My Niece Brooke is 12 Today!!!!

Happy Birthday Brooke! I can't believe you are 12:) I hope you have fun with your friends tonight. Watch out for payback from Colton!

I am posting some pictures of your happy little face that are some of my favorites!

This was taken when you were born in Flower's Hospital.

Your Dad with your Granny and Great Grandmother Momma Peacock. We were all so happy when you finally came! You were a beautiful baby.

This is a picture of Brooke and her Poo Blanket. Poo was her constant companion. He had to be with her at all times.  I think he still is!

Sharing Poo with Colton:)
We like to watch movies. One day we were watching Babe. I thought Brooke would like it because she has always loved animals. All of a sudden Brooke started sobbing really hard. She said she was crying because Babe was lost. I turned the movie off! :)

Brooke, Poo and....... Is that Donald Duck?

In Grandpa's Lap eating Cheez Its with Gracie.

Playing and Singing Jesus Loves Me!.....

Presenting.......THE FACES OF BROOKE

BIG APPLES!

                                                       

                  Having punch with Gracie during Baby Shower for Cicely.

During the shower....in background are Brooke's Granny, Aunt Kim's back, cousin Whitney, cousin Calee, great grandmother Momma Peacock, Aunt Mary, Cicely opening presents, Brooke and Colton.

Home from School Sick with Colton!

That Book Looks Serious!

Halloween Party 2005

Cousin "It" Is Here!

Jasmine, Count Dracula and The Little Mermaid.

With Isa during a party!

Dressing Stephanie!

"You're kidding....."

Brooke, her dad and baby King Louie:)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROOKE! WE LOVE YOU AND WE ARE VERY PROUD OF YOU!



God's will in our lives.......

The Birthday Boys!....Hudson on the right was 1 yr. old Nov. 6 and Holland is 2 today, Nov. 9.

These boys have quite a story to tell already! Holland was born premature and stayed in Children's Hospital in Birmingham until Christmas Eve of 2008. We were so happy he made it home for Christmas.

A year later, Hudson, with great care, was born a full term baby. Soon after his birth there were complications and he was taken to Children's hospital in Birmingham. The doctors told his Mom and Dad, Amber and Justin, there was only one hope to save Hudson's life and of course they agreeded to the procedure. I won't attempt to explain it. But I will tell you a story.......

Justin and Amber had just agreed to the medical procedure and came back and sat down in the waiting area of the intensive care at Children's Hospital, where Justin's mother and I were. One of the Chaplins of the Hospital came over and sat down next to Justin. He had some stones in his hand that had words like wisdom, strength, understanding etc. on them. The Chaplin held out his hand and asked Justin to choose one of those rocks that represent what he would like to pray for. Justin looked at the rocks and thought for a minute and said,  "Well Preacher if it's all the same to you I won't do that." You could see the Chaplin squirm a little. Justin continued, "You see I've found that when you pray for something the Lord puts it in your path to need those things. So if it's all the same to you I had rather just pray for God's Will in my son's life."  The Chaplin was overjoyed to hear that and we prayed..........  There's a lesson there for all of us.

Amber, my niece and Justin, her husband, are two of the most courageous people I have ever known. I am so proud to have you in our lives. We love you all very much.

Holland left, Amber and Hudson right





National Peanut Festival

This Banana Tree came up next to a barn at the farm where some limbs, that were trimmed from Granny's Banana tree, were thrown away. They were o.k. not very sweet.

Yesterday I watched some of the Peanut Festival Parade on television. I called home and Momma said that Holland was riding in the parade on a tractor with his Daddy! Glad the tractor had a cab, it was really cool outside. Great parade day though. The National Peanut Festival has always been a bright spot for our family.
My first memory of the fair was when I was about 4 years old we lived on the Cottowood Highway and the fairgrounds were located on the grounds of the Houston County Farm Center. We could see the farris wheel from Momma's bedroom window. I remember lying on the bed with Momma waiting for Daddy to come home and take us to the fair. My favorite game was Pick up Ducks! I won a little sock monkey once! We all enjoyed the greasy pig and calf scramble as much as the midway. We also enjoyed the livestock tents and of course the crafts and cooking tent. When it was time to go home we always bought a corn dog and then a candy apple!

I found this clipping in Granny's recipe box from the Dothan Eagle featuring the Peanut Festival Cake winner, Mrs. Carolyn Coskrey. Mrs. Coskrey was one of Momma's good friends in later years.  Mrs. Coskrey was a great cook and a good friend to all. She passed away recently and is missed by everyone in the community. I'm not sure of the date of the clipping but LBJ was president.  There is a cartoon on the back.  The LBJ Tax Bill is standing in front of President Johnson saying "I bring you a message from Congress" ....on his back side is a big foot print!

The rides were operated by Johnny's United Shows. Granny's brother Eddie Sims worked for them. Every year he came to visit and sometimes he had a surprise for me! I  will post some pictures of Uncle Eddie.

Uncle Eddie on the right and his father, my Great Grandfather, Henry Sims on the left.

Thanksgiving 2007, Chicken and Dumplings and Cornbread Dressing with Giblet Gravy

Momma's Thanksgiving Table 2007

In the early days on Thanksgiving Day we were usually at home with Granny and Grandpa. Aunt Ruby and Aunt Bertha came over to our house, and sometimes, Aunt June and Uncle Bob and Mick and Sandra came too. Momma, Aunt Bertha and Granny cooked enough food for an army. They served cornbread dressing, with giblet gravy, chicken and dumplings, fresh peas, potato salad, baked ham, baked turkey, sweet potato casserole, collards and/or turnips with mustard, with fried corn bread. For desserts there were cakes, pies, and cookies. Momma usually made a coconut cake with a 7 minuet frosting, and a lemon cheese cake. Aunt Bertha often made a Japanese Fruit Cake and Granny usually made a German Chocolate cake for Thanksgiving.

Steve left standing, Keith right standing,
Mickey Wayne holding Teresa and Daddy, 1978

Aunt Bertha made the chicken and dumplings, Granny and Momma both made a pan of dressing. And they each cooked meat and vegtables. There was alot of food. But there were alot of hungry guys to feed! We ate left overs and made turkey and ham sandwiches the next day while we watched the Alabama/Auburn football game.


I'm not sure where to start. This is a big task because they didn't measure things except in baking. Baking measurements had to be exact. Aunt Bertha's chicken and dumplings were so good. She made the dumplings from scratch. Her dumplings were the best of all the Aunts! Sorry Aunts! Every Holland Family reunion I always made it a point to ask Aunt Bertha which pot of dumplings she made so I could be sure to eat hers! It's going to be hard to tell you how to do this because there are no measurements, but I will try to explain it. "Practice makes Perfect applies here. I think she had a lot of practice!


Steve about 6 yrs old and Aunt Bertha




Holland Family
Standing Left to Right Naomi, Lena Mae, Jessie, Bertha about 7 years old, Seated are Oree left and Hubert my grandfather Right

 Momma dictated the following directions to me, without measurements of course. I tried to pin her down to approximate measures for the oil and buttermilk:) She said "You just have to do it and you will know how!" So here we go lets see how we do.......

Bertha's Chicken and Dumplings

Self Rising Flour
Buttermilk
Vegtable oil
Large Hen
3 Stalks of chopped celery
1 large yellow onion

salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, stainless dutch oven is best, cook a large hen, salted and covered with water, with 3 stalks of celery, and 1 large onion chopped. Cook for 2 hours on medium low heat. Watch the hen and when the legs and thighs begin to separate from the breast it's done. You want it to hold together while you take it out of the water, so don't over cook it. Let the hen cool and then remove from the pot and remove the skin, and bones, pull the breast meat apart and reserve for later use in the dressing and the giblet gravy. At this point it's best to make your dressing. When you have the dressing almost cooked return the broth to stove and bring to a boil. Make sure the pot is about 1/2 full of broth if not add some water, this would be about 4-5 qts of broth.

In a bowl of self rising flour make a well and put 3 tablespoons of vegtable oil, and about 1 cup of buttermilk in the well. With your hand flip the flour from the sides of the well into the buttermilk and mix it until you have a dough ball big enough to make about 10 to 12 biscuits. If you need more just add more buttermilk and flour.

When you have a ball that is thick enough you can pick up, transfer it to a floured surface. Kneed  until it is soft and smooth. You may need to add flour to get it smooth and not sticky. Then flour a rolling pin and roll the dough into a thin sheet, 1/8" thick or less. Take a knife and cut the sheet of dough into strips about 1 1/2 inches wide, about the width of lasagna noodles or a little less, then cut them again into pieces about 2 to 3 inches long. You can lay the long strips in stacks and then cut the whole stack into the smaller pieces.... it's a little faster.

Pick up a stack of the cut dumplings and lay the dough in the boiling broth in single layers. After you add each layer of dumplings sprinkle the top of each layer with black pepper until you have added all of the slices.  Do Not Stir!!!! Press dumplings down in broth with the back of a spoon. (Very Important). Cook only for 1 or 2 min. and then turn the heat off and let the pot sit for at least 5 min. on the cooling eye of the stove. Remove from the eye and let stand or serve DO NOT COVER WITH LID and DO NOT STIR. 


Corn Bread Dressing with Giblet Gravy

3 cups of medium grind corn meal
10 pieces of white bread for bread crumbs
2 tsp. of salt
3 eggs
2 1/4 cup milk
3 Stalks of celery sautee until tender in 2 tablespoons of butter with 1 large onion chopped
7 eggs boiled and chipped (reserve 3 eggs chipped for gravy)
Hen meat previously cooked with celery and onion, deboned and shredded

For Cornbread:

Heat oven to 450
Pour 1/4 cup vegtable oil in 10" cast iron skillet set aside.

Mix cornmeal, salt, 3 eggs and milk. Place in skillet in 3 pones. With a spoon take the oil that comes up the sides of the pan and dab the tops of the pones.  Bake in 450 degree oven for 30 min or until golden brown.

Remove from oven and let cool. You can make cornbread the night or day before and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before crumbling.

Toast the white bread until crunchy. Let cool and roll toast with rolling pin into fine bread crumbs.

Ok now you are ready to combine everything and make your dressing. At this point you can refrigerate everything and assemble the next morning.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Combine crumbled cornbread with sauteed celery and onions, 4 sliced and chopped boiled eggs, ( chop eggs into slices about 1/4 inch thick or less and then cut in half. You don't want to smash the eggs or cut them too small they will break up when you start mixing it all together), add the bread crumbs, and reserved chicken and season with black pepper. Pour some chicken broth into the cornbread mixture and mix with spoon until well blended. The dressing should appear wet and pour easily into a 13 x9 baking dish. Bake 45 min at 400 degress until golden brown.

Giblet Gravy

3 tablespoons of olive oil
2 heaping tablespoons of flour
3 to 4 cups warm chicken broth
2 cups dark meat chicken diced
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped onions
3 chipped boiled eggs
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in skillet and add flour stir until brown add warm broth and season with salt and pepper, add celery, onions, chopped chicken and chipped boiled eggs. Cook on medium for about 10 to 15 min. until thickened. If too thick add more broth. This gravy should be medium to thin....not thick.

Gosh I sure am looking forward to seeing everyone. I found some pictures from Thanksgiving 2007. We were all together in Rabun Gap. It was a really nice Thanksgiving. Our last with Momma Peacock and Daddy. I can't find any of Momma Peacock except her back! She must have been doing that on purpose.  Amber may have some more she had her camera. I will post them if she does.


Happy Birthday Baby Hudson. Hudson Smith is 1 year old today! We are so thankful for you!

Daddy Nov. 27, 2007

Danielle on the way home! She's sleeping :) Shhhh!  We love you Danielle!

Momma, Aunt Shirley and Aunt Brenda during the National Peanut Festival Parade around 1995.

More tomorrow....

Big Creek, Roscoe, Saturdays at Granny's, Bertha's Company Hash Recipe

Ancestors plowing field.

Big Creek, where I grew up, is a community in south Alabama. Not a town or a city. Just a little community made up of farming families whose ancestors have lived there since the 1700's. Big Creek Methodist Church where my father is buried has the grave of a Revolutionary War soldier, whose family is tied to mine by the marriage of distant relatives.

I have traced my family tree back to my Great, Great, Great Grandfather Eli English. The entire family lived within a few miles of Big Creek. They were farmers and woodsmen, loggers and pulpers. Eli English was born in 1848 in Ga. He was a farmer and later became a preacher in a church named Bethel Baptist close to Graceville, Florida, about 7 miles from Big Creek.

Yes the creek is Big. It is small in places but big in others. It is fed by a bay called Cooper Bay, where my Dad always said "the biggest coons in the country live in Cooper Bay!"  He loved coon hunting. I asked him why and he said he just liked hearing the dogs bark and tree the coons. He loved his dogs and he loved being in the woods. I never remember not having at least two hound dogs, usually more than two.

When I was about four years old Daddy brought a baby raccoon home. It was a baby that his dogs  made an orphan. He didn't tell me that.  He just fed the little fuzzy thing with a bottle and gave it vegetables and fish to eat. His name was Roscoe. Roscoe grew up to be a big guy.  He was about as big as my dog Louie, who weighs about 12 lbs.

Soon Roscoe learned how to get out of his pen. His pen was on the other side of the pump house just outside the kitchen window. The dog's pens were on the other side of the pump house by the barn. Of course we always knew when Roscoe was out because the dogs would go crazy!

Raccoons are very smart and use their front paws the same as we use our hands. They look like they have leather gloves on to me. We fed Roscoe grapes and corn on the cob and he washed them first and then ate, holding them in his hands. He was cute and fun to watch. I was never allowed to hold Roscoe but I could touch him while Daddy held him.

One day in the spring, I think, we were going to Granny's house for supper and when we came home we found that Roscoe opened the back door and wrecked the kitchen. It was totally destroyed. All of the dishes were out of the cabinet and broken in the middle of the floor. Flour, sugar, potatoes, everywhere! And to make it even worse there was a bucket of syrup and a churn of butter spilled too. Wow what a mess that was. I remember Momma sitting down in the middle of the floor and crying. Daddy put me to bed and when I woke up the next morning it was all clean.

Roscoe was locked in his cage after that. And despite Momma saying he had to go and arguing with my Dad that he should turn him loose he stayed for a while longer. Then one day he bit Daddy's thumb really bad. After momma bandaged his hand Daddy loaded Roscoe in the dog box he always carried in the back of his truck and took him to the bay and set him free. Daddy said he learned then that no matter what you do a wild animal will always be a wild animal. Roscoe wasn't able to feel remorse or gratitude or know right from wrong. He couldn't become a domestic pet.

The syrup that Roscoe spilled came from Daddy Buck's in Graceville. Really good cane syrup. Wish I had some right now! We ate syrup for breakfast mixed with peanut butter. Momma made her biscuits. I don't know if store bought biscuits even existed then. They didn't for us anyway! The homemade butter was just the very best! Daddy took a little butter and smashed it with his fork and poured some syrup over it, and stired it all together and broke off pieces of the biscuit and "sopped" it up! I loved it and still do. I just haven't ever been able to make those good biscuits the same as Momma.

Picture of Me and Daddy :)

Momma didn't measure anything. She took flour, she stored in a big round plastic container inside a big silver pail and made an indention or well in the flour and she poured in some buttermilk. Then flipped the flour from the sides of the well into the buttermilk. She used her hands and flipped the dough in the well until it was the right consistency. Then she pinched off a little and rolled it in her hands to make a circle and placed them in a greased cast iron skillet. When the skillet was full she put a dab of cooking oil on top. She is really good at doing this. But doesn't make them anymore. I asked her why and she said that the frozen ones are just as good and alot easier! They are easier Momma, but not better!

Me, Momma and Greg

My Grandpa, Hubert Holland lost his thumb when he worked in the saw mill and he told us that he bit it off sopping syrup! He took me to see syrup being made one day. I'm not sure if we were in Gracville or Cottonwood. I was little, but old enough to remember going with him. I remember the mules pulling the arms of the grinder, and the strong smell coming from these big black cast iron pots that were outside over a fire. We took home a big five gallon pail of syrup and Grandpa filled up smaller pails for us to take home. Those pails were used for a lot of things. In an earlier blog I told you about Granny storing her Lane Cake with cut apples around it. She used one of these pails for that, and she stored flour and sugar in them also.

I spent as much time as I could with Grandpa and Granny. On Saturdays we ate breakfast and then Granny went out in the back yard to do laundry.  She had an old wringer washing machine. I loved to watch her set this thing up. She always said "Now Katie you sit right there and don't move. Granny don't want you to get your fingers caught in this old machine. Noooo why it would just pinch your little fingers right off!" She always called me Katie. And if she was looking for me she would call out "Yoo Hoo Katie Lou where are you?" I was usually in her room in the floor looking at something or plundering through her closet, trying on her shoes, or putting on her "ear bobs", as she called her earrings. Later in the afternoon Grandpa would take me to the store at Wilson Mill for a treat. I usually had an orange soda and a Moon pie or a Baby Ruth candy bar, Grandpa liked those. Then I would take a nap on a pallet in the living room with an old black oscillating fan blowing. The noise and the movement of the curtains put me to sleep every time.

On Sunday mornings after breakfast Granny read the Sunday Comics to me, "the funnies" as she called them. I liked Blondie and Dagwood and Charlie Brown and Alley Oop and Orphan Annie. Alley Oop was about a guy who lived in the jungle and there were always pairs of eyes looking out of the dark at him. That was really creepy to me. I have always had a reoccuring dream that I am walking and all of a sudden there is darkness and eyes popping out looking at me.

Ok that's enough of that I hope I didn't bore you with those memories.

This is a picture of Granny and Grandpa on their 50th wedding anniversary. Granny was so happy that day! She said "Wooo Katie, I can't believe we made it 50 years! I wouldn't trade my life for any other."

The following recipe was in Granny's box and it was written by her sister in law, Bertha Holland.
The recipe calls for two cups of tomatoes. She canned all of her tomatoes or put them in the freezer. Today you can purchase canned tomatoes. Use for this recipe, a #2 can, which is the large can of whole peeled tomatoes. The steak sauce she used was probably A1 steak sauce.