Last week Mr. Handsome finished up a remodeling job over in West Virginia. This is nothing new (though the distance was unusual); he does work like this all the time—roofing, repair work, renovations—but this job stood out above the others because of David and Jody, the homeowners.

David and Jody treated my husband and his co-workers like royalty, visiting with them, feeding them homemade pastries, keeping a pot of coffee always at the ready, and even cooking them the occasional mid-day feast complete with multiple side dishes and a dessert.

Not only did David and Jody think of their workers, they thought about their workers’ families. One day Mr. Handsome came home with a plate of brownies “for the children,” and just this last week there was a half-dozen freshly made lemon-poppy seed muffins. That bottle of homemade elderberry wine that I mentioned? From David and Jody. And on his last day of work there, Mr. Handsome handed me a white business envelope, a check for a generous amount stuck inside, “so you can take your wife out for dinner,” David had explained. It was the second time that Mr. Handsome has been tipped since I’ve known him.

On the days when they got fed a hot lunch, Mr. Handsome came home chattering about what Jody had cooked for them. He actually waxed poetic over some of her dinners, his fingers grasping the air as he tried to conjure up the appropriate description, and he flat-out raved over a chicken chili she made them. I listened politely, not sure if he was thrilled over the chili itself, or if it was just that he was blown away because a customer was thoughtful enough to prepare them a meal (I didn’t care if they fed him scrambled eggs and toast—I was just happy that someone was taking care of my man). But the next day when Mr. Handsome came home and handed me the recipe for the chili, I decided I’d better listen up. Raving about something is one thing; following through and coming home with the recipe is another thing altogether.

I made the soup and it was delicious indeed—rich, creamy, satisfying, and fancy enough to be a company soup. I’ll tell you about it in a minute, but I first want to say a couple other things about these special customers.

Maybe it seems like a normal, common sense thing for homeowners to offer their contractors some hospitality—these men are stomping around your house with nail guns and circular saws after all—but it isn’t. Many places where Mr. Handsome and his co-workers are employed, the homeowners don’t even offer them the use of their bathroom, and in the really bad cases the customers lock the doors to their houses when they leave for work in the morning (in those situations, obviously, the guys are doing roofing work or building outside additions)—if the guys are lucky, there are some trees nearby where they can pee, but sometimes they have to drive to find a public restroom.

Needless to say, David and Jody’s hospitality was refreshing, encouraging, and flattering. Mr. Handsome said that when the remodel was finished, Jody had tears in her eyes, so excited was she over her new sewing room.

Now, for the soup.

Chicken and White Bean Chili
Adapted from Jody’s recipe; she, in turn, got it from Epicurious

The original recipe calls for about five times as much heat as I have in here. Crazy hot, if you ask me. (Which I would probably enjoy, given the opportunity, but I have to think of other people besides myself sometimes.) Play with the spices and chilis and do what works for your family.

This soup doesn’t have much color—it is a “white” soup, after all—but if you want to increase the eye appeal, add some minced green and red pepper when you sauté the onion. Some diced carrot would be nice, too, I think. The original recipe also calls for a green chili (or tomatillo) sauce to be drizzled on top; cilantro (or parsley) pesto might be another option.

1 pound dried small white beans
4 tablespoons butter
2 large onions, diced
1/3 cup flour
4 cups chicken broth
3 cups half and half
4 cups cooked chicken, shredded
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 canned jalapeño, minced
½ teaspoon hot pepper sauce
1 tablespoon cumin
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon white pepper
1 ½ cups grated white cheese such as Monterey Jack or medium cheddar
1 cup sour cream
fresh cilantro, chopped

Soak the beans overnight. The next day, drain them, put them back in the soup pot, cover with water and simmer till almost tender—about an hour. Drain.

Melt the butter in a large kettle. Add the onions and sauté till tender. Add the flour and stir well. Whisk in the chicken broth and half and half and simmer for about ten minutes. Add the beans, chili peppers, chili powder, cumin, hot sauce, salt, and white pepper and simmer for another twenty minutes. Add the chicken, grated cheese and sour cream and heat through, but do not boil. Season to taste.

Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with cilantro.

Yield: Quite a bit.

Updated November 27, 2010: Made it with less chicken and half-and-half, no peppers, half the sour cream, and a bit of heavy cream. Added chopped spinach, a cube of cilantro (or else a cube of plain, pureed cilantro—not sure which, thanks to unclear labeling), and smoked salt. Served with skillet cornbread. Delicious.

One Year Ago: Peanut Butter Cream Pie.

If you haven’t already figured it out, Mom fed us well when we visited her and Dad this passed week. The menu was vegetarian (because that’s what Shannon is), except for the bacon, but Mom is a whiz with garden produce and they eat many of their meals without meat anyway. Along with the aforementioned kale and turnips and eggs and toast and broccoli soup, there was beans and rice, oven fries, green beans (with sauteed mushrooms for the sophisticated among us), butternut squash, and salad with olives and feta.

And there were desserts, too, of course. Butternut squash pies with whipped cream, lemon meringue pie, pumpkin cheesecake bars that Shannon brought, and chocolate cake with brown sugar icing of which I was particularly fond, so fond, in fact, that when I got home I made a chocolate cake just so I would have a place to put some brown sugar icing.

I served Mr. Handsome a piece of the cake without telling him what kind of icing it was. After a couple bites, he said, “It’s butterscotch icing, right?” I was slightly stunned. I didn’t even think of it as butterscotch, but he couldn’t be more right. Man, he’s good!

And so is this icing.

Brown Sugar Icing

This a cross between a glaze and a frosting. Don’t try to spread it with a knife; instead, pour it on top of the cake and then gently push it to the edges so that it runs down the sides and puddles on the platter.

This recipe makes enough icing to frost a sheet cake. I only needed enough to ice a one-layer chocolate cake, so I’m storing the rest in the fridge for now. I imagine it should reheat just fine in the microwave.

1 stick butter
1 packed cup brown sugar
pinch of salt
1/4 cup milk (or half-and-half)
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 cup confectioner’s sugar, sifted
1/3 cup chopped pecans, toasted, optional
a couple pinches of chunky salt, optional

In a heavy bottomed saucepan, melt the stick of butter. Add the cup of brown sugar and the pinch of salt. Stirring steadily, bring the mixture to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat a bit, and cook the slowly bubbling mixture, still stirring, for a full minute. Remove the saucepan from the heat and add the milk.

Set the pan in a larger bowl of ice cubes. Stir every several minutes until the mixture has cooled down a bit (it will still be warm, though) and thickened. Take the saucepan out of the bowl of ice cubes and stir in the vanilla and confectioner’s sugar.

Frost the cake and sprinkle with the pecans and chunky salt.

About One Year Ago: No Zip, or election withdrawal. (That big election was just a year ago. Remember the gut-wrenching anxiety?)

On Monday morning I called my friend (and fellow homeschooler) Shannon. “How about we go to West Virginia this week?”

A couple weeks earlier I had suggested to her that we take our combined seven children and flee to my parents’ house in WV for a couple days. The kids could still do their schoolwork, made all the more fun (or at least more endurable) by being with their friends and in a new setting, and then they could spend endless hours playing in the great outdoors. As for Shannon and me, we could go for walks, eat my mom’s good cooking, and sit around on our fannies eating chocolates and talking a blue streak. But, alas, Shannon said she couldn’t go—she had doctor’s appointments and such.

But then she called me back. “I could maybe change the appointments,” she said.

And so Tuesday afternoon found me driving West Virginia’s back roads with Shannon’s maroon van trundling along behind, doing its best to keep up as I whipped over the hills and around the curves.

The following day the kids did their school work as planned, but, truth be told, it was pittance compared to the other learning that went on.

Lesson Number One: Machetes are sharp.

My father showed the boys how to chop the greens off the turnips. He said each boy could de-top three turnips before giving the next boy a turn. Yo-Yo wanted to be first.

He chop-chop-chopped and then dropped the machete and fled to the house with nary a whimper, clutching his hacked finger with his other hand. It was just a nick, but the lesson was duly noted.

Lesson Number Two: Conflict resolution can be simple.
The boys argued. Tears threatened. They split up, not wanting to even look at each other. After a decent amount of cool-down time, Yo-Yo still refused to come out to the kitchen. I said, “Just tell him you’re sorry you were mean to him and then you can get on with doing the fun stuff.” A couple minutes later Yo-Yo yelled for Justus. Justus obligingly went. Yo-Yo said gruffly, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.” And then, without pausing for breath and in the same tough voice, “You wannna listen to this song?” And just like that, they were buddies again.

Lesson Number Three: Steers ought to be in the circus.
My father trains his steer. He holds the can of feed above the beast’s head and says “turn,” and the steer turns, once, twice, thrice, four-ice, and then my father says, “Okay, that oughta be enough,” and dumps the grain in the feeding trough. Hillbilly entertainment, for sure.

Lesson Number Four: Guns are fun.

Even the Baby Nickel took his turn at trying to hit the tin cans my dad hung on a brush pile up by the edge of the woods.

Lesson Number Five: Mountain folk periodically lose their hot water.
My father stayed home from school to do stuff around the house and garden (and to supervise the machete-happy boys and other frolicking kids) and it was a good thing he did because mid-afternoon he went down to the crawl cellar/basement to fetch himself an apple and noticed that the hot water heater was leaking.

So we had to heat up our dish and bath water on the stove. Now I totally understand how Ma Ingalls felt.

Lesson Number Six: Brown bag breakfasts can burn.
We had two breakfasts: the first one happened between six and seven in the morning and consisted of cereal and toast, and the second one happened between nine and ten and consisted of bacon and eggs and toast, all cooked over the fire.

To make a brown bag breakfast:
*Place two strips (or half strips) of bacon on the bottom of a brown paper lunch bag, fold over the top, and poke two holes through the top of the bag and weave a stick through the holes.

*Hold the bag over the fire for an agonizingly long time, till the bacon is mostly done.

*Add two eggs to the bag and return the bag to the fire.

*The breakfast is done when the eggs are cooked, or when the bag catches fire.

*In the case of the flaming bag scenario, drop the bag on the grass, don a heavy pair of work gloves, and clap out the flame.

*Then proceed to cook your eggs and bacon in a skillet, which is probably what you should have done in the first place.

Lesson Number Seven: Cooked turnips are good.
Dad harvested his turnips and at lunch time we ate them raw with salt. For supper, one of the boys peeled a few turnips and then mom boiled them till tender (and burned, but that part wasn’t intentional or serious enough to be a deterrent) and drizzled browned butter over them. I ate mine with piles of the boiled and buttered kale. I’m still fantasizing about that dish.

Lesson Number Eight: The stomach digests protein but not vegetables.
Over a lunch of broccoli soup, pesto torte, and crackers, my father regaled us with the true tale of a man who got shot in the stomach. The wound healed but the hole never closed over, so the man’s doctor used him (respectfully, I presume) for scientific experiments. The doctor tied a piece of string to bits of meat or beans or fruit and then stuck them in the hole. He pulled them out later to see how they were digested. In this way he learned that the stomach digests proteins but not plants. (And I guess not string.)

Lesson Number Nine: Gnomes live in the basement, or else Grandmommy is certifiably insane.
Because of the water situation, we had the hot water taps turned on all the way to let the air out, so we would occasionally hear gurglings and hissings from the bowels of the house. Justus and my mother were working at the kitchen sink together when she suddenly leaned over so her mouth was at the spigot and yelled, “Gnomes! Gnomes! Will you please stop making all that noise! Just stop it, you hear? Stop it, I said!”

She righted herself, glanced at Justus out of the corner of her eye, and then launched into a story about the gnomes in the basement and—What? You don’t believe in gnomes ‘cause you’ve never seen them? Well, of course! You can’t see them if you don’t believe they’re real—and on and on.

Lesson Number Ten: It’s important to get a college education.
Come bedtime, my mother sat on a footstool in the upstairs hallway and told bedtime stories.

The first was about a boy who was so uncoordinated that he couldn’t even clap his hands together, so his teacher told him that she would take him out for ice cream if he learned how to clap. The poor boy practiced and practiced until finally he could do it—oh, joy!—but when he went to eat his triple-decker ice cream cone, he smashed it into his forehead, still not sufficiently coordinated.

The second story was about the Crooked Mouth Family. Each person in the Crooked Mouth Family has—you already guessed it—a crooked mouth. The father’s lower lip juts out, the mother’s upper lip sticks out, and each of the two children speak out of different corners of their mouths. One night when the family is ready to go upstairs to bed, they run into a problem—none of them can blow out the candle. (Mom was holding a candle, acting out the story as she told it.) After each of them takes their turn puffing, the father calls upstairs to their son John who happens to be visiting at home for a few days, and when John comes downstairs, he quickly and easily blows out the candle. Father says gravely, lower lip protruding, “Son John’s been to college. See what he can do?”

Bonus Lesson: Homeschooling moms enjoy tossing kids around.

People who aren’t familiar with homeschooling firsthand (meaning, they don’t do it themselves) often feel sorry for us poor mamas, for all the long days spent sitting beside our children listening to them count by two’s and making sure they cross their ‘t’s and dot their ‘i’s. At least, that’s what they think we do.

They really have no idea.

About One Year Ago: Sausage Quiche with Potato Crust.