Y’all know Mamaw likes to cook. And boy can she cook real good too. She is always making pies, chicken, cake and just about anything else you can think of. She always sends cakes and stuff to bake sales, church functions and she even sells a few. She always yells at us if we run through the house when she is baking, “You boys don’t be running through the house! And y’all don’t stomp, my cake will fall!”

I don’t know why stomping will make a cake fall, but I have seen her make a few lopsided ones that came out of the oven, so somebody must have stomped for sure. She has a glass pan with the glass top, that is the one she takes to church. She has a plastic one that looks just like that one too she carries if there ain’t too many people there, like on a Wednesday night ice cream supper.

I love it on my birthday when she makes me a carrot cake. She even puts fresh carrot pieces in it, just like I like it. You might not think a carrot cake like that would even be good, and Shady always says “yuk.” But those carrots are real crunchy and she always makes my cake out of red velvet, with homemade icing. Its real nice, and that is pretty much the only cake I like.

We have a few ladies at the church that like to cook too, but some of them are hit and miss. There is one older lady, who is kind of poor that makes the best looking pecan pies you have ever seen, but nobody seems to ever eat them. I remember one time the revival preacher saw her pecan pie and went to cut him a piece. Three people caught him off to the side and told him gently; “Preacher so and so, don’t eat that pie, please don’t.” He looked sad and asked them, “Why not? It looks perfectly good.”

The three that got him off in the corner told him, “It might look good, but she has chickens on her kitchen counter.” He looked surprised and backed away from that pie, like it was going to get him.

Yeah, sometimes you gotta be careful of stuff that looks like it’s good, only it ain’t.