into small sections, cut and core, and parboil in salted water for 10 minutes. Drain. Heat salt pork until transparent; add onion, and continue cooking until onion is lightly brown. Add cabbage, caraway, bouillon, and seasoning. Simmer, tightly covered, stirring occasionally, until soft (about 1 hour). Dust with flour and add Kitchen Bouquet; stir and let simmer another 5 minutes. Serves 6–7.
TENNESSEE CORN FRITTERS
THE THING I LOVE ABOUT VISITING with all these ghosts is that I get to go to all these neat locations to meet them. I’ve been all over the country helping people and helping earthbound spirits cross over—sometimes I think I should forget the ghost stories and just write a travel book! And even though the bulk of my work has been local to me, in Ohio, I’ve still visited some pretty neat places right here in my own state.
Take Barbara, for example. She lived on a real dude ranch practically in my backyard, complete with cowboy hats and horse wranglers. She raised show horses for kids to show at competitions, and she employed about five or six hands to help her. She’d not been having a lot of problems, but she had actually been seeing a ghost with her own eyes, and her hands had been complaining that they kept bumping into someone in the kitchen, except there was no one there to bump into.
“She doesn’t look dangerous,” Barbara said of the ghost. “She’s sort of, you know, roly-poly. She has scraggly hair and she’s missing some teeth, but she’s always laughing. Looks like she’s having the time of her life!”
“Are the hands seeing her, too?” I asked her when I got out there. I was looking around, but I couldn’t see this roly-poly woman anywhere.
“I don’t think they’ve seen her,” Barbara replied. “But they are pretty wound up about it. They said I had to do something, so I called you.”
“I don’t see her anywhere, Barbara,” I admitted.
“Oh, she’ll be down in the kitchen. My husband, Bruce, is down there now cooking dinner for everyone—that’s usually when she shows up.”
So we went down to the mess hall and sure enough, there she was. She did look quite disheveled but, just as Barbara said, not dangerous. In fact, I’d have said she was jovial, if anything. As soon as she realized I could see her as well as hear her, I got her fully attention.
“What’s you name?” I asked her.
“Tilly.”
“Tilly, do you know anyone here?”
“No, no,” she laughed. “I came up with my horses.”
“You did what?”
“From Tennessee.” She nodded at Barbara and added, “She bought some horses from my ranch and I came up with them.”
I checked this fact with Barbara and she confirmed that it was absolutely true. She had bought some horse from a ranch in Tennessee the year before and she had started seeing Tilly shortly thereafter.
“I was the cook,” Tilly went on to explain. “And that boy there, he misses his home-cooked Tennessee meals.”
The “boy” she was referring to was a ranch hand named Bobby who had moved up from Tennessee for the job. Tilly said he was especially missing real Tennessee corn fritters.
“If I give the recipe to Barbara so her husband can make it for Bobby, will you go into the White Light?” I offered, making a deal I’ve struck many times over the course of my life.
“Those horses are in good hands,” she decided. “So yes, I suppose my work here is done.”
Tennessee Corn Fritters
¾ cup flour
½ teaspoon salt
Dash of pepper
¾ teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
1½ cups corn cut from cob
Sift together flour, salt, pepper, and baking powder. Add beaten eggs and corn and, if necessary, a little milk. Drop by spoonfuls onto a hot, well-greased griddle or frying pan, and cook until golden brown on both sides. If using creamy canned corn, add an additional 2 tablespoons flour to absorb extra moisture. Serve with warm maple syrup. Serves 6.
BREAKFAST BAKE CASSEROLE
LINDA AND GALE WERE THE KIND OF SISTERS whose bond went beyond the mere familial relationship. They’d always been close, and after their parents had died when they were 19 and 22, that closeness helped them both and it grew exponentially. It was also how Gale knew—knew—her sister was in the house with her.
Linda had been dead more than a year when Gale called me. She’d died of cancer, leaving her 8-and 10-year old boys behind. I knew there was a spirit in the house, but I wasn’t convinced yet that it was Linda. Most cancer patients cross over immediately—they’ve had a long, hard battle to the end, they’ve said their goodbyes a hundred times, and they’re just ready to move on. But sometimes cancer patients stay, and I thought maybe, just maybe, Linda’s children had been enough to make her stay.
I was wrong. Oh, it was Linda in the house all right, but she hadn’t stayed for her kids. Well, not entirely. She’d stayed for Gale to help her care for her kids! The sisters had lived right next door to each other, and since Gale didn’t work and Linda did, she often watched her nephews after school. Gale had her own children, too, and the cousins got along famously—it was hardly a strain, but Linda said she felt bad. Linda’s husband traveled a lot for work, and now that Linda was gone, Gale often had to watch the kids overnight.
“Gale’s always been there to watch my kids,” she said. “It’s not fair. I couldn’t just leave her with all that extra work.”
“Believe it or not, you probably aren’t helping too much, though,” I said gently. Gale had already told me her daughter had seen Aunt Linda in the house, and it had scared her. Not because she was scared of her aunt, but because … well, I guess we’re just conditioned to think ghosts are scary, aren’t we? But besides that, there were the colds and headaches and all the other things that come when a ghost is draining the energy from the living.
“I know,” Linda admitted dismally. “But I also just feel horrible about something.”
“What?” I wondered. “Is there something you forgot to mention before you died?” That was not at all uncommon—seems like even the spirits who tell me they had everything sewn up when they died can still think of just one last thing to say. One last regret to own up to, or one last apology to make.
“No, no, this was after I died,” Linda said. “My boy, Jack, really hurt Gale’s feelings at Christmas, and that’s just not right. Not with all she does for them.”
Apparently Gale had tried to make one of her nephew’s favorite recipes just after Christmas, something his mom always used to make. It had been their first Christmas without Linda, and she was trying to do something, however small, to let her boys know that Linda would never be forgotten. Only she hadn’t made it right, and Jack had told her so in no uncertain terms. Gale had felt bad and Jack only made it worse.
“It’s just not right,” Linda said again. “Look, can you give her the recipe for me, so she can make it right? She put potatoes in it, and that’s what Jack hated so much.”
“Sure,” I said. “Of course I can.”
“And one other thing,” Linda added with an amused smirk. “Ask Gale why she didn’t just go next door and get my recipe box.”
Gale chuckled when I asked her that. “I guess I never thought of it!”
Breakfast Bake Casserole
3 cups ham, diced
1 tablespoon dry mustard
3 cups cheddar cheese, shredded
1