My Trails into the Past

As each of us married, our mother made photo album cookbooks filled with her favorite recipes. She typed up the recipes on yellow paper and decorated the pages with photos from our childhood. The best part of the album is her commentary about the dish. It’s like she’s in the kitchen with us. These recipes came from many sources. Some were her favorites, personally massaged to her liking. The chicken roll-up recipe was her “gourmet” dish which she served to company. I have made her stew recipe many times, though I substitute pork shoulder for the beef. Others came from family members. Nana’s beer pork chops were always a favorite. It’s a pretty simple recipe but very tasty. We always had it with rice. However, Nana’s meatballs were served with mashed potatoes. In her discussion about easy chuck roast, she suggested using “cheater sauce” to make the gravy dark. This was Kitchen Bouquet and was used often in her kitchen, (but don't tell anyone!). Casseroles were very common in the 1...

Like most American families, our Thanksgiving dinners were filled with traditional dishes. Besides the turkey, we had dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, candied yams, peas with pearly onions, and pumpkin and pecan pies for dessert. All were prepared by my mother except the pies which were brought by my grandmother, Mam-ma, and my great-aunt, Bev. Since our family was large, my mother cooked a twenty-five pound or larger turkey, beginning the process about nine o’clock in the morning. The previous evening, she baked a batch of plain, unsweetened, cornbread in one of Nana’s large cast iron frying pans and hardboiled some eggs. On the day of Thanksgiving, she put together the cornbread dressing by first filling a bowl with cubed bread she purchased from Kilpatrick’s bread company that came with a seasoning packet. She added chopped onions, chopped celery, chopped parsley, and chopped hardboiled eggs. She then added melted butter and chicken or turkey broth to the consistency wanted. ...

It's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun by Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings .   For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I want you to: 1) Read Lisa Alzo's blog post "Fearless Females Blogging Prompts Series Returns for 2019"   on her blog, The Accidental Genealogist .  2) Choose one of her daily blog prompts from the list (this is March 9th, do that one if you don't want to choose another), and write about it. 3) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook post. Please leave a comment here with a link to your post. Checking Lisa Alzo's blog post, I chose March 7:   "Share a favorite recipe from your mother or grandmother’s kitchen. Why is this dish your favorite? If you don’t have one that’s been passed down, describe a favorite holiday or other meal you shared with your family." Many years ago after I was first married, my mother made me a recipe book full of her favorite...