If you do stuff, stuff gets done.......

If you do stuff, stuff gets done.......

Sunday, March 28, 2010

weekly words to live by


"Oddly, it is not real cooks who insist the finest ingredients are neccessary to produce a delicious something...Real cooks take stale bread and aging onions and make you happy" - Susan Wiegand

more WORDS at Tracy's Notes from a Cottage Industry

Friday, March 26, 2010

Sepia Saturday

This picture is my great grandparents on my dad's side of the family.
John was the Pastor for "The Church Of The Brethren" church in rural Cordell, OK. Photo taken probably in Cordell, Oklahoma, about 1915.


They are dressed very conservatively in this one.
In the front row - John Pitzer, Marie, my grandmother Minnie Maye and Annie Elizabeth.
In the back row - Gladys, James and Alice. James disappeared in 1938, the family believed he was robbed and murdered as he was carrying a large amount of cash after a sale, but nobody ever found out for sure.


Gladys, Marie (in wagon) Alice standing in back and Paul with his dog Bounce.
this picture is earlier, my grandmother was not born yet for it


This photo was around 1935. I guess the Church of the Brethren had a not so strict dress code by this time too.


more Sepia Saturday family photos and histories

Thursday, March 25, 2010

happy anniversary to us!

Jeff and I celebrated our wedding anniversary this week. We ate out over the weekend to celebrate so we ate at home on the actual day.
For dessert, I made a half recipe of Jeff's favorite lemon pound cake and my favorite, chocolate covered strawberries.
The first time we ate chocolate covered strawberries was in 1982 on an all expenses paid trip Jeff won to San Francisco. We had vouchers to eat at some fancy restaurants but we liked the street food sold on the wharf better. I was 8 months pregnant on this trip and I think we bought chocolate strawberries more than once from that vendor.

I made a few at home and they were so good! I just melted 3 ounces of chocolate chips with a teaspoon of shortening in the microwave. Then I dipped/spread it on with a little spatula to about 10 strawberries.

Jeff surprised me with this pearl and diamond necklace. So, can you guess which year anniversary we just had?

Monday, March 22, 2010

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Weekly Words to Live By - Linked to Notes from a Cottage Industry


This is a passage from Nella Last's War that I really liked. The book is a diary written by an English housewife during World War II. I found the entire book thought-provoking and fascinating.

"One think I've noticed since the war: what a lot of people - mostly women- seem to have no resources of their own to fall back on. My generation had no wireless (radio) and few pictures, so perhaps we had to find other things - particularly when we lived in the country, as I often did with Gran. We took the opportunity of being alone to wash our hair (now no girl seems to wash her own), mend a hole in stockings (stockings today do not stand much mending), sew buttons on - but then again, there are few buttons to sew on underwear. Older women shredded vegetables for the following day's soup, but now it is all tinned soup. They gladly read yesterday's newspaper, if they had not had time before. There were always oddments of embroidery or sewing, or letters to be written, and a few hours alone were a boon and a blessing. We liked to sit down and relax by the fire and think things out - to plan menus and shopping lists. Of course, living today is in every way more exciting and thrilling: but where today it's as if people snatch a piece of rich Christmas cake and eat it, with creamed coffee, on top of a good dinner, we took our cake and ate it slowly, savouring each mouthful and finding time to think how wonderful it was that the ingredients came from so many far-off places."

To participate in or see more Weekly Words, visit Tracy at her beautiful blog, Notes from a Cottage Industry