What is Darryl's, you ask?  WHAT IS DARRYL'S?  You don't know? Seriously? ..

Who knew Googling "tipsy cake" would yield hundreds of pictures and thousands of recipes? Certainly not me until I recently did it. If you add "trifle" to the search - and after all, a tipsy cake is the Southern cousin of an English trifle - you'll have even more hits, but none remotely similar to my grandmother's Tipsy Cake (capital letters de rigueure for this perennial family favorite). Her recipe was an original - and perhaps a regional favorite although I wouldn't know for certain because I've never had Tipsy Cake any other way and I've never lived anywhere else.  ..

Both kids are with their in-laws and Susan is traveling with her sister, Anne, so today it was just Mother and me having a delicious Thanksgiving lunch at The Albemarle. Even with all her physical issues, she's still going strong, is remarkably resilient and can still cuss with the best of 'em. I hope her resilience, determination, spunkiness and zest for life have all passed down to my children and grandchildren (and perhaps the cussing gene stops with me). ..

Some weekends just work and even though the family was scattered east and west in North Carolina, from Linville to Atlantic Beach (and Wilson, of course) and north and south from New York to New Orleans, it's been a picture perfect weekend. I'm at the beach doing my normal beach stuff - running errands, putzing around the cottage, taking long walks and having a good meal or two (...or three). Susan, Elizabeth and Page are on a girl's trip to New York while Joe and Alex are in Raleigh for a birthday and an action-packed, fun-filled Alex-centric weekend. Anderson and Campbell are on the wedding circuit and Cotton and Sawyer are left behind at home in Raleigh. In the meantime, my cousin entertained her father and friends with a special dinner in Wilson while Johnny and Susan visited Claire in New Orleans. Enough of the words....I'll let the pictures tell the story of one family's fan-damn-tastic weekend.  ..

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The Hackney Family
Christmas 2016
Past, present and future roll makers  ..

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Sisters  ..

They seemed to be in a hurry to get life going because in 1955 my parents built their contemporary dream house on Watson Drive just three years after they married and two years after their first child was born. Mid-century modern was never a term they used when describing their home, it was always a contemporary home when they proudly described it to others. The term mid century modern, so prevalent today, was not used back then, at least in their world but they loved that house from the first day they moved in it until the day they sold it 53 years later.  ..

Today's post will be like a book for toddlers....lots of pictures and not many words. Maybe-but you know me...maybe not (probably not). I'm too tired to even try to be funny but not before one quickie. I learned something I should have know a long time ago - size does matter. Small cuts of watermelon rind ended up being mushy after they were cooked and I was the designated fisherman to get them out of the pot o' pickles before they were placed and sealed into jars. Anyway, as you can see above, we finally finished the job and the watermelon rind pickles look exactly like they're supposed to but they were so damn much trouble to make, I'm not sure they'll ever taste as good as the ones Mother made. A jar is in the frig, tomorrow we taste test them and I'm a little scared. We've tasted the hot pickles and they were good but I always eat them cold so that will be the final test. When I started unpacking the jars first thing this morning, all I could think about is what I used to say to my parents when we were on long road trips, "How much longer"? What I know now is that as I was unpacking these jars we still had a long, long way to go. Where ever there was, we weren't even close.  ..