THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 5, 1995 TAG: 9504050592
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Before we get into today's theme, homemade mayonnaise, heed a word from Sister Mary Joan Kentz.
Nobody, she stresses, is authorized to seek donations door-to-door in the name of the Children's AIDS Network, as some individuals have been doing in West Norfolk.
Sister Mary Joan, the network's president, notes that it raises funds through civic organizations and events, such as Casino Night aboard the Spirit of Norfolk, and from corporations and foundations.
The network helps produce the best quality of life for children afflicted with AIDS and to help their families have as normal an environment as possible under the sword of that terminal disease, she notes.
That anyone would seek to divert monies from so worthy a cause suggests there is a Devil, after all.
To return to mayonnaise, reader Abbay Evanoff asks how anybody from a Southern briar patch could fail, as I did, to mention the homemade variety in a recent column.
It is inconceivable, I admit.
Why, we ate nothing but homemade mayonnaise. It cost half as much and tasted twice as good as store-bought mayonnaise.
We'd run in from play, spread mayonnaise on bread, and run out, eating on the run.
Once, my mother gave me a jar to take to Miz Orr, who had telephoned to borrow some. ``Now don't dawdle on the way,'' she said.
I didn't dawdle, but I did pause, briefly, at the sandbox to pour a handful of sand in the jar and stir it with a stick. I put the jar on the backdoor step, knocked, and skedaddled before she reached the door.
To this day I haven't heard a word about it. Had Miz Orr told on me, I'm sure my mother would have reprimanded me and made me go back with a fresh jar and apologize.
It was unlike one mother not to tell another what her offspring had done. We had a neighborhood of mothers on the watch for misdeeds by any mother's son. We had about 14 vigilant mothers.
I can only assume that Miz Orr thought mother had discovered a way to introduce roughage into mayonnaise. I wish, now that it's over, she had told her. My aunt would have enjoyed it tremendously. In her eyes I could do no wrong.
Abbay sent me a jar of homemade mayo, and, after testing it for sand, I consumed nearly half the jar at a sitting. I had forgotten how delicious it can be. It even made some infernal gas-fired tomatoes tasty, as if summer had come early.
Abbay said she uses a little paprika, a little dry mustard, a little salt, corn oil, fresh lemon juice, a whole egg (and an extra yoke because her mother does).
Her mother also uses a silver fork to stir the ingredients.
Homemade mayonnaise goes well with sandwiches made of asparagus, chicken salad, cold artichokes.
It lacks preservatives, she warned, so don't let it sit around.
No danger of that, I told her. by CNB