New drabble topic!

Challenge #67 (fire) is now closed.

Challenge #68 -- and I swear I thought we already did this topic, but I checked the topic history, and we haven't -- is cooking. (Hi, Deb!)

Administrative note: there haven't been many drabbles lately, and I'm wondering -- do we need a break? Is it just summer putting people in a vacation state of mind? How about the topics themselves? Maybe they're getting stale. *Please* suggest future topics, because I might be stuck firmly in a rut. Suggest any and every topic you like, please.

Heh. Hi Tep!

I've been slightly down in the drabble numbers because I've been so deeply invested in the new series: 135K words or thereabouts in less than ten weeks has pretty much eaten my brain.

But that's the only reason. Actually, the topics have been extremely resonant.

Aaaaand, we're off...

The Taste of You

"That's what love will do for you..."

Field greens, crisp at the edges. Heirloom tomatoes, weirdly bumpy, perfectly golden at the heart. Mushrooms, sliced thin to take dressing the way croutons would.

"That's what love will make you do..."

Olive oil, crushed garlic, a splash of truffle vinegar, the juice from a lemon, off my own tree. Bread in the oven.

"No matter how hard I fight it..."

I sing to my ingredients. If you're not here to sing to, I cook in your name. Body and heart meet the earth's bounty, singing, remembering.

"I'm still in love with you."

I'm wondering -- do we need a break? Is it just summer putting people in a vacation state of mind? How about the topics themselves?

Tep, I've been moving, and finishing a book, and all kinds of real-life stuff, which has gotten in the way of drabbling. On a totally personal level, I love the more specific topics -- the photos, the situations (one person lying down, one standing up, etc.), because sometimes the one-word ones are too...well, big for me. But I always love reading everyone else's. And I have been wanting to start again. Which I will do this week! I so decree it. (Because I'm totally the boss of me.)

I'm just tired of navel gazing, and it's hard to come up with drabbles otherwise.

And I'm at the other end of the spectrum from both Amy and connie: I think navel-gazing is the purest and truest source for anything I write, provided I do it well. And I tend to back away from most of the "scenario" topics, because I always feel I'm being artificial about it, unless I get totally lucky and do a good one by chance.

edit: but also, one of the cool things about Teppy's topic choices, for me, is how broad the spectrum is. An off-week for me is almost invariably followed by a topic that makes me work.

This one's autobiographical.

Drabble:

When I was nine, Dad was teaching at a small but prestigious college in North Carolina. Mom had split a couple years before, and we rented rooms to a couple of undergrads. They were stereotypical upper middle class Southern good old boys, and their stereotypical Southern Belle debutante girlfriends would come over from their own college to visit most weekends. I remember this one Saturday I had just made a grilled cheese sandwich for my lunch and was taking it out of the toaster oven when one of the girls came in.

"Oh, that looks wonderful! And it smells delicious!" She paused. "What's the recipe?"

I've been writing a lot, but not always drabbles. And I wrote one a few topics back and decided it was bad and didn't post it.

dcp, I'm laughing like a loon.

I'm a trained cook, and one of the few things on earth I completely butcher every time is your basic grilled cheese sandwich.

Seriously. Nic handles those.

Deb, GCS purists would sneer that I made it in the toaster oven, but at nine I wasn't allowed to use the real stove if Dad wasn't home.

I was just flabbergasted when she said "recipe." At first I thought it was just an automatic Southern Belle courtesy formula. Then I realized she had no clue, and honestly wanted to know how to make the sandwich. She was a social butterfly, in college to snag a future doctor or lawyer or politician and get her Mrs. degree. Kinda sad, really.