Did It Serve Her Right?

I am putting this picture on my blog today because I doubt that anyone else has seen or has this picture. My daughter, Melanie, is five years old (left) The dress was given to her for her birthday by my sister, Rosie. My niece, Julie, is my sister's child. If you look carefully, you can see she is carrying her horse. She adored them. My oldest son, Joe (on the right) He was three.

I do believe that my cousin, Bruce gave me some pictures to scan when he was here that I didn't have. My mother lived in a trailer court as you can see there are some trailers across the street from her. If there was a lot of noise over there my mother would creep in the dark to look out the window to see what was going on. One night she broke her toe. I told her it served her right!

Company Is Coming!

There is an old, old song called, “Company’s Coming!” I thought of that song this fall. We had company which was very cool.

I have such a very small family that having a cousin visit is a very big deal. I have only one uncle left and he is ninety four and sharp as a tack. His only child came to visit. He is so smart I couldn’t keep up with him. He knew dates for everything and kept asking me for verification. Finally I told him that I didn’t know and didn’t care. Everyone laughed and he said, “Boy I guess she knocked me down a peg.”

He brought with him a lovely lady friend who also had a wonderful sense of humor. She and my husband kind of sat and had no clue what my cousin and I were talking about. He had brought a photo album with him which I was absolutely fascinated with. There were pictures that I had never seen before and were in very good shape. These photos were about fifty to seventy years old.

We talked about my uncle a lot. I told my cousin stories that he had never heard before about my mother and his dad on the farm.

I asked him if it was okay if I put a post about his visit on my blog. He assured me that it was fine. His visit was about two months ago. I am sure he thought, “boy she was really excited about my visit.” The fact is, that Fran got sick, and I got started on Christmas and Thanksgiving. We took quite a few pictures outside which made a nice background. Hopefully we will get to see them again. Thanks for the visit!

Leftovers

Have you ever forgotten something at the store to make something special? I just wrote a post about lists not too long ago. Yesterday I wrote about candy thermometers. I wanted to make peanut brittle. Hmm, well guess what, I had only dry roasted peanuts because I forgot peanuts for the candy.

Fran kept coming out to the kitchen not only to “help” but to give me “helpful” comments about the color of it especially. He had never seen peanut brittle a fawn color. He said he had always seen a chocolate color. I told him I had never seen chocolate colored peanut brittle. Things were getting a bit heated in the kitchen especially when the syrup was getting thick. He wanted me to dump it out immediately. On and on!

Well we chilled it out on the covered porch where it was 20 degrees. In a few minutes it shattered when dropped on the counter. And..I might add it is delicious. I think from now on I will only use dry roasted peanuts or for that matter, any kind of peanuts I have. Leftovers are wonderful! Oh I did find a recipe for using dry roasted peanuts, so I wasn't so talented, doggone it!

Just to show Fran how nice I am I got on recipies.com to see if ever in history there had been a recipe of molasses and brown sugar peanut brittle. They had a hand written cookbook from 1912 that was called Grandma’s peanut brittle. Of course, there was a lot of hooting and hollering from the “peanut gallery.”

The Candy Thermometer

I can remember my mother making candy at Christmas time when we lived on the farm. I was just a little girl then, but my mom always wanted me to learn how to do things, especially in the kitchen. I think that was to make up for not being able to do hand work. Lol

If the recipe said “soft ball” then she would drop just tiny bit of the syrup in really cold water and mold it with her fingers. When it made a soft little ball it was done. There was hard ball and hard crack as well. I loved to help with hard crack. When we would put a tiny bit of syrup into the cold water it would actually crack. Plink! That was when she made anice candy.

Since those days, they have invented the candy thermometer. Oh my, how easy it is to make candy now a days.

Well, I have been a bit nostalgic this year. All of these old memories have come slamming back to me. Not making me sad, but with a lot of smiles too.

I think my sister, Rosie, made some of my favorites. She made cookies with chocolate kisses in the middle. She frosted a zillion cookies with my mom one year even when she was very very sick. I think she made fudge that did not crumble, did not run to the edge of the pan etc. I am describing my fudge if you haven’t guessed already.

My mother made a yummy peanut butter fudge. Oh, it was so good!

I made divinity that was flavored with different flavors of Jello. That was really good too. Like my mother, I taught my daughter, Melanie, how to do that. That took a candy thermometer to do that for the syrup to be just right. I say that, but my mom made popcorn balls with red and green syrup without a candy thermometer.

Oh, the good old days. I thought I was going to have to do it without one today, but Fran found mine, so I guess I have to make candy now. I think peanut brittle. Yes, that sounds good.

Gulp And Swallow Hard

Once in awhile, something will come to mind, or a person that looks like someone else, birthdays of someone who is gone etc.

I miss my children something fierce. I mean the little children. This is a picture of two of my daughter’s children “helping” decorate their tree. Oh the days that my little ones “helped.” We often had to put our tree up on a table to Keep it away from my little one. One year when we got our tree home we discovered that the trunk had a severe case of scoliosis. That poor little tree had to have a piece of twine around it and nailed to the wall. Oh the stories of Christmas! When I saw this beautiful picture of my grandchildren. I saw the quiet twinkling lights and my grandson on his tiptoes stretching to put on his decoration. My little boy would do the same thing. In the winter before Christmas the children would make chains out of green and red construction paper to decorate the tree with. And…of course, the very few glass decorations I had left, two or three hit the floor by accident and the paper chains were more dominant that year.

Presents had to remain hidden because it was just too much for little fingers and mama’s nerves to keep the gifts safe.

Yes, Oh how I miss those days. Gulp and swallow hard.