The response to my recent inquiry

about where to find an old-fashioned sunbonnet has been incredible. Thank

you! When I am finished checking out all the recommendations that have

come in, I will follow up and tell you about them.

In the meantime, I must share

something with you. I made the most scrumptious hamburgers over the weekend!

In fact, a friend who went to the Cotton Pickin' Fair in Gay with me on

Sunday said the burger was the best she had ever had.

Even allowing for the fact

that after skipping breakfast, and trying to keep up with a soon to be

five year old who was fascinated by just about everything this year, thus

prompting us to be quite famished upon returning home, so much so that

almost anything would have been good to eat, it still really was great

burger.

A while back, I had been told

hamburgers. Go for high fat content, she had said.

So I did. For the first time

ever, I bought my high fat content ground beef on Saturday evening, along

with a Lipton onion soup mix and Kraft Hickory smoked barbeque sauce.

I thoroughly mixed a half bottle of the sauce and one packet of the soup

mix, along with a very generous grinding of fresh black pepper into the

four pounds of meat. I then made my patties and refrigerated them overnight.

The next day, when we three

girls walked in from the fair and announced that we were starved, the

guys informed us they were "full." After having slept in, they

had just finished breakfast. Thus I could not bring myself to ask my hubby

to crank up the grill.

That's how I came to cook the

burgers on top of the stove. Yes, I smelled up the house and even smoked

it up a bit. To the buns that embraced our well done and ever so slightly

charred burgers I added only a slice of American cheese and a generous

slathering of mayo and mustard.

Betty took a bite. Elise bit

into her burger. I started on mine. Our eyes lit up. We took another bite.

On the third mouthful, Betty uttered the words, "This is the best

burger I have ever had."

It was! For me, too! Don't

know if it was the soup mix, barbeque sauce, and black pepper combo or

frying it on top of the stove in an old-fashioned iron skillet, but something

made a difference.

Later in the day, we had a

really awesome smoothie that I decided would have complemented our burgers

well earlier. It consisted of two bananas, one to one and a half cups

frozen vanilla yogurt, a cup and a half of orange juice with heavy pulp

and ice cubes to taste blended on high speed until smooth. The mixture

makes two tall glasses of extra thick, energy boosting enjoyment. Try

it.

On the previous Sunday, after

church I had baked homemade macaroni and cheese and was going to share

the recipe for that dish with you as well. I had a house full of company

and all who gathered at the table said it was the best mac and cheese

ever. (Could I be on a roll?) My son made me promise I would not forget

what I had done to make it happen. He insisted that I write down the recipe.

I said "later."

I forgot.

Now, I have to go