I know there’s this rumor going around about my mother-in-law Ms. Larda, but it absolutely ain’t true.
Ms. Larda does a fair amount of socializing, with the Parish Altar Society and her Book Club, not to mention all the Gunches and mini-Gunches in the family.
She also happens to belong to a different kind of ladies’ group named the “LaDeDahs.” Most of the members are also in the Altar Society but LaDeDahs are for less churchy activities. Like getting together for lunch downtown and then strutting down Bourbon Street, giggling, or drinking hot toddies and daring each other to swing from somebody’s chandelier. Stuff like that.
My gentleman friend Lust calls it the “Out-With-the-Old Ladies Club.”
Anyway, last year, they got the school gym for their Twelfth Day of Christmas party — which is always an all-you-can-eat event. They don’t just got king cake; they got everything left over in their freezers from Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s. Or most of them do. The Gunches happen to be a family with very hearty appetites, so Ms. Larda got no leftovers. She has to make something fresh.
She decides to make her delicious “Lively Bells.” These are chocolate cookies with chopped M&Ms in the middle which she takes out the oven halfway through baking and rolls into little balls, with the M&Ms in the middle. When they’re done, she rolls them into colored sugar — purple, green and gold, and puts another M&M on top for the top of the bell. It looks more like the bell on a teacher’s desk with a button to push for order than a church bell, but it tastes so good nobody gets persnickety.
Well, when she is taking them out the oven, the cat suddenly scoots between her ankles. She loses her balance, staggers around a little, and manages to get the cookies on the counter before she trips over a kitchen chair behind her.
Her ankle hurts like crazy. Luckily, her sons, Leech and Lurch, live on the other side of her double house, and they rush over. They help her to the car and drive her to the emergency room — where they get stuck waiting, next to some teenager who keeps gagging like he’s about to throw up. God only knows what he tried to swallow.
Finally, they call me and ask if I will come over and wait with her while the boys go home to get the goodies she baked and bring them to the gym. At least somebody will get to appreciate them.
Ms. Larda says “Forget about the purple sugar. Just take them off the cookie sheet and arrange them nicely on that green plastic tray I left on the kitchen table. There’s a fancy label and a purple marker there too. The name is on a piece of paper, just copy it, Lurch, in that fancy handwriting you do…” Just then, the teenager gags again and the boys hustle out of there.
They get home, and real careful, with their pinkies lifted, arrange the chocolates on the plastic platter and they find the label and find the marker, and look around for the name of whatever she cooked.
It’s on the table, but the paper is a little wet and the ink is smeared. Lurch squints at it, and carefully writes, in curlicue letters, “LIVER BALLS by Larda Gunch.”
“Yeccch,” says Leech. But they cover the tray with Saranwrap and bring it over to the gym.
Well, can you believe, the ladies have actually named three judges — none of which they happen to be married to, just regular old tubby guys — and are holding a leftovers competition.
The judges don’t get to see the name of the food or who made it — just a bite of each dish. Turns out, they are the only ones who actually taste the liver balls. She is the unanimous winner.
Of course, certain people think she must have somehow bribed the judges. But other, nicer people, say, well, if anybody could make liver balls that are actually edible, not to mention delicious, it would be Larda Gunch.
That tells you a lot.
