Help! I need Cooking Lessons

Cooking is not one of my better qualities. I just never got started off right. Being the oldest of 7, and living in the house with my grandparents until I was 11, I didn't get any cooking lessons when I was growing up. My grandmother Wilson was an excellent cook and did much of the cooking. Everything she cooked was just perfect! Her biscuits were light and fluffy, her rice never stuck together, she seasoned her vegetables with bits of pork, and her cakes were supreme. My mother helped in the kitchen but Mama was the chief cook. I should have been in there getting lessons. Instead I was the "nanny" and helped take care of my younger siblings while mother was in the kitchen.

When Jim and I got married, was he in for a suprise! I had to buy a cookbook and start learning to cook. I didn't even know how to make coffee because we didn't drink coffee in our house. We had to drink milk (although I never did master the art of milking a cow). In the summer we drank iced tea, even for breakfast sometimes. Jim had never heard of anyone drinking ice tea for breakfast, or in the winter.


I bought a Better Homes and Garden cookbook when we were living in Germany the first 2 years we were married. The only problem was I couldn't find a lot of ingredients called for in the recipes, in the German marketplace where I went to shop. I baked my first turkey while living in Germany and didn't know there was a package inside the turkey that needed to be removed. I found the giblets inside when we carved the turkey. I tried to make dressing for the turkey but they don't eat cornbread in Bavaria and the only cornmeal I could find looked like grits. So much for my Southern Thanksgiving meal.


I got my B.S. degree in Home Economics and I'm so glad I didn't get graded on individual cooking. We usually cooked in teams. My interest was more in the interior design, arts and crafts and sewing than in foods.


Over the years, our family has eaten a lot of frozen entrees and convenience foods. When we retired, I started making things from scratch and using as many fresh vegetables and fruits as possible. Food tastes so much better when it doesn't come from a can or loaded with preservatives if bought packaged, ready to heat and eat.


I still have one big problem. I cannot bake. There's just something I do wrong when I mix things to put in the oven. A recent pound cake was a disaster. It didn't rise, with the crusty, split crack on top like my friend's cakes. Another friend told me to cut it in cubes and freeze it until I need a dessert, and then turn the disaster cake into a trifle. Yesterday I made a key lime icebox pie; except it was more like a pudding than a pie. To make it firm enough to cut and serve, I got creative and dissolved 2 envelopes of gelatin and added to the pudding and it became firm like a pie should be. One problem; I added too much green food coloring and it looked more like a Christmas dessert than pale green key lime. But it was good and we ate it and the graham cracker crust which I bought already prepared.



A few years ago I made our son Bill a 7 layer chocolate cake for his birthday and the icing was better than the cake. The granddaughters loved it and keep asking for another one. I didn't tell them how many thin layers I made before I got enough of the same size and thickness to make the cake! And I had to keep making more cooked icing to have enough to spread over 7 layers. I have no plans to make another one any time soon. They have good ones already made at our grocery store.


I don't think my biscuits have ever tasted the same or looked the same each time I make them. I admit to buying frozen, uncooked biscuits from Kelley Foods (not the kind that come in a rolled can). We don't have biscuits very often - too many calories. Once at a family gathering, my nephew Andrew asked if Aunt Judy could make biscuits. He said Aunt Nell's were more like cannon balls. I didn't even get angry because he was telling the truth!



My granddaughters fortunately think I'm a good cook and I usually try to cook their favorite dishes when they visit. Katie loves to cook and when she visits us, she likes to make chocolate chip cookies (so she can lick the spoon and bowl). This photo was taken at the farm house a few years ago when she was about 11. She was standing on a stool to reach the counter. She wanted to make the cookies all by herself. She kept sampling the raw cookie dough and I was afraid she wasn't going to have any left to bake! I remember they were very good.


I cut out recipes from magazines and maybe try them once or twice and my family always say things like, this is good, but we like chicken better fried! Why bother to try new recipes!

I have a basket of recipes on all types of paper, backs of envelopes, torn out of newspapers, etc. and one of my "to do" things for 2008 is to put these recipes in a computer file, coding them as favorites, holiday, pot-luck, etc. I still use my old Auburn and Montevallo home economics cookbooks from high school in the 1950's. They have the kinds of foods and recipes we ate when we were growing up.

My goal is to get all of my "tried and true" recipes in a recipe file on the computer and when I need one, I'll just print it out without having to search through my basket or cookbooks. But I'll miss the dirty,worn, greasy pages of the old cookbooks or cards with icing on them. Maybe I'll save those valuable recipes in a lock box after I enter them in the computer.

Dog Days of Summer are over ???

Dog days of summer are supposed to be over but not so here in Elba. The phrase Dog Days or "the dog days of summer", refers to the hottest, most sultry days of summer. They are still with us and it's only about 30 days until the first day of fall.


This past month has been unusually hot and humid, in the 90's every day, and lots of showers. It's almost like living in a jungle. I'm so thankful for modern conveniences, but most of all for air conditioning in weather such as we are having. I go walking around 6:30 A.M. before the sun comes up and by the time I get back home the sun is shining on my back and my hair is wet, and I've only been gone for 30 minutes.


Because of the heat and humidity, I sometimes feel very tired and no energy. In fact, I have to take a nap after lunch because my energy level drops way down. Jim remarked recently that I haven't "pulled weeds" in the flower beds in quite awhile. I just can't get motivated to get out in the heat. I even forget to water my plants in the potting shed sometimes.


Now I know part of the problem with my lack of energy, etc. Recently I mentioned to the nurse at the Dr.'s office when I went for a shot for an inflamed sciatic nerve, that my blood pressure was normal and my pulse was 47. I thought the lower the pulse reading the healthier I was. Jim's pulse is always in the 60's and 70's. Little did I know that mine was way too low! She said I needed to contact my primary doctor right way and let him see why my heart was beating so slow. Later that day I did go to visit the Dr. and learned that I need to have a pacemaker "installed" to take care of my slow heart, a condition called bradycardia. An EKG showed that I have a right bundle branch block!! Now I'm waiting to get an appointment with a cardiologist who is also an electrophysiology cardilogist (only 2 in Dothan) who will check me out and arrange for the pacemaker.


Other than fatigue and being sleepy, I am having a hard time concentrating. Actually I thought perhaps I might have symptoms of Alzheimer's. But I'm glad to learn that this is also a symptom of bradycardia.


At certain times of the year, I sometimes wake up with vertigo usually caused by sinus problems. But last Sunday morning I work up early and went outside to get the newspaper, and was so lightheaded and weak, I was wondering if I would make it back inside. Again, feeling lightheaded is a symptom of bradycardia.


It's amazing how we have all these things wrong with us, and assume they are part of aging or the hot sultry dog days of summer pulling us down.


I have been reading about pacemakers and learned that they don't put you to sleep to install them. So maybe I'll get to watch and see how they do it?? I want the most modern, up-to-date version with energizer batteries that will last a long time. I wonder if I will be able to hear it sending out the electrical signals to my hear muscles?

Caroline, Grandmother Gilmer, Grandma Nell
Nerissa, Katie, Liz, Ally 

I'm fast becoming a bionic person. First the artifical knee which I got in 1997 and it was supposed to last 10-12 years. It's now on its 11th year and recently it was x-rayed and the Dr. said it looks fine. Now I'll have a power pack installed in my chest. My knee set off the alarm in Boston airport last summer and now I will tell the airport screeners that I have a pacemaker and they must not touch it with the screening wand. Maybe I'll just stay out of airports. Most of the places I want to visit are within driving distance anyway. Besides we have to drive 4 hours to get to the Atlanta airport to catch a plane. By then we're usually half way to where we are going.


I can't wait to get my energy renewed. There's so many things I've been putting off doing because I just didn't "have the energy". I need to be "rewired" for a trip to the NC mountains in October and seeing 3 granddaughters (on the left side of photo) and Jim's mother in Harrisburg, near Charlotte. We hope to see the other two granddaughters when they come from Texas to Alabama to spend Thanksgiving with us.

Sunrise, Sunset

When I left home at 6:30 A.M. today for my morning walk, I saw the most beautiful sunrise through the tall trees down our street. It was bright red, with rays shining all around it. I don't think I've ever seen a brighter sunrise, the colors were so intense. As I was looking at the sun and walking along, the song, "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof came to mind. This has to be my all time favorite movie.


I can just see Tevye and Golde talking about their little girls as they sang " Sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years, one season following another, laiden with happiness and tears".



Our five granddaughters are growing up too fast; three in college, one a senior in high school and a 7th grader. Seems like yesterday they were all so young and just starting to school. Now the three in South Carolina, along with their dad, will be helping older sister Nerissa move back to her apartment at Clemson University where she will be a sophmore this fall. Last year they all fell apart when it was time for them to leave her and drive back home. I asked if they were going to be sad to leave her this year and they said "probably". These 3 sisters remind me of the little girls in Fiddler on the Roof. All so different but yet so close.


The other two granddaughters are back in school in Texas; one a senior at Univ. of TX and the other a junior at North TX at Denton.......

Sunset from our back yard

Then this afternoon as I was driving down Brunson Hill after leaving the funeral home where I visited with Miriam Kennedy's family, I witnessed the most beautiful sunset hanging over the little town of Elba. I almost stopped in the middle of the road so I could capture the beauty of the bright orange/red sun hanging suspended over the town, shining through a haze. It didn't last long because as I got to the bottom of the hill at Pea River, the sun disappeared over the horizon - and was gone. It was magical for a few minutes.


Again I thought of those lines from the song, Sunrise, Sunset - "one season following another, laiden with happiness and tears."


My days are fill with happiness and tears. All day I was thinking of the 12-year-old granddaughter who has just finished sewing a dress for her college sister. When I talked to her yesterday she was hemming the dress and could hardly for her sister to try it on again. Her enthusiasm for sewing prompted her dad to buy her a new portable Singer sewing machine.
She has a real knack for designing and sewing things. She spent a week with me in July and I gave her sewing lessons. The biggest accomplishment for her was to be able to do something neither of her older sisters can do. I can't wait for a photo of Nerissa wearing the dress her sister made for her.


The happiness disappeared awhile this afternoon when I went to the funeral home to visit the family of someone I've known most of my life, Miriam Kennedy. Her brother Glen was a classmate of mine and not in good health. I spent some time with him and we talked about memories of other classmates and where they are, etc.


Then when I left and started down the hill - there was that beautiful sunset, and I was happy again.


I wonder what song will come to mind in the morning when I have to go to the hospital to get an epidural for a sciatic nerve problem in my right thigh.

Celebrating Retirement

Grow old with me!The best is yet to be.— Robert Browning
Last Friday I had a telephone call from a friend in Atlanta, GA, telling me that our "boss" was retiring from the University of GA on August 15, and she thought I'd like to know so I could send him congratulations. He was a very special friend and I would like to attend his reception - but with the price of gasoline, I'll just send a pretty card instead.


In 1990, I started working part-time (20 hrs a week) for the GA Highway Safety Office through a grant administered by the GA Cooperative Extension System at UGA. Dr. Don Bowers, our boss, was Extension Leader of Family and Consumer Sciences. There were 7 of us (Regional Coordinators) who worked for the Occupant Safety Program. Our home office was in Lithonia, GA, just east of Atlanta. We met there monthly as a group to plan programs, etc. Don was usually at these meetings and we had a close relationship with him. He was much younger than some of us. It's hard for me to believe he's old enough to retire. The office in Lithonia closed and the program became the University of GA Traffic Injury Prevention Institute, now located in a new building in Conyers. Only one of the original 7 staff is still working for the program.

My friend and I talked about all of our co-workers and the fun time we had. We were all college graduates with varying majors. There were two retired law enforcement officers on our staff, a former school superintendant and some teachers. I think they hired me because I had a degree in Home Economics and lived in SW Ga where they needed a coordinator for 13 counties.


When you enjoy your job, you can be most effective. At the beginning we were to educate children and parents the importance of using seat belts - when the State of Ga started requiring people to buckle up. Then we trained workers to teach parents how to use child safety seats.


We met at Jekyl Island, Savannah, and other coastal places for annual meetings and I usually had to take James with me. He loved going to the GA Highway Patrol training center near Macon when I had to go there for safety classes. It snowed one week when we were at Rock Eagle 4-H Camp for a workshop. James was along and he wasn't too happy about the cold weather.


I was not planning to retire when  Jim decided one day in May to slow down and stop travelling to operations off-shore.  He took his doctor's advice and decided to retire. 


 My co-workers planned a big "going away" party for me at one of our monthly meetings. I treasure the plaque they presented to me. It hangs over my computer desk and I think of my friends every time I walk by and see it.


He didn't plan on retiring early but I'm glad he did. Because of some health reasons, he decided to retire at age 62. In the spring of 1996, we talked about selling our home in Georgia and moving to our farm in Alabama. This was accomplished by June 1996!


I won't say that was an easy move since we were not prepared to move on such short notice. We sold our house shortly after advertising it and the people were in a motel, ready to move in! We hurriedly stored much of our furniture and remodeled a home at the farm and moved to Alabama early in July.


James had a little difficulty with his dad being around all the time. One day while getting ready to go to town to buy groceries, James noticed that his dad was getting dressed to go with us and he asked "Does he have to follow us everywhere we go?" He was not used to his dad going shopping with us. We both had to adjust to having him at home all the time. But we soon got used to having Jim around and our retirement is great!


We haven't set our alarm clock in a long time, but I guess because we're getting older (in our 70's) we wake up early every morning now that we don't have to! We can stay up as late as we want to at night except I start nodding off around 10 PM.


We "celebrate" retirement every day of the year and I'm so glad we got an early start.

There is a "time" for everything

One of my favorite Bible passages is in Ecclesiastes 3:2; ... a time to be born and a time to die. I was thinking about that this week when John Mark Stallings (Johnny to us) died in Paris, TX. He and our son James attended the same school at one time when Gene Stallings was between coaching jobs and had returned to his hometown, Paris, TX.


Their school was a little white building near West Paris elementary school and it was appropriately named "The Little White School House". It was the only school for the mentally handicapped in Lamar County. I have a group photo someplace with Johnny in it. He is not in the photo 
pictured here. It was Boy Scout day when this photo was made. The 3 teachers are on the right end of the photo and James has on his coat and hood. Johnny was around 8 years old then and our son was 14 when Johnny was there. The teacher, Mrs. Cunningham, was Johnny's aunt. He was only at the school for about a year when Coach Stallings got a job and they moved. Our son never forgot about Johnny and over the years he would hear about him or see him on TV with his dad, and he would say, "There's my friend Johnny; I remember him!" 



Gene Stallings co-wrote a book about raising Johnny: Another Season: A Coach's Story of Raising an Exceptional Son and it paralled our lives so much. Until you've been in his shoes, you cannot believe the energy it takes to raise a "special" child. It often drains you, emotionally and physically. James is lucky because he is with us and we take care of him just as the Stallings family did for Johnny. But I think of all the other poor mentally handicapped children who don't have anyone. Many of his peers at the workshop he goes to every day have no family and live in group homes. Sometimes the families stop coming to see them and rely on others to take care of them. So sad...


Sometimes James amazes us with things he does. Recently his brother Bill send him a Burger King Crown card that he can use to buy cheeseburgers at his favorite restaurant. While James doesn't exactly know the value of money, he did figure this out. Last week we stopped at Burger King (he can only go once a week or he'd want to eat every meal there) to get a cheeseburger to take to church mid-week supper (he doesn't always like what we have to eat there). He had just received his card in the mail and I had tried to explain that he could use it until all the credit on the card was used up. One the way to the Burger King, he said he was going to buy onion rings, a cheeseburger, and a large Coke. Then when we got there, and we were getting out of the car, he announced that he was going to leave off the onion rings because they "cost too much" - he's heard me say this before so he wouldn't want to order them; and I didn't want him to have the calories. Then we got in the que to order and he decided to leave off the drink, so he would have money on his card for more cheeseburgers. He said he had a coke at home and could drink tea at church. I was amazed at how he figured all of this out. He has used his card 3 times now and makes sure I have put it in a safe place. He can get many more cheeseburgers - at least 15 or more.


He loves dollar bills rather than $5 or larger; because he has more bills. His Uncle Bob occasionally sends him a card with dollar bills inside. He saves them for a long time before he decides to spend some. Lately he gets $2 out of his billfold when they go bowling at work. He likes having his own money. The problem is sometimes he wants to share with his friends and we usually check to see how much money he has in his pocket when he leaves every morning.


Another "time to die" this week was for our 88 year old neighbor Mr. Manuel Jones, whose wife died in April this year. He died at home, alone, last Sunday afternoon. I will miss seeing him leaving early every morning in his red car, driving to the deli to get his breakfast. I waved to him last Sat. morning as he passed me on the street when I was returning from my morning walk. 


In my mind it's time for him to pass on; he was getting old. But Johnny was only 47.


I'm going to practice living life to the fullest every day I have left!!

Meeting the author of a good book I've read

Have you ever read a book so intense and descriptive that you would like to meet the author and hear how the book came about? That's what we plan to do on October 15 when we travel to Charlotte, NC for a few days. More about the author below.


Last year I was in a book club at our library and I suggested that we review "The Kite Runner" for one of our selections. I was so fascinated by the tale of the young Afghan who left his country after the Taliban took over and eventually came to California with his aging father. Before the Afghanistan war in recent years, I would have had to use an atlas to locate the country! But because of following the war on TV the past 3 years, I know where all of the areas are located and have a vivid picture in my mind of all the mountains and roads traversing them, weaving in and out of hills and valleys.


I didn't see how a movie could possibly be made from this book. It would be too violent! I wasn't disappointed in the movie when we saw in on DVD yesterday. We viewed it on wide screen tv in our living room. I didn't get up and leave the entire time. My favorite character was little Hassad, the servant's son and best friend of the rich boy Amir. That's all I'm going to say about the movie. Be sure to read the book before you see the movie. It will help since the entire movie has captions and it's a little difficult sometimes to read the pale yellow print at the bottom of the screen.


You can go to the author's website and read about him and another book he has written. I thought the Kite Runner was better. http://www.khaledhosseini.com/ Charlotte, NC's library program called "Novella" has several authors lined up in October 2008 to be a part of their Novella festival series: http://www.plcmc.org/novello/.  This is an annual affair.

Honoring my Great, Great Grandfather Grimes

Today Jim and I talked to Heath Wyrosdick, owner of Horizon Monument Company,  to discuss ordering a Civil War Military flat granite marker to place at the gravesite of my G-G-Grandfather John William Grimes who is buried in a Grimes family cemetery near Curtis community where I grew up.

Grimes Reunion

I never knew about this cemetery when I was growing up, nor had I ever heard of John W. Grimes. I doubt that my father ever knew about him either. My cousin Paul Grimes who lives in Jonesboro, GA always comes to our Grimes reunion the first Saturday in October every year. He has published a family history and we all consider him the Grimes authority. Paul's father and my grandmother were brother and sister, along with 11 more siblings.


My cousin Linda Westbrook and I decided one year to clean the old Grimes cemetery and invite our Grimes relatives to take their children to see the old tombstones there. No one has been buried there in many years. We got some inmates to help us one Saturday and we did more work than they did. We used clorox and soapy water to clean the tombstones ( later learned you don't use clorox on marble).


In recent years  money from a small cemetery fund has been used to pay someone to cut the grass and keep the cemetery clean. The chain link fence surrounding the small cemetery is starting to rust and we have to keep repairing it when trees or tree limbs fall across the fence.


Since we retired and moved to Alabama, we have researched several of our family lines and in the process, we discovered that John W. Grimes was a confederate war veteran. We got info about his regiment and where he served. We wrote to the national archives and obtained his CMSR (compiled military service record). He was a member of Co K, 57th Ala Infantry Regiment. The 57th joined the Army of the Tennessee and shared the hardships of the Dalton/Atlanta campaign.


He was born May 17, 1820 in Duplin Co, NC and died September 6, 1886 in Coffee Co., Alabama at age 66.  John William Grimes was married to Julia Ann Garrett who was born in 1827 in Montgomery, AL and died in 1903 in Covington Co., AL. They had several children and my great grandfather James Shorter Grimes was one of them. She is buried beside John William Grimes.


The flat marker will be placed at the foot of John William Grimes grave and a ceremony will be held to unveil the marker on the morning of October 4, 2008 when Grimes families gather for the Grimes reunion at New Ebenezer Baptist Church at Curtis community between Elba and Opp. The first Grimes reunion was held during WWI when the oldest son John was going to war and they gathered to tell him good-bye. The war ended soon after and he didn't have to go after all. The family continued to meet every year to celebrate Grandmother Grimes birthday the first Sunday of October. Later the date was set to meet on the first Sat. of October when more people could attend and not miss their church services on Sunday.


The New Ebenezer cemetery at Curtis was started when my grandfather James Shorter Grimes died from typhoid fever and his son John bought 2 acres of land from A.C. (Doc) Donaldson to start a cemetery. We have a copy of the deed for the cemetery. Several of James Shorter and Malissia Grimes sons and daughters and their Grimes families are buried in this cemetery, as well as my parents and we have a plot adjoining theirs.