“This is just for Hunter,” she said cheerfully. “We’re having fried chicken and waffles!”
After straining the mixtures, she grated in horseradish and added lemon juice and tabasco sauce. Then she poured it into a tall glass, pulled a miniature bottle of vodka out of her purse, and dumped it in. She stirred it with the celery then added the bacon and the hardboiled egg.
“I thought you were making a hangover cure?”
“You need a little something to take the edge off,” she insisted as I followed her into the dining room. She handed the glass to Hunter.
“I don’t like tomato juice,” my older brother said.
I made a threatening motion.
“It’s good for you,” Sadie said sunnily.
Hunter took a sip and frowned.
“Drink up!”
“Sorry, he’s had a rough night,” I apologized.
“He’ll be fine; he just needs a little pick-me-up,” she said as she started directing my little brothers to grate cheese, crack eggs, cube potatoes, and shred lettuce for the salad.
“I’m amazed at your brothers. They’re like little chefs!” she said. “I love a man who knows his way around a kitchen! They are going to make some women very happy in the future.”
“We try,” I said as Sadie rose onto her tiptoes to drape an apron around my neck.
“You’re going to be on grits duty,” she told me. “So roll up those sleeves! Yum! Yes, all the way up.” She trailed her nails along my forearms, making my skin tingle.
I set a stockpot on the stove, and Sadie added chicken stock, water, and salt then dumped in box after box of what looked like chicken feed.
“This looks strange,” I said, peering at the pot as I stirred it.
“You’re not making potato soup again, are you?” Nate asked in horror as he and Andy came by carrying one of the large stand mixers.
“No, I’m not making soup,” I retorted. “And that soup was perfectly edible.”
“It smelled like death,” Nate countered.
“This is Sadie’s recipe,” I told him. “We’re having grits.”
“What’s grits?”
“Excuse me?” Sadie turned and faced him. “You’ve never heard of grits?”
“Is it like cornbread?” Nate asked, confused.
“No, it’s like porridge,” I told him.
“No, it is not like porridge!” Sadie said, hands on her hips. “You put fruit, nuts, and sugar in porridge. You don’t ever put sugar on grits.”
“I want sugar on mine!” Ellis said from where he was grating a mound of cheese almost as tall as Davy.
“No sugar! You’re having cheese, pepper, and hot sauce.”
My little brothers were not convinced. Honestly, neither was I, but I smiled at them gamely.
“You can at least try it. It’s like macaroni and cheese. You like that, right?”
The grits took forever to cook. Sadie was halfway through frying the chicken and had most of the waffles done and warming in the oven by the time she inspected the grits.
