Good Cooking
Good food is always to be found at the Rushes’ table
Story by Jacquelyn Hall Photos by David Moore
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renda and Richard Rush enjoy living on Smith Lake and cooking together. Despite having different approaches to recipes and preferred methods that differ, they make a great culinary team. Richard typically helps Brenda with the main courses, sometimes as her sous chef, the chopper of ingredients or however he can. Brenda prefers to follow the recipes to the letter, while Richard is more of a “measure with his heart” type of cook. They also enjoy traveling to the Chicago area to visit his son and family and experience the “real snow.” And it was on one of these trips that they were introduced to the now family favorite dish of ragu bolognese. Richard’s son and daughter-in-law made it for dinner one night, and it was a smash hit with all. A perk of the recipe is that, like most tomato-based dishes, it gets better with age and freezes well – just skip freezing the noodles. They usually round out the pasta dinner with bread and salad with Brenda’s homemade Caesar dressing. Their favorite dessert is an Italian cream cake. “It was MawMaw’s recipe,” Brenda says. “It is our favorite cake, especially at Christmas. The recipe is everywhere now, but I always say it was her original recipe.” Brenda enjoys the process of making the cake. “It’s just that easy, and the product is always delicious. It is pretty fool-proof. Anyone can make that cake.”
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renda, originally from Cullman County, met Richard, originally from Marine, Illinois, through a mutual friend in 1993. They dated for six months, but it just wasn’t the right time, and life took them their separate ways.
Brenda’s Italian cream cake is beautiful, if not daunting to behold from a baking standpoint. She, however, says the recipe is fool-proof. Brenda then met her husband, Carl, who passed away from poor health after 14 years of marriage. After his death, Brenda and Richard’s mutual friend, embracing their inner Cupid, connected them again. This time the timing was right. “It’s kinda’ weird how things work out,” Brenda laughs. The Rushes married in April 2010 and relocated to Atlanta for Richard’s job. At the wedding, the preacher, knowing that Brenda is an Alabama girl through and through, lightheartedly added “you will bring her back” to Alabama during their wedding vows. And so he did. Richard had first visited Smith Lake years ago and had fallen in love with it. After a year of marriage, he and Brenda
bought their home there for weekends, summers and eventual retirement. Brenda had formerly worked in the business-office side of the medical field for 15 years, divided between Cullman’s former Woodland Hospital and a surgeon. She later worked 17 years for a commercial painting company. Richard spent some 25 years as consultant for Patterson and Dewar Engineers, traveling the U.S. and some in Canada and Mexico. After six years living in Atlanta, he retired and they moved to the lake.
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long with Willow, their 18-month old mini Aussie-doodle, Brenda and Richard thoroughly enjoy the laid-back lake life. They often enjoy the cozy house and FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL 2022
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