Category Archives: Big Stone Gap

“I Eyed her Risotto Speculatively…”

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Wendy and I tend to share cooking duties, swapping back and forth as other responsibilities allow. Actually, when we first met I was mightily impressed with the lasagna she served, thinking this must be the pinnacle of a vast mountain of culinary expertise.

Alas, I subsequently discovered, too late, that said “pinnacle” was pretty much the whole mountain.

A further complication to our shared cooking duties is that I tend towards spicy food. I love Indian curries for instance, whereas Wendy runs from anything spicy as fast as she can, considering cinnamon hot. This often means that we have to find ways of producing two entirely different dishes simultaneously to suit our different preferences. Such are the fancy steps of the dance called marriage!

Just recently I contracted some kind of stomach bug and had a couple days when I wasn’t eating very much at all as it worked its way (pretty much literally) through my system. Wendy followed on by going down with the same thing a few days later–but we didn’t realize it until a critical moment.

At the point where I was feeling much better, and fairly hungry, it was my turn to cook. Being tight for time, I prepared a nice crock pot risotto, very non-spicy for Wendy with a spicy side-sauce for me. Setting the dishes out on one of our porch tables, we settled down to an amiable al fresco dining experience that would include sharing our stories of the day. It had been for both of us a stressful day in a stressful week; the Celtic festival was bearing down on us, Wendy was working hard on a critical juncture for her second book, and we were in the middle of plans to open our upstairs cafe for October, with a workman installing heat and air in the new dining room even as we sat down to dinner. Oh, and they’re about to start filming a movie in our town and some people were scouting locations in our shop. Difficult week.

Wendy took a few mouthfuls of risotto and paused, then sat very quietly as I wittered on – then she got up, went down to the far end of the porch, leaned over the rail, and puked. Coming back she sat quietly again, then got up and went to the rail again as I continued to eat – I was hungry after all! Besides, I knew she wasn’t dying. I’d had it the week before.

As Wendy’s greenish-grey pallor deepened, and she continued to sit VERY quietly, I eyed her risotto speculatively. When she got up a third time, I reached over and retrieved her plate. As she returned, with my fork I wordlessly indicated that I’d be happy to polish off hers as well. She signed that she would have no objection. And continued to sit quietly, waiting for the next wave.

We wondered afterwards how many people observed the whole pantomime and quite what they would make of it. But you know, around here, crazy is the new normal.

Wendy is fully recovered,  but she has gone off rice-based dishes for some reason. And yes, I am a heartless bastard. But the risotto was excellent.

The Man from Malta

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Last Saturday a tall, serious-looking guy walked into the bookstore with his wife and introduced himself as a criminal lawyer. Then he said, in an ominous tone, “I’ve been here before, and I’ve been meaning to get back to see you for awhile.”

Yikes!!

It turns out he had been in the bookstore a couple of years ago, while conducting a case in the federal courthouse across the street. He had been so caught up in the case, he said, that he’d gone through our store in a daze and hadn’t been back since.

He also said that he wrote a weekly column for our biggest local newspaper and that was what had brought him back. In fact he is a member of the Quality Paperback Club, so had gotten a copy of Wendy’s book in the mail as QPC’s July selection–and loved it, so much so that he’d contacted his editor at The Kingsport Times-News to ask if they’d reviewed the book.

“We don’t do book reviews” came the reply. So D. Bruce Shine, criminal attorney, who “doesn’t normally write this kind of column,” decided that the time had come to change all that. He got some facts from me, sat with a kitten on his knee while his wife browsed, and said the column would be in next week.

I am currently teach a class every Tuesday morning at the Higher Ed Center in Abingdon, and Tuesday past I was met with a barrage of “have you seen the column about you?” from just about everyone in the class. Later we had loads of folk bring copies of the paper to us at the bookstore just in case we hadn’t gotten one.

Tuesday and Wednesday we were inundated with customers from the readership area  (three of whom were able to check out our disabled ramp and reported no difficulty– woohoo!). The customers, intrigued by our story as described by Mr. Shine, felt they just had to come and see for the themselves. Despite a miserable rainy day they drove for over an hour to get here and then spent lots of time exploring every nook and cranny of the store, all the time plying me with questions – “how long have you been here, what brought you here, where are you from originally?” And, of course, “where’s Wendy?”

Just when I think that the shine may be about to wear off this magical, fun experience that Wendy’s book has catapulted us into, someone else comes along and burnishes it again – Mr. Shine, the man from Malta.

Malta?

Mr. Shine is also the Honorary Consul General for Malta in the Commonwealth of Virginia. How cool is that?!

Thank you Honorary Consul General.