Best 4 quotes of Beth Webb Hart on MyQuotes

A barbeque in Jasper County does not mean hamburgers and chicken breasts on a fancy gas grill. Yankees call anything you cook outside "barbeque." The word 'barbeque' in Ray's neck of the woods is a 'noun,' not a verb, and it means a whole hog tied to a spit with chicken wire and rope and roasted in an outdoor oven, usually in someone's backyard or some parking lot. And the fixin's that must accompany it are baked beans, collard greens, white rolls, cole slaw, and rice topped with a sweet gravy made from the drippings and other unmentionables that the packs call hash. Jasper folks sort of take the "don't ask, don't tell" approach with the hash. 'We don't want to know what's in it,' Ray thinks, 'but it sure tastes good.

It's Kitty B.'s specialty: a lemon sour cream pound cake with a little hint of Grand Marnier liqueur. Each tier is iced with an ivory-colored buttercream and decorated with pearl drops and an elegant piped pearl border. A cascade of real white orchids starts at the top tier and curls its way down the side to the bottom, encircling the base with delicate white petals and dark pink centers.

The food is presented on the finest compilation of their silver trays and bowls. It's as delicate as the floral arrangements and includes Kitty B.'s petits fours and lemon squares as well as Sis's shrimp salad and cucumber sandwiches and Ray's cheese straws, praline pecans, and fruit kebobs dipped in white and dark chocolate.

Tonight Ray will tape the the drenched oasis inside of the silver bowl that sits on the top of the candelabra and fill it with the pale green hydrangeas, pink English garden roses, lilies of the valley, and extravagant lavender sweet peas that R.L., the local florist/antique dealer, delivered a few hours ago. The flowers are all soaking in their respective sugar water jugs in her kitchen- out of the direct sunlight, of course- as is the oasis which she'll mold into every bowl and vase in the house with a similar arrangement. She's even going to make an arrangement in a flat sweetgrass basket to hang on the front door and a round little pomander of pale green hydrangea with a sheer white ribbon for Little Hilda to hold as she greets the guests in the foyer. Ray is tempted to snip the last blossoms of gardenias growing secretly behind Cousin Willy's shed. In her estimation they are the quintessential wedding flower, with their intoxicating fragrance and their delicate cream petals surrounded by those dark, waxy leaves. She bought the seedlings when R.L. and the gals weren't looking at the Southern Gardener's Convention in Atlanta four years ago, and no one has any idea she's been growing them. Sometimes she worries that the fragrance will give her away, but they bloom the same time as the confederate jasmine, which grows along the lattice work of the shed, and she can always blame the thick smell on them. It would take a truly trained nose to pick the gardenias out, and Ray possesses the trained nose of the bunch.