 1 tsp. coconut extract, 3 tsp. Praline Pecan Liqueur -sent to me by Ms. Tammy in Arizona who spoils me)
coconut extract
almond extract
brandy
sherry
For the glaze:
1 cup sugar
1/2 T. each: vanilla extract
coconut extract
1 t. each: brandy
sherry
Prepare 2 loaf pans by generously coating them with soft butter and then coating them with sugar.
In a large mixing bowl, cream together the sugar, butter and cream cheese.
Gradually alternate adding the flour and eggs, stopping to scrap down the bowl as needed. Mix just until blended.
Add the extracts and the wines until blended.
Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pans.
Place the pans in a cold oven and then set the oven to 300 degrees. (I think my oven is a bit off so I set it to 325˚F for the first 40 minutes and then turned it down to 315˚F)
Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. (Sometimes mine need a little longer. However, you want this cake super moist–like a butter cake.)
Once you remove the cakes from the oven, let them cool in the pan on a wire rack.
In the meantime, melt one cup of sugar in half a cup of water in a pot on the stove. Once the sugar is melted, remove the pot from the heat and add the extracts and wines.
Spoon the glaze over the top of each cake–do not remove the cakes from their pans. Continue to let the cakes cool and absorb the glaze for a couple of hours before serving. ***This can be made in a bundt pan. However, you will need to invert the cake before adding the glaze. I feel that you do not get as much glaze absorption on a bundt cake as a loaf cake.
Bon appétit, y'all! Make a pound cake and take it to a friend. Or make it and invite a friend over. Pound cake is a gift no matter what. It has healed many a broken heart. Calories? Yes. Sugar? Yes. Moderation, people. A little pound cake once in a while never killed anyone. Thank you, Sean and Jamie!
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