2005-03-06 - 7:09 p.m.

I have six brothers and one sister and a bunch of animals. I don't think I told you that yet.

This morning I saw a wild turkey on the other side of our pond. We live in the woods. I wish we had vines so that we could swing through the air like Tarzan. We do have ropes tied to trees but they aren't Tarzan ropes. You just kinda have to swing around one tree over and over again.

I want to tell you where my nickname, Johnny Caker, comes from. My great-grandfather, Opa, was a baker man from Germany. He had a bake shop in New York City. He and Oma were from Alsace-Lorraine where Quiche Lorraine comes from. Opa was a jolly man with white hair and fat red cheeks and my dad says he looked like the Quaker Oats man. He also had big muscles on his arms, like Popeye, from kneading all that dough. I must be like Opa because I love to bake and cook. I used to bake in my sister's pink Easy Bake Oven until I got my own blue and grey one for Christmas. I made spicy pecans and pizza and something I made up that was sorta like baklava. I put some phyllo pastry down and sprinkled it with chopped pecans and cinnamon and butter and maybe honey... I don't remember it all. All you have to do is have your mom save some of the ingredients she's making and put it in your pan.

Also, my dad is from Rhode Island and they have Johnny Cake mix and he started calling me that.

I wish I could use my sister's chef's knife she got for Valentine's Day. It is just like Rachael Ray's and she can whack a piece of garlic and she chops, chops, chops, fast like a jackhammer or a woodpecker. Sarah Grace has been making all kinds of things that have to be chopped ever since she got her new knife. She makes fresh salsa and salads and guacamole. I just love guacamole. Aldis had cheap avocados.

When we went to the beach we caught thirty or forty crabs and we made crab quiches with bacon and onions and swiss cheese and it tasted really good. I like it when we make things from things we catch or pick. We make blackberry and blueberry jam and all sorts of things from our garden.

Last weekend we went to the mountains to look for property to buy. One time we were in a cloud and I felt like we were going to fall off. We listened to The Last of the Mohicans soundtrack while we were driving through the mountains with all the creeks and brooks and all, but I wasn't just thinking of Indians, I was also thinking about being a Knight on a quest for a king and a queen while I was riding a sure-footed horse in and out of the trees. A sure-footed horse is the kind you would want in the moutains. We ate sandwiches with poppy seeds at picnic tables on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is a pretty highway but not an Interstate. It was cold. Really cold. I was asleep when we went by Bat Cave. Dad said it was near Gotham but he was joking. We looked at a horse farm with seventy horses and a lodge with a fox skin and a swimming pool and a golden dog and a Dalmation dog.

I live in South Carolina and I'm hoping someone from Greenland or somewhere will write in my guestbook.

BAM!!! I say that because I watch Emeril.

�

previous - next

�