Chapter Eleven
Honey’s Helpful Hint, from
Honey Frost’s Southern Cookbook for Recipes Gone Wrong:
Opposites can be great complements, especially when it comes to texture.
Animal crackers hold their crunch in banana pudding better than vanilla wafers, and their drier texture supports the intense sweetness of the pudding.
They are one of the rare, perfect secret ingredients that Do The Most. Except when they’re a mortifying means of unintentional seduction.
After another week of Farewitch best hits from the Frost family’s kitchen grimoires—delicious, but no success with a cure—I decide it’s time for an intervention.
“Did you know that poodles don’t have fur, they have hair? Like us?”
“I admit, my knowledge of poodles is lacking,” I say, listening to Lazlo as I shuck corn. Evening sun slouches through the windows, and bowls of fresh corn and leeks and okra cover the counter. My eyes dart to a clock on the wall by the pantry.
They better not be late. Food or time, a Farewitch doesn’t like to waste anything.
Lazlo looks up from his notebook and a doodle that looks half dog and half flamingo. “It’s why they don’t shed. And did you know poodle is from pudeln—that’s German for ‘to splash.’ Like a puddle. ’Cause they’re water dogs. Pudelhund. They used to hunt ducks.”
I move on to mincing serrano pepper. “I see German with Governess Zeen is going well.”
Her homeschooling clearly doesn’t include art.
“So they’re excellent swimmers. Oh, and did you know—”
“Hey, kid.”
“Yeah?”
“Ms. Zeen only let you come cook with me because I told her we’d work on fractions.” I push a battalion of measuring cups toward him. “Help a lady out.”
He heaves a sigh. “Math?” He shrinks down, chin on the counter. “But it’s the weekend. And I’m not that bad at fractions.”
According to Ms. Zeen, the kid is, tragically, that bad at fractions. Which is where I come in. Measuring cups are a three-dimensional lesson in portions. And I’m happier than I thought I would be with a little sous-chef in the kitchen. Relinquishing some control can be fun.
Even if said sous-chef keeps drinking the milk he measures and is easily distracted by canine facts.
“Mr. Knight would want you to try.” The boy idolizes the man.
“I’ll just be a gardener, like him.”
“While a noble pursuit, there’s still math in gardening.” With a grunt, I drop a sack of yellow cornmeal in front him. “We’re making corn pudding and cornbread. Both Southern staples, but baking is more precise than cooking. Measuring accurately will be crucial.”
“Cru-shul?”
“Really important. You can’t mess around with the measurements for cakes and cookies and breads. Baking is chemistry, but in the oven.”
A groan. “I thought this was math.”
“Here’s our recipe. See these numbers? We’ve got to double everything since we’re making two batches of everything.”
We collect the ingredients together, and as I show Lazlo how to spoon the cornmeal into a measuring cup instead of scooping, he says, “Did you know a man tried to run the Iditarod race with poodles as sled dogs?”
The kid knows Iditarod but not crucial? “That sounds… bold.”
He nods solemnly. “It did not go well.” Shrugs. “It was the eighties.”
“How do you know all this?” I pass him a small cheese grater and a block of cheddar for the cornbread.
“Books.” To his credit, he attacks the cheddar with gusto… and then stuffs a hunk into his cheek when he thinks I’m not looking. “I would know a lot more if I could Google.”
Shuffling sounds come from the door. “Mr. Knight, it would behoove you not to stand in the doorway. This is tornado country, not earthquake.”
Glancing up, I see the Warlock stepping aside so Governess Zeen can march into the kitchen. “I didn’t want to interrupt such a pertinent conversation, Ms. Zeen.”
I ignore the sarcastic jab and choose peace today, waving him over. At least he’s showing up now instead of brooding. “Perfect timing. I need help chopping squash.” Lazlo isn’t knife-handling certified yet. “Oh, and welcome to Sunday supper.”
Stoic as ever, he stalks toward me. Now that I’ve seen his magic, I’m less afraid of him. Knowing how exactly someone could possibly kill me in my sleep, well, it’s kind of freeing.
Pastor Webb’s warning simmers on a back burner in my mind.
Is that why the Warlock doesn’t—can’t?—leave his Manor?
He’s worried people like Oris Webb and Gertha Fudge will start asking too many questions?
That can’t be it entirely. The Warlock’s stayed isolated for decades, yet Lazlo has only lived here a year.
Although, the kid doesn’t attend school in town and—that’s not my job.
I’m the Farewitch, not the boy’s guardian, and I’m definitely no Governess Zeen.
I need to focus on the rhythm of the kitchen. Keeping the hands busy does wonders to chase away anxious thoughts.
When the Warlock reaches the island, I hold up a hand. “Wait—you can’t wear those gloves while you cook.” Honestly, this man. “You’ve got dirt… everywhere.”
“I pulled this squash out of my garden with these gloves yesterday. I don’t think my dirt is going to harm you.”
I stick out a hip, which is less commanding when you’re wearing an apron and said apron hides your lack of hips. But I can’t come up with a good counter.
“Fine. We’re making butternut squash corn pudding.
” The sweetness of the squash and corn work well together, and we’ve got leeks for subtlety and serrano peppers instead of jalapeno.
“Farewitches make corn pudding to help with inflammation, which is the cause of many a problem. Though the squash is good for your spleen, magic or no magic.”
He stares at my piles of ingredients. Judging? Displeased?
I scramble. “I’m making extra for a few folks.” Named Mom. “Don’t worry, I have separate funds I use for my customers. You’re not subsidizing groceries for the entire Holler.”
He stiffens, like I’ve insulted him, but then quickly absorbs a couldn’t-care-less aura.
That’s how Governess Zeen, Lazlo, and the Warlock are making Sunday supper in the kitchen. With me. Together.
And nothing’s caught fire.
“What’s burning?” Lazlo asks, mid-whisk.
Nothing’s caught fire yet.
“My patience,” Ms. Zeen says, slicing okra at the kitchen island. She wasn’t happy about the post I assigned her, and keeps muttering audacity under her breath, although that could be a dash of tea. I can’t tell—the kitchen is busy and loud for once.
I try a new recipe for the Warlock each day, which is as fast as Farewitch magic can work.
The body needs time to digest the food and process the ingredients, to see if the recipe has an effect.
Or not. The town expects me to reopen the Apothakery in a week.
That’s seven or so chances to cure the Warlock.
But I don’t feel any closer than when I started.
We’ve covered the basics: sweet tea for headaches; sorghum-syrup sweet potato casserole for joint pain; cornbread for general under-the-weather malaise. Coconut cake…
Nothing. Zero results.
My anxiety can’t ignore the parallels. Momaw, my mom, the Warlock.
Why are these three cures so stubbornly evasive?
I’ve been trying different foods for months and months with my mom, and I’m running out of answers.
The right recipes for both of them have to be here in the Warlock’s archives.
Like the sharp taste of bourbon in the first sip of a Kentucky Coffee, I can feel it in my belly. They need to be.
“Nothing’s burning, thank you,” I say, hopping over to the ovens. “The leftover bits on my cast iron are burning off. Life cycle of a skillet.”
The Warlock looks up from chopping the squash. He’s got superb knife skills even with the bulky gloves. ’Course he does. Unfair. “Again, I have to protest. It seems appallingly unsanitary to not clean them.”
“We clean them.” Lazlo’s down to a tiny chunk of ungrated cheddar, so I free him of his task before he starts skinning fingers. “With water.”
“No soap? Honestly?”
I point to a damning pile of other skillets off to the side. I’ve been working to free the house’s cast iron from a glaze of rust since I got here. “Honestly, Mr. Knight, if you bring so much as a single sud near my skillets, I will mulch your mums. Respectfully.”
His gaze narrows. “I dare you.”
“Respectfully.”
“Twice,” he says, teeth tight. “That’s twice now you’ve threatened my plants.”
I try not to focus on how his biceps flex through his shirt as he chops with increasing agitation. My head must still be recovering from all that church-lady perfume.
To distract myself, I check the consistency of Lazlo’s dessert. The kid’s a furious whisker, and stiff peaks become granite boulders real quick. I’ve graduated him from the corn genre of pudding to banana. The South loves its hash, mash, or mush.
Once the Warlock is finished with the squash for the corn pudding, I promote him to the fried catfish. Gloved hands hovering over the flour, egg, and cornmeal bowls, he insists on using a fork rather than perfectly good fingers to dunk the fillets.
“Sunday supper is a Frost tradition, and it requires happy skillets,” I explain as I mix our prepped ingredients for the corn pudding: cheese, creamy milk, leeks, serrano, kiss of sugar, cornmeal, salt.
And of course, gobs of corn. “No matter how busy the shop and life were any given week, my mom and Momaw and I protected suppertime together on Sundays.”
Even now, I can hear Momaw Frost snapping instructions across the kitchen, wild gray hair held in place with illegal amounts of hair spray. When was the last time I cooked a full meal on a Sunday? Not for the shop, not to deliver to neighbors. Just for myself?
Probably the last time the inhabitants of Knight Manor had a real meal. These people have a kitchen table made for a mess hall, yet no one ever eats together.