The Proposal

by R. R. Banks

  Desserts

  Fran’s Flan – Tapioca pudding with homemade caramel sauce

  Choreos – Batter-dipped and deep-fried Oreos rolled in cinnamon sugar and served with chocolate sauce. Golden or chocolate. Not to be confused with the breakfast option

  From the Kitchen of Marge Ramirez Bubba Ray

  Thick-Style Chips and Queso

  Perfect for starting your meal, a munchie in the middle of the afternoon when you’re craving a little something but not quite ready for supper, or just as a nice lunch with a big pitcher of Marge-aritas. Make sure you fry the chips up good or they’ll be too soft for proper dipping in the queso. Melt the queso right before serving or it will get right gummy and you’ll have to spread it out on your chips

  Chips

  1 ½ cups flour

  1 ½ teaspoons salt

  1 tablespoon baking powder

  1 tablespoon sugar

  2/3 cup milk

  1/3 cup shortening

  2 tablespoons butter, chilled

  • Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

  • Sift your dry ingredients into a big old mixing bowl. Dump them out and sift them again

  • Add your shortening and butter in chunks and cut in until it looks all crumbly

  • Make a well in the middle of the mix and add in your milk

  • Gently fold the flour mixture into the milk to form your dough

  • Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and flour your hands

  • Press the dough out into a rectangle and fold in half

  • Press down flat again, turn a quarter turn, fold in half and press

  • Repeat this for six more folds

  • Press out to a large rectangle and cut out your biscuits

  • Bake for 9-12 minutes or until golden

  • Once cool, slice each biscuit in half

  • Flatten your biscuits without crushing them

  • Fry until deeper brown but not burned

  • Drain on brown paper bags or paper towels

  Queso

  1 cup grated extra-sharp cheddar

  ½ cup sharp cheddar

  ½ cup mild cheddar

  4 ounces softened cream cheese

  ½ cup mayonnaise

  ¼ teaspoon garlic powder

  ½ red onion, chopped fine

  4 ounces pimentos or roasted red peppers, diced and drained

  Salt and pepper

  • Put softened cream cheese in a mixing bowl. Make sure it is plenty soft

  • Add in grated cheeses a little at a time and mash with a fork to start mixing it in

  • Add mayonnaise, garlic powder, and pimentos or roasted red peppers and combine thoroughly

  • Taste and add salt and pepper as you please

  • If you want it to bite back a little, sprinkle in some ground cayenne or chili powder

  • Pour the whole mess into a sauce pot and melt down until gooey right before serving

  From the Kitchen of Marge Ramirez

  Choreos

  (not to be confused with the breakfast item)

  If a churro and an Oreo had a baby, this would be it. Golden cookies make it a bit more churro-y. Chocolate cookies have chocolate. Don’t be shy on the cinnamon and sugar at the end, and if you want to serve these up with a big glass of cold milk, we won’t judge you a speck. Sprinkle some cinnamon on it to make it fancy

  Batter

  1 cup of your favorite pancake mix (I like to make up a batch of my homemade mix and save the extras for breakfast)

  2/3 cup milk

  1 egg, beaten

  1 ½ teaspoons vegetable oil

  Golden or chocolate sandwich cookies of your choice

  Equal parts cinnamon and sugar mixed together

  • Combine the pancake mix, oil, beaten egg, and milk in a mixing bowl until it creates a batter

  • Plop a cookie down in there and use a fork to flip it around a bit until it is totally covered

  • Lift the cookie up with the fork and wiggle it a little to get the excess off

  • Fry in 350-degree oil for about 3 minutes or until golden

  • Drain on brown paper bags or paper towels

  • While still hot and a little oily, toss around in the cinnamon and sugar

  From the Kitchen of Marge Ramirez Bubba Ray

  Chili in a Cornbread Bowl

  Now I know that most people think that Marge does all of the recipe making around here, but the truth is she might have given me some of the foundation for some of the dishes, but the menu is all mine. This here chili in a cornbread bowl is my greatest accomplishment if I do say so myself. Some people don’t believe that. Some people believe that it’s my Country Quesadilla and Warm Creamy Salsa that’s my real claim to fame, saying it’s just a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. Can you believe that? Grilled cheese sandwich. Now I ask you. What is a sandwich? I mean, what makes a sandwich a sandwich? Two pieces of bread. TWO pieces of bread. You take one piece of bread, you slap some cheese down on that booger (I was going to say ‘bitch’ but I have been informed that that is no longer an acceptable term and you being a girl and all, I wouldn’t want to offend you), then you put on another piece of bread, griddle it up, and you’ve got yourself a grilled cheese sandwich. That is not what I make. I use just the one piece of bread.

  I’d like to add that I make that bread every day single-handedly. Well, I mean with my two hands. I’m not like Sally in the kitchen there who has just the one hand. She can’t really knead bread. That just gets messy. So, I get in there every day and I make big old pieces of flat bread. I put the cheeses and the onions and my secret blend of spices in there, I fold it on up, squish it down real good, and cook it. Now I ask you, does that sound like a sandwich? I rest my case. But anyway, back to the chili and cornbread bowl.

  The thing about it is, I didn’t even plan it. Now, don’t you go telling anybody that I told you that. I have a certain standing around here and I don’t want my brilliance to dim in the minds of my admirers. So, we’ll just let them keep on thinking that I came up with this idea out of the clear blue sky and not because I didn’t have any bowls to have my chili in.

  I used to eat my chili in a normal bowl just like anyone else. Every time that Marge cooked up a pot, I’d ladle it into a big old bowl, crumble up some cornbread on top, and go to town. One Christmas party, though, changed that forever. We had gathered up just about the whole town and were deeply involved in our festive celebration of the birth of our Lord and somebody broke out Cletus’s Clementine Moonshine. Well, after drinking a bit too much of it, which is to say…any, there were some words and a challenge and next thing I knew all my bowls ended up on the roof. They looked glorious all wrapped up with the Christmas lights. In fact, they’re still there. People come from all three surrounding counties to see my Christmas bowls. I tell you what, I like the attention. But they’re still my bowls. I realized quickly that going about my life without bowls was going to be bit more challenging. Not having a bowl for my morning cereal wasn’t all that difficult. I mean, I can just tip my head back and pour the cereal and milk in my mouth, then jiggle around some and it’s all the same.

  But then Marge made up some New Year’s chili and I didn’t have a bowl to eat out of. I couldn’t climb up on the roof to get one of those bowls. There had been some ice and I just couldn’t get a good grip on it. Besides, there were still some people coming by to see the lights and I didn’t want to break up the display any. It was just too beautiful. So, I had to figure out another way to eat my chili. That’s when I thought about my cornbread. I always put the cornbread in the chili. So why not put the chili…in the cornbread. Believe me when I tell you that I don’t make none of that pansy cornbread that falls apart when you look at it wrong and tastes all sweet and sh—tuff. (Sorry. That’s another one of those words that I’m apparently not allowed to use anymore. I’m telling you. I feel like I’m having to learn to talk again. Times have changed. Times—have—changed.) My cor
nbread is solid. I don’t know if the jalapenos I mix up in there have some sort of binding powers or what, but when you turn a batch of my cornbread out on a plate, it stays together.

  Therein lies the beginning of my brilliance. (That’s a new word I just learned. Therein. It’s just like ‘there’ but fancier. It sounds like it should be a guy on that show with the swords and the big mountains and the naked girls and the dragons and stuff. You know the one. What’s it called? I’m not allowed to watch it with Marge in the room, but I’ve caught a couple of episodes down at the bar on their screening nights when Vint drags out the big TV) I baked up some cornbread and plopped it out onto the cutting board. Just like always, it was just one big nice solid chunk. I had burned up the edges a little, but that’s no thing. I just took out the cheese grater and trimmed them up a bit. Then I hollowed out that middle and ladled in the chili.

  BOOM. My masterpiece is born. Now if you really want to, you can put the innards on top of the chili, but I think a whole bowl made out of cornbread is enough and I’d just as soon put those aside and use them for corn pudding or dressing.

  Well it looks like I’ve filled up both sides of this here recipe card and didn’t put the recipe. I’ll try to squeeze it here in the bottom.

  1 pot chili

  1 dish cornbread

  • Hollow out your cornbread

  • Put a big old ladle of chili inside

  • Eat

  Rue

  I turned the page of the scrapbook and found the torn piece of notebook paper that Cletus had given me with his recipe for Cletus’s Clementine Moonshine scrawled on it. Now all that was visible on it was the title. The rest of the recipe had been crossed out with a large black marker until it was one solid mass of black ink. I felt Richard come up behind me and lean around to kiss my cheek and I pointed at the blotted-out recipe.

  “I don’t think that was entirely necessary,” I said.

  “Oh, really?” Richard said, grabbing the sides of my chair and spinning me around to face him. “You think that it’s a good idea to include a recipe for the very moonshine that led to her birth in our daughter’s scrapbook? A scrapbook, I’ll point out, that you intend on giving to her when she’s eighteen – right around when moonshine is probably the least good idea possible?”

  “What?” I asked, trying to keep my face as straight as possible. “Don’t you want her to grow up knowing how to properly clean and disinfect?”

  Richard laughed and leaned down to kiss me.

  “Come on. It’s time to get going. We don’t want to be late.”

  “Late?” I asked. “How can we possibly be late to pick apples? Don’t you ever slow down?”

  He gave me a knowing look and grinned.

  “Alright. Move slowly. Take as long as you want to get dressed. Put your makeup on. Get Clementine dressed. Stop for a meal and a couple of cups of coffee,” he teased. “But don’t blame me if all of the good apples on the bottom branches are already taken and the only ones worth eating are left up at the top.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t mind,” I said, standing up and starting out of my craft room and toward the stairs to our bedroom.

  “You wouldn’t?” he asked, sounding both confused and a little bit aggravated that I seemed to have called his bluff and really was going to take the rest of the day to get ready to head for the orchard.

  “Nope,” I said. I paused and glanced over my shoulder. “Because I would just make you climb up into the trees and get them for me.”

  He gave me a playful glare and started toward me. I squealed and ran, scrambling up the stairs and toward our bedroom, hoping that we could steal a few minutes alone while Clementine finished up her mid-morning nap.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Richard

  I rushed up the stairs after Rue, trying to keep my laughter as quiet as I could so I wouldn’t wake the baby. It felt like it had been forever since I had had a chance to touch her, and I didn’t want to wait even another moment. I chased her into the bedroom and closed the door behind me, already tearing my shirt away from my body and kicking my shoes off as I approached her. She was still smiling at me with the playful sparkle in her eyes, but there was a hint of velvety mischief there as well, a hint of arousal that had become passionately familiar to me.

  I strode across the room toward her and grabbed her up into my arms, crushing my mouth over hers in a deep, passionate kiss. She laughed as I tossed her forward onto the bed and dropped down over her so that I could stare down into her eyes. I loved the way that she looked at me. It was unlike anything that I had ever seen or experienced before, and I could never get enough of it. I wanted to stare at her all day, to drink her in and try to memorize all of the flecks of color in her eyes and the way that her eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks when they slumbered with desire. But my body craved her, ached for her touch, and I couldn’t wait any longer.

  Kissing her another time, I reached down and grabbed the waistband of her pants, tugging them down over her hips. She was wearing nothing beneath them, immediately freeing her body to my touch, and I ducked my head down to draw my tongue through her folds, needing to taste her, before standing and taking off my pants as fast as I could. As I stripped off the remainder of my clothing, Rue pulled off her shirt and released her bra. Her breasts bounced free and I groaned, cupping my hands around them to feel their soft warmth against my palms. I leaned down and flicked the tip of my tongue across each pert peak, knowing that they were still experiencing heightened sensitivity. Rue gasped, and her eyes closed as she arched her back to press up more into my touch. I obliged her by tracing the tip of my tongue around the edge of each nipple and then down the center of her body, feeling the dip of her ribcage and the smoothness of her belly.

  Her body was already bouncing back after the pregnancy, but there was a slightly wider fullness about her hips that made her waist look even smaller. She was even sexier now than when I first saw her, lusher and seemingly more confident and settled in her body. It made me want to worship every inch of her. I brought my mouth back up to her neck and ran it down the side, allowing my lips to part just enough that I could feel the skin grow damp. When I reached her shoulder, I lifted my mouth again and blew a stream of cool air against the trail that I had just made. She shuddered slightly, a soft moan coming from between her lips. I continued my progress onto her chest, running my tongue from one side to the other. Her skin tasted lightly salty. I loved when she took the time to pamper herself and smelled floral and fresh, but there was something indulgent and special about the feminine, natural smell of her body. It was something that was only for me, something that only I got to experience, and I enjoyed every second of it.

  My tongue continued its progress over her body, briefly touching her breasts again and then making its way onto her stomach. I rested my hands on either side of her ribs and then drew them down into the soft curve of her waist as I licked my way down. Her body felt both wonderfully familiar and beautifully different. I felt like I was both enjoying her in a new way and rediscovering something precious and beloved.

  I felt Rue’s belly shiver beneath my mouth as I made my way over the soft swell that was still there, and nuzzled my face between her hipbones, just grazing her skin with the tip of my nose and my lips. Her legs parted naturally, sliding across the bed to open her to me. I eased my way off of the foot of the bed so that I sat on my knees and touched my hands to her inner thighs, gently pressing them apart. My position gave me a full view of Rue, the delicate curves and folds of her body displayed openly and without hesitation to me. I took a moment just to admire their beauty, to revel in the perfect way that she was crafted and the luscious way that I could already see she was readying for me.

  Her body glistened with the hot, slick moisture that would soon welcome me into her and I dipped my fingers into it, allowing it to smooth my path as my fingertips glided from her opening along one side of her core. They swept through her petals and up to her peak, settling onto her
sweetly swollen clit for only a moment before tracing down the other side. I dipped them slightly inside of her again to gather more of the fluids that were increasing every moment and brought them up through the inner folds, finding smooth, soft skin. I pressed my fingertips against the skin, finding the rhythmic dance of her pulse there. She was groaning now, writhing against the bed, but I wasn’t finished with my exploration. I wanted more of her. I wanted to know everything that I could about her delectable body and how I could create the most intense pleasure within her.

  I ran my fingers through her again and then brought one to her sensitive pearl. My patient touching had coaxed it forward, guiding it closer to me, and I could tell by Rue’s reaction when I brushed my fingers even lightly against it that it was even more sensitive now than it had been. I ran my fingertip along it gently, just softly tracing it at first, and then pressed slightly harder. Rue’s back arched and I heard her take a gasping breath. My body was aching, my cock so hard it hurt wanting to be inside of her, but I wanted to enjoy this for a few more moments, to pamper her and allow her simply to luxuriate in the pleasure that her incredible body was capable of achieving.

  I tucked two fingers from my other hand inside of her to gather more of her fluids and then brought my hand down to my erection, allowing the silkiness to cause my hand to glide. I wrapped my hand tightly around my cock and pumped it in short, intense strokes as I watched myself touching Rue. She pulled her legs up, resting her feet on the bed on either side of me so that her knees were bent. This caused her opening to part more, the glistening entrance acting as an invitation to me. Pumping my hand harder and faster, I leaned forward and slipped my tongue inside of her.

  The taste of Rue’s body filled my mouth and I groaned. My own fluids dripped from the tip of my cock, mixing with hers to make my hand run even harder and faster. I mimicked the touch with my fingers on her clit, pressing hard enough that I could feel the tightness beneath my fingertips. Rue’s hands grasped the mattress beside her and her breath was coming in hard, labored gasps. I wanted to feel her come around my tongue, to taste her as she tumbled over the edge into oblivion. Knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to hold off for much longer, I took my hand away from my cock and instead pressed it to her belly to hold her down against the bed. I plunged my tongue deeper into her and curved it so that I could lick at the exquisite ridges along her upper wall.