Daddy's Rolaids Bottle

There is a Rolaids bottle sitting on shelf in my house. It is special to me. Really, it is! I'm sure you've scrunched up one side of your face wondering how a plastic bottle that says Rolaids on it could have extra significance to me. 

There is a story in it. Years ago, my father would buy Rolaids and take them for his heartburn, which he often had. Then he would save the bottle and put pennies in it. The bottle that sits on my shelf is ¾ of the way filled with pennies. When I look at it, I see my dad taking a penny out of his pocket, opening the lid of that plastic jar and dropping it in there. I laugh at the memory: Daddy had Rolaids bottles scattered here and there  throughout the house, each one worth its weight in pennies.

Every cent in my little bottle was held by my father; he touched every one of them and valued them all because “a penny saved is a penny earned.” My father left the earth more than two decades ago, and I miss him every day. Yep, that plastic bottle of pennies is special, and it will remain on my shelf in an honored place.

Groundhog Day

Last week Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow.* 

I've never met Phil, but I've seen lots of his kin in my lifetime. A groundhog is a woodchuck, a rodent, a ground squirrel. I grew up on a farm in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York and there were woodchuck holes all over the fields. The critters liver underground, where they dig long tunnels with several openings on the surface. When I was a young girl, I my father stopping me from galloping a horse through the field. He took me out to that field, showed me a groundhog hole and said, “If that horse steps in one of these holes while running, it's gonna break its leg and we’ll have to put ‘em down.” I never ran a horse through the field again.

In Germany, hedgehogs were the animal of choice to predict the coming of spring. But when German immigrants came to America, there were no hedgehogs to be found — so they called upon the woodchuck to predict the weather. It works like this: if the groundhog sees its shadow, it will be scared of the shadow and run back down the hole to sleep for another 6 weeks. But if the groundhog does not see its shadow, it means spring is close at hand. Now, mind you, groundhogs are only 40% successful at actually predicting the coming of spring, but still the ritual happens every year. Oh well, what can you expect from a humble rodent that never went to college.

*If you aren't happy with Phil's prediction, here are 8 other groundhogs that predicted spring last week.

Paper Flowers

Our oldest daughter got married a year and a half ago. She lives in Lynchburg, VA, and, of course, she wanted to get married there. She and her fiancé had both been living in the area for several years and they had established a great group of friends and a church family there so certainly it made sense. 

I wanted to have a shower for her but since her social group was in Lynchburg, it made more sense for me to travel there and host it in the area rather than having it in Charlotte, NC. I wanted it to be special, original, and transportable from Charlotte to Lynchburg. I needed to do as much as I could at home so the set up would be easy.

After some thought, I decided to multi-task flowers/decor and favors into one. It was Spring, so a garden theme fit in perfectly. Origami is one of my hobbies, so instead of purchasing flowers, I made them… about 100 of them.Then I made tags for each flower with a positive word on the tag; happy, wonderful, amazing, lovely, enjoyable, and so on. I used them to decorate the tables and at the end of the shower everyone received 2 or 3 flowers to take home and enjoy. My daughter kept several as a memory, too.  

Our lives are made up of memories and then we share them with others by turning them into a little story. What happy memory do you have? What did you do that was special and original?

Chocolate Jumbos

Merry Christmas and Happy Celebration!! 

I thought you might enjoy a favorite holiday cookie recipe, Chocolate Jumbos. They are a chocolate spice cookie with a butter cream frosting. They have a hole in the middle — and they just don't taste right without that hole. Even as I write this, my mouth begins to water for the taste of those cookies.

The recipe has been in the family since the 1800’s. We always make Chocolate Jumbos during the holidays and even now these cookies remain a family favorite. Recently my youngest daughter called me and said, “Mom, I want to make Chocolate Jumbos with you. I want to learn how to make them properly.” That made me feel good within my soul. To spend the time with my daughter carrying on a family tradition makes these cookies a taste of the past, the present, and the future.

This recipe is all we ever had to go by — just the ingredients, no other written instructions. I did make my own changes. I only use butter, no shortening.

My mother always rolled out the cookies with her rolling pin and used a biscuit cutter to cut them out into perfect circles. I have added my own flare by using a scoop. I scoop out the dough, put it on a cookie sheet I have sprayed with cooking spray, then flatten the dough with my hand. Using the handle tip of a wooden spoon, I swirl in a hole.

Have fun!! I truly hope you enjoy these cookies as much as my family does; a part of my life I share with you.

Back home...for a moment

This is the time of year I get transported back to my childhood in upstate New York. I sat on my front door step here in Charlotte a couple of days ago and ate an apple. It tastes different in the fall as the leaves softly float to the ground. Somehow it is sweeter, crisper, more delicious.

When I was a kid I would go out to the orchard in the back of our house. Now, I had to walk through the pasture and across the creek to get to it, but those mountain apples in that unkempt orchard were the best. They were small, red, and so very sweet. Many of them were “protein apples”, meaning they had a little worm in them — you eat around that part. But no chemicals, no GMO, just an apple. The cows liked them too. 

We also had a couple of winter pear trees. My father would lift my siblings and me up in the bucket of our tractor and we would pick pears in the fall and put them in bushel baskets. They would then be put in the cellar of our house and throughout the winter they would get ripe and we would have fresh fruit during the holidays. Mom would can many of those pears, too. I liked them better when you could hold them in your hand and bite into them. 

I think this year, as my family gathers together, I will ask my kids what memories they are fond of from their childhood. I’d like to know what brings them back home as they sit on their front door steps, too.

Right now, I think I need to get a cup of apple cider and sit on my front door step and go back to the Catskills for a few moments. I’ll return to Charlotte in 20 minutes or so.