Family Traditions Continued by Margo Hoornstra

In my last post here, I talked about how my son and grandson value the idea of family traditions and are each doing their part to preserve them. My grandson through genealogy research of the past, my son through taking charge of plans for a family reunion  in the future.

Add to my family endeavors lately, a cousin who was going through abdominal surgery. Everything went well, better than well, and she's doing fine by the way. But, back to my point. In the course of helping to see her through this, we talked some about our family and a little about family history. Specifically, the grandmother we both shared.

Mimi was a loving and kind and caring and compassionate woman. She was devoted to our family. My grandfather, her two daughters and four grandchildren. She was a true lady in every sense of the word.  Like me, Mimi didn't cook much, as I recall.  Holidays and family gatherings at her house were not so much focused on food, but about being together, about sharing each other's company. Every chance I got, I would do sleepovers at her house. The times I spent being at her house, with her, are some of my favorite childhood memories.

One day I remember she was looking through the paper and made the comment that she had just read that one of her brothers had died. I had met one of her sisters she was close to, but never knew she had a brother. It wasn't until I was much older, and Mimi was gone, that I learned why.

My grandma was eighteen and my grandpa twenty-four when they, horror of horrors at the time, conceived a child out of wedlock, my mother. According to some of the family records my grandson has discovered, they were married in February, my mother was born in July. Her birth certificate had 'illegitimate' stamped across it. An unfortunate stigma she was forced to live with. My sweet, caring, loving, giving grandmother, as it turns out, was disowned by her family. Because she fell in love and had a child.

There's a story in there somewhere. One I do plan to tell someday. Which brings me to a little bit about one I have already told.

My first book Honorable Intentions has to do with an out of wedlock child. That didn't stop my hero, Chase Canfield, from being a loving and devoted father.

“Her mother and I never married. I’m a little, no, a lot embarrassed to admit Lisa was the product of what turned out to be a one night stand.” Regret tinged his voice as he went on. “I was very young, and incredibly stupid, but I’m not one bit sorry she’s here. I didn’t even know I had a child for a couple of years. I met my daughter for the first time when she was almost three.” He didn’t wait for her response. “I had to fight for every moment with her. First, I obtained a court order to be able to submit to a paternity test. Then it was back to court to fight for visitation rights. Monica sure doesn’t make it easy.” He paused, lost in some private reflection. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw my little girl.” His voice was a mixture of pain bolstered by sturdy resolve. “Do you know what it’s like to look at your child for the first time and see fear, of you, reflected in their eyes?”

My favorite saying comes from a wise man sometimes known as Doctor Seuss. "Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
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Yikes, my family's focused on foods! ~ by Leah St. James

A few months ago, my son emailed me and my husband asking about our family traditions. It was for a paper for one of his college classes. After thinking about it for a bit, I had to respond something like, “Geez, the only traditions I can think of involve food!” He answered that’s what he’d come up with.

I thought more about it in the days that followed. There had been traditions when the kids were little—annual pumpkin picking, tree decorating, the usual holiday stuff. But as the kids aged and began to spend holidays with girlfriends, then moved away altogether, the traditions seemed to go with them. All except for the ones that ended with us stuffing our faces. 

Then I realized that even going back into my childhood, most of my memories of tradition were the same—food focused.

One of my earliest memories of my grandmother has me standing on a chair next to her at the kitchen table. We’re putting together apple pies to bake. She has a regular pie pan (glass), and I’m working with a miniature version, about half the size. I remember the aroma of the baking pie, but most of all, I remember the fun of spending time with my grandmother and feeling like a big girl, baking my own little pie. (I still have that plate and think of Grandma every time I use it…although it’s been years since I’ve attempted a pie!)

Grandma didn’t bake just pies. She also baked cookies, and my favorite was one she called “Pecan Crescent Cookies.” Made of lots of fat and sugar, they’re mixed, rolled into a log, then cut, shaped into a crescent, then baked. I still remember Grandma showing me her pinkie finger to use as a measure for the size.  This was my hands-down favorite cookie anytime of the year, but especially at Christmas. 

My sister and I carried that love into our adulthood. Every December we’d take a day off from work to bake massive batches of cookies. For at least a month in advance, we’d comb through cookie and holiday recipe books to make our selections—a total of about 10 or 12 different cookies, from the drop kind, to the roll-and-cut kind, and we even tried some with a cookie press.  Then we’d split them up into gift trays for co-workers, teachers at school and Sunday school, and for the staff at a local nursing home where our mom lived. No matter what else we baked, Grandma’s crescent cookies were a staple.

Now she and I live an 18-hour drive apart. I miss her, but every year when I make Grandma’s crescent cookies, I think of the fun we had.

Here’s the recipe for any who’d like to try them, now or during the holidays.

Pecan Crescent Cookies

(Makes about 3 dozen, depending on the width of your finger.)

Ingredients

• 2 cups shortening (Grandma used 1 cup of Crisco, 1 cup of butter. I use butter or margarine.)
• 2/3 cup white granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3-1/3 cups flour
• 1-1/3 cups finely chopped pecans (If the pieces are too large, it’s harder to form the crescent shape.)

Thoroughly mix all ingredients – and don’t be afraid to dig your hands in and get messy. Everything should be well blended.

Separate the dough in half and form into two “logs.” Wrap the logs in waxed paper or plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator at least a couple hours (I leave overnight).

To form cookies, cut slices of the chilled dough and roll in your hands until about the size of your pinkie. Bend into a slight crescent shape.

Place cookies about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 ° about 15 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.  (The bigger the cookies, the longer it takes. :))

Set the cookies (still on the sheet) aside to cool for a few minutes. Until they set, they’re fragile and liable to fall apart.

Combine sugar and cinnamon in a bowl, mix thoroughly. I start with about a third of a cup of sugar and add cinnamon to taste. If you run out, you can always make more.

While the cookies are still warm, but after they have firmed up a little (about 5 minutes or so), roll each cookie in the sugar/cinnamon mixture (careful handling still required!), then place on some waxed paper (or paper towel) in single layer to finish cooling.

These are probably one of the few cookies I’ve ever made that taste better after they’ve cooled, so you might want to wait before sampling. 

Grandma's Pecan Crescent Cookies - in Grandma's Mini Pie Plate :)

 Let’s face it, food is fun—whether you’re making/baking or eating. I think we all have family food traditions. What are yours?

Work during the 50s by Barbara Edwards

My husband and I

Tobacco drying shed

were driving though South Windsor Connecticut when I spotted tobacco drying in one of the old sheds and it reminded me of hot summers and cool autumns during my childhood.

If you don’t have a family member who smokes cigars, you’ve probably never heard of Connecticut Valley-grown broad leaf wrappers.

When Cuba was famous for their hand-rolled cigars, the premium wrapper in the world was grown in Connecticut. Shaded fields filled the farms of northern Connecticut. Tobacco is on crop that draws its flavor from the soil. The plants have been planted in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rico and other sites further south. They produce a useable leaf but it doesn’t have the flavor.

So, with the recent upsurge in cigar popularity, growers are opening the old fields.

In years past, the last weeks of high school had growers recruiting boys and girls to work in the tobacco fields for the summer. The farms would send a bus to pick up the workers in the early morning and return them around four pm.

This was in the days before itinerant farm workers and the guys were glad to do the hard job. They worked by the piece. A faster picker could bring home decent money.

The girls didn’t pick, they used a large needle threaded through the stems to make bunches that were then hung in the drying sheds.

My bother returned home filthy, covered in black dust from head to toe. He did this every summer until college.

I'm glad I got a job at the library.

Check out my new release, Journey of the Magi, with a happy ending in Connecticut.

Noel is struggling to keep her promise to her children. A blizzard in Minnesota, a broken down car and lack of money halts their journey to a home in Connecticut. When the man of her dreams offers his help and love, can she resist? http://amzn.com/B00ES5DZEQ

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Porching - The Fall Tradition in My Neighborhood



Laura Breck

Remember when it drove you a little nutty when people made verbs out of nouns? Now it’s so common, we don’t even question it. In our little neighborhood, everyone around the park has a porch, and in the fall, we take turns inviting neighbors for a Saturday evening get-together. The tradition has come to be called ‘porching.’ Sitting on a porch and chatting while consuming libation. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

 

As a writer and an editor, the term still makes me a little red-pen-y (my new idiom for ‘needing to circle word with red pen and add a question mark.’)

 

When an event notice came out this week that the city approved us to have a bonfire near the river bluff, the title had me reaching for my red pen. “We’ll be Bonfiring Sunday!” Okay, the person who sent this is going to hear a few choice grammar rules from me Sunday—whilst I’m marshmallowing and smoreing!

 

What are your favorite nouns that have become verbs?

 

Hope you all are great-day-ing!

Laura

~Smart Women ~Sexy Men ~Seductive Romance

LauraBreck.com

~Dancing in a Hurricane is available in digital formats at Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble and in paperback at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Createspace

~Love in the Land of Lakes is available in digital format at Smashwords, All Romance Ebooks, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, and in paperback at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Createspace

Weather and Baseball and Television, Oh My! by Alicia Dean

(Sorry. I am going to see Wizard of Oz in IMAX on Tuesday, so I guess I’m in the zone :)) 

However, the title is related to this post. Those are three of things I love about Autumn. I love the change in weather. I very much dislike Summer and heat and sun, so when the weather cools off and Fall is here, it means Winter is coming soon…which is my favorite season of all. 

Another thing I love about Fall is MLB Post-Season. This year, my team (the Cincinnati Reds) is going to the playoffs, and I am so excited! We blew it last year, but I have faith that it won’t happen again. 

I also love that my favorite shows premiere in the Fall. It’s been a long hot Summer without them, and I’m anxious to be reunited with old friends. A few of my shows air during the Summer: Dexter (which is ending forever, and I’m afraid I will have to seek counseling to deal with it) and True Blood. But my shows that have either just started or will start soon are New Girl, The Mindy Project, How I Met Your Mother, The Middle, Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, and in January, Justified. 

 But the shows I’m looking MOST forward to are The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, which start October 3^rd. I’m such a big fan, I wrote two Vampire Diaries stories for the launch of Amazon’s Kindle Worlds:

Hopefully, you’re not as much of a tv addict as I am (I even watch reruns of Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, etc, etc), because it takes up a lot of time. But, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. 

What are some of your favorite shows—new and old?

Run Into Fall by Jannine Gallant

Yep, it’s that time of year again. Temperatures are cooler, a few leaves have started to turn and the kids have gone back to school. A whole new routine begins—one where I can write without constantly hearing, “Mom, do you know where my flip-flops went?” (As if they got up and walked away of their own accord!) “Mom, what’s for breakfast (or lunch or dinner)? Mom, can you drive me…” (Fill in the blank—the choices are endless.)

Tara at the 2012 Championship Race

In our house, the beginning of the school year means the beginning of fall sports. No, my girls didn’t get their athletic ability from me, thank heavens. My husband is a sports fanatic. (Not watching—doing!) While for most high school sports enthusiasts, fall means football, it doesn’t around here. My girls run cross country. My youngest, Kristen, is a freshman this year. Her older sister, Tara (a junior), spent the summer brainwashing my beautiful ballerina into believing she likes to run. Tara is a die-hard competitor (Nevada state champ last year—yes we live in CA, but Tahoe kids compete in Nevada since it’s so much closer.) This year Tara’s goal is not only to be personal State Champ again but to have her girls’ team win as well. It didn’t take a math whiz to figure out she needed at least one more fast runner to accomplish her goal. Kristen is a recreational runner. Tara decided that somewhere in her sister’s genetic makeup, there must be a competitive racer just waiting to be released. So she is slowly but surely torturing her into shape, determined to let the team’s missing link loose! LOL Kristen is improving. She has until the end of October to accomplish her sister’s (and what is becoming her) goal.

So, on most Fridays I drive an hour or two (or three) to races to cheer them on.

Since we are so immersed in the running world around here, it isn’t surprising I chose to make one of my heroines a runner. In Maybe This Time, Chloe runs into her old high school pal, Adam, on the course of the Lake Tahoe Marathon. A friendship turns into a romance in this story about finding love a second time around. There’s plenty of humor too. The book opens on the set of a reality dating show set in Hawaii. The show’s name—Get Lei’d. One of my more clever moments if I do say so myself. So if you enjoy running or reality TV or funny romances, give this one a try.

What’s the fall sport of choice in your house?

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Returning Home But Leaving Part Of My Heart Behind

by Betsy Ashton

I'd been gone two years without returning home. Without stepping foot on US soil except to vote at the American Embassy and a couple of raids at the BX with an air force officer I met. When it was time, I didn't want to go. I couldn't stay either. I was torn.

I spent two years in Japan in graduate school, working on a masters degree in Japanese literature, immersed in the culture, rarely speaking English. I was twenty-one when I left home, already a college grad. I had no idea what it was going to be like living in another country where I could never assimilate. After all, this was Japan and everyone there was Japanese. Everyone but me, that is.

Friends in my student apartment house taught me to shop, use the train and subway systems, the etiquette of the public bath. My "apartment" was a four-and-a-half tatami room with a squat john for a toilet and cold running water. I had a gas ring for cooking and a small electric furnace for heat. A floor fan to cool the sweat in the summer. No furniture. In a nine- by nine-foot room, you don't have furniture. You have a small table with cushions on the floor. Bedding folds up and goes into a closet every morning.

Did I mention public baths? Yup. Mine was two blocks away. I carried my wash basin, all my lotions and potions and towels down the street to bathe with other women and children from my neighborhood. Dark auburn hair halfway down my back. 5'8" tall. Skinny. Striped tan lines in the summer.  I was the only foreigner and the kids were transfixed.

I learned to hold my wash cloth in from of my privates. Japanese women aren't shy about showing their breasts to other women, but they hide their privates. When the man who ran the bath house walked through the women's room, I covered my breasts the first time. That was poor manners. I never did it again. I gradually go used to the bath house owner moving through, to men's voices on the other side of the wall, to nodding at clean bodies walking away from the bath.

One day, a young child stared and stared. I was terribly sunburned from a week at the beach. She wanted to know if all foreigners were striped or just me. When I rose from washing my hair and body to move to the soaking tub, the child walked over and lifted my towel. I dissolved in laughter, Her mother dissolved in humiliation. It took the intervention of several other women to help the woman understand I wasn't angry but thought the child wonderfully natural. We became fast friends.

I traveled throughout Japan. I loved the mountains, the temples, the shoreline. Everything but always feeling like a stranger.

When it was time to leave, when my two-year program was finished, and when the Japanese government issued orders for me to return home, I do so aboard a ship. On the dock were my friends, those I had to leave behind. I was alone on the deck of a large immigrant ship taking Japanese to Brazil. I threw paper streamers to my friends. We held onto our ends until the ship pulled away from the dock and the streamers broke.

That day I turned my face toward home, but I left my heart in Japan. I've been back many times since, but it was never the same. I could never again be a stranger in the strangest land I could have imagined. I miss my naivete.