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I thought we had come close to ending the conversation over interpreting the holiday recipes handed down from grandmothers and great aunts, but apparently not.
You may recall the earlier discussion about recipes that call for a smidgen of this or a tad of that.
My wife and I wondered just how much salt or sugar makes up a “tiny” pinch, which is definitely smaller than a regular pinch, and how much hot sauce goes into a dash, which may or may not be smaller than a splash.
We tried to rank these measurements according to size, and decided that a pinch (which can be held between two fingers) is surely smaller than a sprinkle (which requires the action of several fingers).
A smidgen is smaller than a pinch, we said, but bigger than a bit, and even a “little” bit is bigger than a touch.
Our final ranking, largest to smallest, was dollop, dab, dash, smattering, bit, tad, sprinkle, pinch, smidgen, touch, soupcon. We didn’t think of hint, which probably fits between touch and soupcon, and had to agree to disagree over whether itsy-bitsy is bigger or smaller than teensy-weensy.
End of conversation, we thought.
But now we are confronted with “gollop,” which apparently is a pretty good bit. We won’t go into how much makes up a bit or whether a “pretty good” one is bigger or smaller than just a “good” bit (both of which are prima facie bigger than a bit with no adjective at all).
We surmise that a gollop may be derived from, and is bigger than, a dollop, but can’t find any guidance on how many dollops are in a gollop.
Webster’s tells us that a dollop is “a shapeless mass or blob of something, especially soft food.”
But the dictionary doesn’t tell us how big the blob is (the one in the movie was huge, one plopped on a plate not quite so big). We are also told that when it is used in recipes a dollop is something added “casually and without measuring,” which is no help at all.
“Gollop,” we’re told by one dictionary, could come from “gulp,” which seems to indicate it is small enough to be consumed in one swallow. That would make it smaller than a dollop, but that’s not the way I remember it being used in my family.
I always heard it in the context of “Uncle Ned could eat a whole gollop of mashed potatoes because he had a humongous appetite.”
He could too and had the girth to prove it. But, alas, I never thought to watch carefully just how big his mashed potato serving was.
So that leaves us even more confused about how big or little a gollop might be, and whether it may grow or shrink according to whether it is applied to potatoes, yams, ice cream, or movie monsters.
Worse still, it raises the entirely new question of how big humongous is.
We figure that something humongous is probably bigger than something enormous, gigantic, or even colossal, but we’re not so sure whether it tops something gargantuan.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

The Rotary Club of Franklin donated $2,670.24 to the City of Franklin. The club receivedthe funds through a Rotary International grant to fund community projects. The funds will be used to purchase benches that will be installed in the Old Center Theater lot for the community.

MADD Chapter will host its 22nd annual “A Light of Hope Ceremony” at 6 p.m. at the Lamp Post event center on Main Street in Franklin on Dec. 2.
The ceremony will feature a time of remembrance for victims of drunk/drugged driving crashes. Members of MADD recognize that there are, unfortunately, many families in St. Mary Parish who have had the course of their life changed forever by an impaired driver, and issued this invitation to all to attend and light a candle in memory or honor.
MADD has had a presence in St. Mary Parish since 1995 when former Baldwin Police Chief Gerald Minor and Greg Ibert issued a call for an organizational meeting to charter a MADD Chapter.
The call was answered by many, as Minor anticipated, due to the large number of alcohol related fatalities on St. Mary Parish roads and highways. He, along with members Delores and Noel Norton, spent months completing the necessary paperwork to charter the parish chapter. Once completed, the group set about promoting awareness of drunk driving and offering prevention information.
Judge Ed Leonard played a pivotal role in the local chapter’s success when he urged members to provide a service to the courts by hosting Victim Impact Panels for DWI offenders. MADD members received the required training and began offering the monthly panel sessions. To date, over 2,000 DWI offenders have been court ordered to attend a Victim Impact Panel session. Just as the name implies, MADD Chapter members, who are victims, share their personal testimony of how a crash impacted and changed their life forever.
Guest speaker for this year’s “A Light of Hope” ceremony is Sheriff Blaise Smith. Local MADD Chapter member, Jacki Ackel, said that in observance of the group’s 22nd anniversary celebration, the group will recognize Sheriff Blaise Smith, a lifelong resident of Franklin, who eagerly agreed to speak and share his insight as the sheriff.
The ceremony will also feature naming the “Top Cops” of St. Mary Parish, those officers from both the parish and local agencies as well as Troop I which has been diligent and vigilant in removing impaired drivers.
The public is invited to attend the ceremony. A meal is being donated by the Sheriff Department and Franklin Lodge #57. Arrive as early as 5 p.m.to be served

Morgan City police and parish and federal authorities have arrested a man wanted in a Mississippi homicide.

City officers, parish deputies and U.S. deputy marshals located Jose Angel Melendez-Davila, 33, at 4:49 a.m. Friday at a home on Eighth Street in Morgan City.

Melendez-Davila was wanted in the shooting death of a young male and the wounding of a woman in Jones County, Mississippi.

TV station WTOK quoted the Jones County Sheriff's Office as saying the shooting happened about 1:30 a.m. Thursday on Toombs Road. The woman Melendez-Davila is accused of shooting was his girlfriend, and the fatality is her son, the station reported.

Jones County authorities said Melendez-Davila was gone when they arrived at the scene of the shooting, but witnesses identified him as the shooter and described the vehicle in which he fled.

That vehicle was later found at a business on 15th Avenue in Laurel.

Jones County asked the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force for help.

At about 2 a.m. Friday, Morgan City police posted a Facebook message saying that Jones County deputies were looking for Melendez-Davila and that he is known to have ties to this area.

The post warned that Melendez-Davila was believed to be armed and dangerous.

Another post Thursday by a Tri-City area resident posted pictures of Melendez-Davila and a young woman and said, "This man shot my friend and her son leaving her oldest son dead and her in critical condition because she was trying to get out of an abusive relationship."