For my birthday, Jeff Mitchell met up with me at Honeybaked Ham.  I wasn’t aware that you could eat in, and thought of HBH as where you go to get the spiralized ham for Christmas or Thanksgiving.

They have a good selection of sandwiches, but I have only eaten the one (4x), the BBQ Smoked Stacker.  What is that?  Ham, cheddar cheese, red onion, tomato, lettuce and bacon on a roll with some sauce.  *I’ve only tried the potato salad, which tastes just fine after I add some sweetner (they have Splenda).  You can get the sandwich as a stand-alone, or a combo, which includes a drink and one side.

This sandwich is consistently good.  Three of the four times the sandwich has been “really” good, and the other time it was just “good.”

Only about 5 small tables, so not alot of seating.

ADDENDUM [05/03/21]: Sometime before COVID they changed their potato salad and included shredded cheese in it. I’ve never heard of potato salad having cheese, and this was a real negative for me. The sandwich was still good, but this side was now off the list.

I made one of my day trips down to the coast on Saturday.  I had two things that I wanted to accomplish:  I wanted to have a Country Ham Breakfast at Helen’s Kitchen in Jacksonville, as I have done many times,… and I wanted to go down to Beaufort and drive across the newly opened bridge.  *The threat of the Flu has severely restricted my visiting family and friends over the past month.  If you have kids, I think you are that much more likely to be able to share the Flu with me, so I am currently avoiding you… even if I love you dearly and miss you.

So, I left my apartment about 6:10 am on Saturday morning heading to Jacksonville, NC.  I use the I295 extension which becomes Hwy. 13 and take that past Spivey’s Corner and do the round about (usually going past my 701 exit to make the complete circle) in Newton Grove.  I then get on I40 and usually get back on Hwy. 24 where the Rest Area and Smithfield’s BBQ are located.  I go through Wallace, and then Kenansville, Beulaville, Richlands and turn by the old “Toot-n-Tell-It” (now a used car dealer) to eventually get on Old Gum Branch Road.   A short distance after Bethlehem Baptist Church, which I rarely go by without thinking of Mary Bell Jarman’s little grandson, who was struck while crossing the road, by one favorite 5th Grade teacher, Barbara DeBerry Newman.  *It was years after the accident when Mary Ann told me who was driving the car and that was a surprise.  So I turn and go the back road and eventually get back to Hwy. 17 N and head back into Jacksonville.  A short distance and on the right is Helen’s Kitchen.

As I drive into the parking lot of Helen’s Kitchen, I see that there are no vehicles parked there, and there is a commercial trash dumpster at the front corner of the building.  I see the business is closed, and there is a sign with the message, “Temporarily Closed” on it.  I begin to cuss and mumble.  I think maybe they are just remodelling, but as I start to back out of the lot, I look up and see what appears to be water damage and some fallen ceiling on the outside awning.

Hubert Grill & Deli

Joe Hartsoe and Kenny Gillette & wife are sitting in the restaurant when I enter and Joe starts waving me on back to their table.

*There was a fire earlier in the week at Helen’s Kitchen, starting while a few customers were in after 6 am.  That was probably a good thing, because the Fire Department was called and they appear to have gotten the fire put out before it did major damage.  Although I am sure, it smells and looks like major damage from smoke in most of the building.

New bridge at Beaufort

Mai Tai

Yesterday at work, I started rehearsing the events which led to my mother’s death.

My mother died of leukemia on the same date that Colonel Harland Sanders, Kentucky Fried Chicken, died, December 16th, 1980.  He too died of leukemia.

Vivian Inez “Mick/Mickey” Morton Gibson was my mother.  I called her “mom”.

Mickey worked for most of her adult life as a Civil Service Secretary, mostly aboard Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base, but also at the Naval Hospital at Portsmouth, VA.  She worked in the 1960s at Building 66, the Naval Medical Field Research Laboratory at Camp Lejeune.  Growing up in Eastern North Carolina in the 1960s, 70s, 80s Lejeune was never pronounced as “le jurne” as it is today.  It was “Lay Jewn.”

I think she was last stationed at the Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital at the time she was first diagnosed with leukemia.  She had begun to feel tired, and for someone that loved working outdoors, this was a major obstacle in her life.  She did have a Singer Zig-Zag Sewing Machine, with the attachments, and had used McCalls, Simplicity, etc. patterns to make most of her work clothing.

She visited her doctor, Dr. Adnan Taj-Eldin, who is still a practicing physician in Onslow County, Jacksonville, NC and the next day I noticed a bruise on her arm which was obviously caused by a hand.  When I asked her about the bruise, she said that Dr. Eldin had squeezed her arm as a test the day before.  I guess this was the result of the early stages of Leukemia.

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I will skip some of the process here to get to what I rehearsed for myself, yesterday.

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*Not sure where this needs to go, but near the end of her death, this last time in the hospital, mom weighed only 84 lbs.  She was basically taut skin stretched across a skeleton.  I recall that she had attempted to get out of her hospital bed to go to the bathroom and had fallen.  I wasn’t there when she did this.  She was apologetic about the fall.  She didn’t realize that her body had failed to the point it had.

I spent the last night sleeping in my mom’s hospital room in a high backed chair in a corner of the room.  I think this was on the 4th floor of Onslow County Memorial Hospital.  Probably Room 401.  The room was located directly across from the Nurses’ Station, and I think the logic was to put the most ill patients closest to this location.

My cousin, more like an aunt to me, because of her age, Yvonne deLagneau, had come up from Florida to be with my mother during the last stages of mom’s illness.  But, Yvonne had to return to Miami to her work, and had left just a couple of days before mom’s death.

My mother had a sharp mind up until a few days before her death, and the strong “end of life” drugs that she had been given to alleviate much of her pain, had taken over and put her into an almost comatose state.  The last night of her life, she had labored, sporadic breathing and her eyes were rolled back in her head so that only the whites of her eyes were visible with her partially opened eyelids.

I slept in the chair and was awakened during the early morning when nurses came in to test my mom’s blood pressure and breathing.  I think I recall one of the nurses saying to another nurse that one of the readings of blood pressure was 15… and I understood that 15 for either systolic or diastolic (sp?) was an extremely low unit.

About 8 am on December 16, 1980, I was awake listening to my mom’s irregular breathing as the early morning light began to light the darkened room through its single window.  *The window looked out onto Western Boulevard and across the road was the almost vacant lot for Jacksonville Mall.  The steel girder structure  was growing from the concrete foundation, but I seem to recall a bare light bulb or two hanging from the structure and steam coming off the concrete.  Tuesday, December 16th, 1980 proved to be a bright, but cold, sunny day.

I got up from my chair and walked around to my mother, hesitated, but eventually touched her hand.  Her pupils rolled back to face me, but just briefly, and there was no sign of recognition in her eyes.  No sign of love for her son, Billie.  The pupils rolled back to show just whites again and her labored breathing continued, but with longer periods between her lips sucking in oxygen.

I moved to a chair next to her bed and between the window and the bed.

Finally her breathing stopped.  I waited intentionally, which seemed like minutes, but might not have been any more than a minute.  I knew that they, her doctor, Taj-Eldin, had put a “no code” on my mother.  That meant that if she stopped breathing, the nurses or doctors were not to attempt to revive her.  But, I too wanted to make sure that she did not return to the pain that she had just left.  I heard air escaping from her unmoving lungs, as if it were water flowing over rocks.  I later learned that this was called the “death gurgles”.  Air flowing upward and out of the lifeless body.

I rose from my chair and walked around the end of the bed and opened the door and walked across to the Nurses’ Station.  I recall that it was darkly lit and there was a single nurse standing behind the counter.

The nurse looked up at me and I said to her, “Could you please take a look at my mother.” *There was that other monitor, my other voice, that has always been with me, and it said to me at that time, “You know she’s dead.”  But there was no hint of that awareness in my voice, as I made the request to the nurse.  The nurse was polite and said that she would look, and she came around the counter and went into my mother’s room, the door closing behind her.  I continued to stand by the station.

A minute or so later, the door opened and the nurse, with a worried look upon her face, came out.  She asked if I would follow her around the corner to a waiting area near the elevator.  I followed her, and I knew she was trying to be protective, and probably it was not her duty or obligation to let me know that mom was dead.

I don’t recall if I called Mary Ann or if she arrived at the hospital on her daily routine.

ADDENDUM: It is now forty years later. Today is December 16, 2020. It has been a horrible year… Corona Virus… Donald Trump as President of the United States… but fortunately, Trump lost his bid for a second term as President. However, the election was relatively close. And, as I have heard one person mention, there isn’t much comfort knowing that there are that many people who voted to re-elect Donald Trump. I’m not sure why someone would think that Donald Trump was a good president.

I was watching TV, in the very early morning a few weeks ago and came across this song/video.  As I watched it, I said to myself, “How could we not love you.”  It’s not that she had a great body, Diana Rigg.  She had a good face, and personality, and the writing and acting for her character was winning.   Could you think of a better role model for young girls, than the character, Emma Peel?  Strong mind,… like a diamond, judo flip you if you look at her cross-eyed… She was STEM trained before it was fashionable and an equal to John Steed.

It looks like Herdez is discontinuing the Hot Salsa Ranchera and only has the Medium version.  I bought a can of the medium, and haven’t tried it yet… but saw something I wrote previously that says the medium is still plenty hot.

Compare Foods had a couple of varieties of small onions for $2.99 a pound.  There were white and copper colored pearl onions and an onion that looked like Cipollini.  I mixed them together since they were all the same price.

I was frying some boneless pork chops on the stove top, with a little Agave nectar and a little mango powder.  *I had gotten the Amchur powder at the Indian Market in Apex, NC.  The powder has a hint of citrus, although I don’t think of a mango being a citrus fruit.

I put a mixture of some of the small onions in my microwave onion cooker and set it for about a minute and a half.  I took the pork chops out of the pan and added some sliced okra (no breading) and a little olive oil to cook them.  Natures Seasoning (Mary Ann’s & Aunt Sis’s contribution) while frying the okra.

After the okra were done, I took the onions out of the microwave and added them to the pan.  Just a few minutes to give them a little color and more flavor.

I had some Jewish Rye Bread, so I made a sandwich of some of the pork chops and some mayo.  The pork was good!  The okra were good!  The little onions were good!  *I forgot to mention that I didn’t peel the onions, which provided them with a rustic quality.  You can pull off some of the onion husk easily, but sucking the sweet onion from the husk is also a pleasure.

I think I got the hankering for Brunswick Stew because Chasson’s Grandsons offered it on their buffet last week.  I had looked online as to what went into BS, and I recall that my dad had a very good BS recipe.  I had it, but don’t know if I still do.

On Saturday, I was returning from a trip to Raleigh and coming back through Fuquay-Varina (which I normally come through on the way up, but not on the way back), and stopped to eat at the Smithfield’s Chicken & Barbecue.

I ordered a Combo Dark Platter, which includes both BBQ and fried chicken (dark meat).  I didn’t intend to order the BBQ, but after I got it, I began to think that I could save the BBQ and make some Brunswick Stew when I got home.

I stopped at the Food Lion in Lillington and bought a can of succotash (tomatoes, corn and green lima beans).  * I ended up not being happy with the amount of corn and beans and now think that I will try this again but buy small individual cans of tomatoes, corn and lima beans.

The flavor was good and I added potato, carrot and onion to the succotash and mixed in the BBQ.  Surprisingly, the amount of BBQ was more than enough and I ended up with two helpings of Brunswick Stew.  *I might like chicken instead of pork better.

The recipe I used called for Worstershire Sauce, barbecue sauce and some hot sauce.  I didn’t have any barbecue sauce so I used a little catchup.

 

 

This has become my favorite cheese.  I bought it at Whole Foods in Raleigh several months ago, and have since bought several rounds, even giving some to relatives & friends.  I think it is best served at room temperature, on crackers.  It has a tangy flavor.

I came across the Mary’s Gone Crackers in a Fresh Market and like the Original crackers especially.  The goat cheese and these crackers go well together!

I don’t have any pictures of the 1971 Pontiac Lemans that my mother bought me as a present for my Senior Year at Swansboro High School.  It was blue with a white textured vinyl top.  It had a 350 hp engine with an automatic transmission.

I drove the car my Senior year, but had to give it up my Freshman year at Carolina.

How undeserving I was.

ADDENDUM [04/04/21]:  … and what a Mama I had!

I was just thinking of what I might have for supper tonight, and wasn’t sure if I had any meat thawed.  I really don’t like to freeze meat, because I am always bad about planning ahead to thaw it out so that it will be ready for cooking when I come home at night.

But, then I began to run through the check list of what was already prepared:

• One final helping of Chorizo, Chickpea & Kale soup (lots of Smoked Paprika in this one)
• About a pint of home made salsa (fire roasted tomatoes, green bell pepper, cilantro, Vidalia onion, cumin seed, lime juice, agave nectar, Equal, turmeric, salt, ground pepper, hot sauce)
• I’ve got some home made Thousand Island Dressing, which would go good on some cauliflower & Campari tomatoes.
• I also bought some more Capricio de Cabra cheese and some sliced Jewish Rye bread.  This cheese is better when it is served at room temperature.