The 2009 North Carolina Literary Festival

This year's Literary Festival is going to have over 100 authors both famous and not so famous. The headlines will largely revolve around keynote speakers like John Grisham, Kathy Reichs, Anna Deavere Smith, and Pulitzer Prize Winning author Elizabeth Strout. However the true gems are lesser known authors like
Janis Owens because they don't get as much exposure. Lord knows we all are aware of Grisham's opinions on being a lawyer and Reichs is well known due to both her books and that annoying TV show, Bones, on Fox.

Speaking of Owens, her new book is The Cracker Kitchen: A Cookbook in Celebration of Cornbread-Fed, Down-Home Family Stories and Cuisine. It's part cookbook and part family memoir of her own crackery family and their background in the swamps of Florida. Here's a recipe and commentary from the book:

Hummingbird Cake

3 cups cake flour
2 cups white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons Watkins, or real vanilla extract
8 oz crushed pineapple, drained
1 cup chopped pecans
2 cups squashed banana – the riper, the better


1. Heat oven to 350, and Pam or grease three 9-inch cake pans.
2. Sift dry ingredients.
3. Add eggs, oil and stir till they’re combined.
4. Add vanilla, pineapple, pecans and banana.
5. Bake 30 minutes, or till a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool a while, then frost with this heavenly frosting. If I live in your town, call me and I’ll take your left-overs.

16 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup softened butter
2 pounds powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Combine cream cheese and butter and mix till smooth. Add sugar, beating with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, then stir in vanilla. Ice the cake in layers, then sprinkle with pecans.

This cake will seal your reputation. It will make you make you swallow your pride and start ordering nightgowns from Lady Bryant. It has that power.


The Festival kicks off with the keynote speech by John Grisham and Kathy Reichs on Thursday, September 10, 7:30 pm. Like all events at the Literary Festival it's free and open to the public. It does require tickets but they can be obtained by phone---if there's any left.

In addition to the keynote speeches there's going to be several live performances.

Good Ol' Girls on Saturday with Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, along with Nashville musicians Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman. That's at 8pm and requires free tickets too. The second performance is The Bible Salesman and it's at 4pm on Sunday. Clyde Edgerton and Mike Craver will perform a musical rendition of Edgerton's book, The Bible Salesman. Sweet.

Lots of stuff for the kids too with authors R.L. Stine, Judy Schachner and Brian Pinkney to speak at the Children's Main Stage. I know all 3 of my nephews loved Stine's Goosebumps series. I don't know if the books are still as popular now though.

Comments

Jan said…
Most impressive. One hundred authors, something for the whole family and the price is right.-
5:25 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nitroflex at home

Image
I mentioned a few days ago that I'd purchased off of Craig's List an exercise machine. A Nitroflex, to be more specific, for the grand sum of $75. The boxes you see to the left were bought by the seller as discontinued merchandise over a year ago and stored in his back yard storage shed. You might be able to see some of the bugs and such that had made their homes on these boxes. I left them out on my deck for a few days before opening them to allow the insects to leave gracefully or die in the sun. The picture to the left is the pieces from the box, unboxed, and up in one of my upstairs bedrooms. For the most part it wasn't difficult to move it around though two pieces were heavy and a number of them were kinda long and bulky to be wandering about the house with. Surprisingly, this kit didn't require any extra tools. There were two allen keys and one combo wrench included in the boxes and that was all it took to put it together. The whole thing only took about half an h
Read more

flea!

Image
Yep, that's one of those damn blood suckers. Renee's revenge on my neglecting her feelings, no doubt. We guys just have it so tough! LOL This here is a picture of my ankle and while it's not very obvious, I guess, there's a bunch of flea bites on there. Itches a bit, dammit. The annoying part is that the damn fleas can't use my blood--fleas are mostly species specific and don't have the proper enzymes to make meals out of blood from other critters--so they're not getting anything out of biting me. It's just frustration and starvation driving their biting. Well, I guess the real annoying part is the bites themselves, but I wanted to seem a little sensitive there for a moment. But no more of that. Kill the fleas! While most of the bites are on my ankles and calves, there's an occasional bite up higher like these 4 on my thigh. They're kinda hard to see through the hair but I wasn't able to focus on the skin with all the hair in the way. Sorry.
Read more

ankles: the sequel

Image
I've heard rumors that one post about my sprained ankle wasn't enough so here's more pictures to satisfy a public hungry for swollen flesh... This was taken the morning after I sprained the ankle. There's starting to be a black and blue mark from the blood vessels leaking At this point the swelling is still very localized to the lateral side of the left ankle and presumably that's the tendon that was affected (very likely since I really screwed it up 15 years ago and it's got extra play in it) In this picture, taken on Sunday evening about 25 hours after the injury, you can see the edema, or swelling, has spread out over the top and entire lateral side of the foot. There's also more evidence of hematoma at the skin above the metatarsals. At the same time, there's still significant swelling at the original site to the point that it totally eclipses the left ankle. Here's a lateral view taken at the same time as the photo above to show the hematoma bet
Read more