How Sweet It Is by Alice Wisler

mother of all inventions, and even as a kid, I knew it was necessary to create a new sauce. I was tired of Mom’s standard mixture of milk, butter, fat drippings, and salt and pepper, with a few tablespoons of flour to thicken it. I experimented in the kitchen and came up with sauce à la marmalade (a white sauce with a tablespoon of orange marmalade), sauce au garlic (adding minced garlic really spiced up the palate), and sauce au basil—my favorite—which had fresh minced basil and parsley. Andrea liked the marmalade one the best; Dad raved about the garlic. Mom said she couldn’t decide between the basil and garlic, but if I wanted to cook dinner one night a week, that would be a great help.
    Pretty soon one night a week became two, and then it got so I was cooking every night. Mom was proud of my culinary talent, which delighted me. Dad was proud, too, but I could simply breathe and he’d be proud of me.
    When I told my family I wanted to go to Atlanta for culinary school, they weren’t surprised. Mother did comment that she wasn’t sure I could get a real job with a degree in cooking . I showed her an armload of books written by gurus who were skilled in cooking—graduates of culinary institutes all across America and around the world. She then nodded and asked if I could make a dessert for the next night.
    “What’s tomorrow night?” I asked.
    “Friday,” she replied. “And the Jeffersons are coming by after dinner to buy Hector.”
    “Daddy’s selling Hector?”
    Hector was the largest sow in the history of Georgia, I was sure. She was the size of three hogs. Champion pig—that was Hector. She’d won the blue ribbon at the state fair for four years in a row. When people saw the name, they would assume Hector was a male. When they found out she was female, they’d scratch their heads, let their cotton candy stop bobbing for a moment, and wonder. Dad named the pig. Apparently, he had an uncle Hector who was rather large and pink. When Hector was born, Daddy said the pig reminded him of his uncle. He started to call her Hector, and that was that. People wondered if the real Hector was offended to know that a pig had been named after him, and not even a male pig, but a sow. “Oh, no,” my father would say, “Hector is pleased.” The truth was, Hector had died long before his namesake squealed into the world.
    When my mother didn’t reply to my question, I rephrased it. “Why is Daddy selling Hector to the Jeffersons?”
    “They’re offering a good price.”
    The first cake I ever made and decorated was for Hector’s farewell. I used a recipe from an old Betty Crocker cookbook. I spent the entire evening icing it with a buttercream frosting, staying up till midnight. The Jeffersons made a big deal over the cake, saying it was tasty and moist.
    I was sad to see Hector leave us. I patted her good-bye and felt like little Fern in Charlotte’s Web . It took all the strength Mr. Jefferson and Daddy had to haul Hector onto the Jeffersons’ truck. Without Hector to feed, I thought we could probably save enough to build a new barn.
    The next time I baked and decorated a cake was the night before Grandpa Ernest visited. “Could you make that same cake you made for the Jeffersons?” my mother asked.
    “What’s happening tomorrow night?”
    “Grandpa Ernest is stopping by on his way home from Greece.”
    I thought it was funny to use the phrase “stopping by.” Tifton, Georgia, is not at all a place on the way to or from anywhere. It is so out of the way that most people can’t find it even when looking for and wanting to come to the town.
    Grandpa Ernest took one look at the frosted two-layered butter cake and gave me a hug. Then he told me that he’d just spent two weeks on Kos, and although beautiful in both scenery and food, nothing he had seen in the cake department came close to my cake. I was so nervous. I wondered if the taste could live up to his compliments. It must have; I found him at