The bronze frog was given to me at a recipe party when we were moving away from Crawfordsville.  I have a whole lot of those recipes, which I have preserved in a particular little recipe box.  This one is one of my favorites because it's not a recipe for anything except for the poem that went with it--"Sand, Water, Sun, and Life", or something very simple.  It was in fact the mother of the Smith family who lived right around the corner from us.  She was kind of  lonely but an active mother--she had seven children and raised them beautifully.  She was shy and we didn't know her very well but she had another life as an artist, and this is what she gave to me as a parting gift and it's never been out of my kitchen since.  That family is sort of the heart and soul of Crawfordsville in my view and this is now a representation of that.

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One of the other favorite things that came out of that recipe shower was a recipe for something--some soft kind of cake, something very Southern--and with it came a note that said "Don't ever, ever give this away or tell anyone where it came from.  It's a secret."  I've never cooked it all, I'm so afraid of it!

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Polly 3/16/18