.jpg)
Thelmy is married to Harold, Harold’s cousin Richard is married to Thelmy’s sister, Judy Jean, who everybody I know calls JJ. Two sisters who didn’t flunk basic sandbox, they get along, not trying to one up each other, they play nice, in different ways, but the same way.
I offer one example, being so recent. One of the sisters will lay down a sheet of bacon in a cast iron griddle. Both sisters walk past it, will flip a strip, or some or all of them, but between the two, each strip is served crispy, not blackened, not rubbery, just right. And they’re both cooking the bacon and making a second or third pot of coffee, frying eggs to order, mixing pancake batter or whipping cottage cheese into their version of sour crème, which, Thelmy mixes with her portion of the pancake batter and makes her sour crème cakes fried in white lard. JJ uses the bacon renderings and takes her cottage cheese sour crème and tosses in blueberries or raspberries and then makes her pancakes. Both sisters making pancakes, that’s the same, but entirely different, that’s those two sisters.
Thelmy’s cakes are served with last rites, because they get drowned in maple syrup. JJ’s you can do what you want, what you will, but each one she sets on your paper plate comes with a pat of butter, and if you think one of three cakes is better or less than the other, you’d never know it by Harold’s or Richard’s or my waistline.
--The trout whisperer
