To raise money for Christmas, the Dog River Women’s League held a Bazaar and Bake Sale last Saturday afternoon, which, as usual, was geared to make your mouth water and clean all the copper and silver and crumpled dollar bills out of your jeans.

Here are some samplings of what they had; pumpkin pie, lemon meringue pie, chocolate cake, butter tarts, ginger bread, oatmeal cookies with no walnuts.  And on another table, pickled beets, green tomato relish, beet horseradish relish and cranberry catsup.  Then, on the table in the corner, mint fudge, caramel popcorn, Christmas stockings, placemats, pot holders, wool mittens, braided coat hangers, crocheted pillow cases, nylon stocking dolls and woven willow wreaths.

My favorite things to eat, though, are them made from the berries we pick around Dog River.  Things like wild strawberry jam and jams made from raspberries, rose hips, saskatoons, rhubarb and cranberry jelly, rose petal syrup, blueberry tarts, Saskatoon pie, cranberry pudding and deep blueberry buckle.

But I hav’ta tell you my all-time favorite number one mouth-watering first-prize supreme ruler and red ribbon winner of fine taste in Dog River, and that’s Dora Beaulieu’s Whole Low Bush Cranberry Muffins.  Dora makes the kind where you don’t boil or mash up the berries.  You put ‘em in the dough whole then go ahead and bake the muffins as usual.  Then, when you take ‘em out of the oven, there’s little swirls of steam spiraling up and the cranberry tingle tickles your nose right down to the back of your throat  looking down at he pan of muffins, you can see dark wine colored cranberries here and there with little purple halos in the muffin around each berry.

And all you want to do is break one of those muffins in half, smear some butter on it real quick and pop it in your mouth and Kazam! Are you in for the treat of your life when you sink your chompers into that half of warm muffin you stuffed in your mouth!

It’s something like being in a shooting gallery at one of those Carnivals where you shoot tin ducks with a .22 rifle and they go Twang!  when you hit’em and something like those old time comics, where they have all the action words and sound effects in yellow balloons and red stars and orange blasts for words like Wham! Blam! Kapow!

Zing! Zang! & Zowee!

Because that’s what’s happening inside your mouth…
your teeth are biting down into those prime, plump cranberries
and the hot red cranberry juices are zapping around inside your mouth
rocketing off the roof of your mouth,
bouncing across your tongue,
squirting delicious glowing juices all over your gleaming white teeth,
running down between your gums and pulsating lips,
slathering all over your madly salivating taste buds…
until your whole mouth is jumping up and down with joy, smiling and laughing and feeling so good you just have to swallow that mouthful …
and sit back and have a little rest.

Now folks, I’m here to tell you,

if Dora Beaulieu’s Whole Low Bush Cranberry Muffins aren’t a mouthful of heaven,

they’re the next best thing.

excerpt from The Owl and the Teacup: Dog River Tales