Virginia swept into our house on a Friday night to find my son Eric and me attempting to make "gob" cookies, the Pennsylvania version of homemade whoopie pies. Eric was about 6 years old at the time. He earnestly took the "talents" challenge from our church: take a $20 bill from our church, invest it, and give the resulting money to the church. His grand idea was for us to sell homemade gobs to friends, family, and church members. Never without a goal, Eric wanted us to make 100 gobs to sell for $1 each. Fortunately for us, Virginia arrived from Miami in time to teach us about the wonders of parchment paper. With a flick of her wrist, she pulled out the parchment like a magician, and low and behold - there were 12 chocolate gobs on a cooling rack and an empty cookie sheet waiting to be dressed in parchment and adorned with raw gob dough. I can still see Virginia whipping up the vanilla cream for the center of the cookies, her stirring hand a blur of speed. And she whipped us up into a fast production line. Making 100 gobs really meant making 200 cookies to pair up with the cream in the middle. So I had plenty of time with Virginia to catch up on her Miami adventure and her plans for her return to Aspen. I would never have survived the cooking if it weren't for Virginia's talent and love for cooking, the real moral of this story. And it is a memory that both Eric and I cherish to this day. Virginia, thank you again! Barbara