Then I Thought of Home

I told you all I would post the recipe for the Turkey/Chicken Corn chowder but then everything happened with mom and I forgot so here it is now. Unless you froze some of your leftover turkey from Thanksgiving it's probably to late for you to try it but you might keep it in mind to help use up leftover Christmas turkey 3 cups cooked turkey breast, diced (can use chicken) 3 pieces of bacon 3 Tbsp. butter 1 onion, diced Two 14.5 oz. cans of turkey/chicken broth 28 oz. jar of salsa 16 oz frozen white corn (thawed) 2 cups milk 2 Tbsp. cooking sherry grated sharp cheddar cheese Fry bacon in a large pot. Remove bacon and set aside Saute onion in bacon grease and butter until onions are soft. Add four and stir until mixed well and starting to brown. Add turkey/ chicken broth, salsa, corn and turkey. Simmer over low heat for 20 minutes. Add milk and cooking sherry. Heat back up and serve. Crumble fried bacon and shredded cheese over the top of bowls

When I was a girl we always had what we called glazed sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mom made a glaze to go over the potatoes. She always used drained canned sweet potatoes or yams. In later years when they came out with the sliced frozen sweet potatoes she took to using those. I always like moms sweet potatoes. When I came into the Gray family they did sweet potatoes too. June always used real sweet potatoes, she cooked, peeled and made a glaze to go over them. I loved it. Now at Gray dinners Karen, Marks sister always does the sweet potatoes and the dressing she is the only one who can do it like her mom. For a long time I made sweet potatoes like June even thought they neve were as good as hers we liked them. Then I heard people talking about Sweet Potato Casserole. I had never had it but I had just got the Westview Christian Church cookbook. They named it A Taste of Heaven. I was going through it and I saw Reta Haub had a recipe for a swee

When I was growing up we always said yeast rolls. When Mark was growing up they always said yeast biscuits. I can hear his mom saying it now. June always made yeast biscuits when she had the family for dinner. She would most always make them ahead of time and freeze them. That helped her out a lot and we couldn't tell the difference. When she brought them to the table they tasted fresh from the oven. Not long after we married she shared her recipe with me. I made them and made them and made them. Or I should say I tried and I tried to make them. We rented a house from James and Melba Denny at that time it was near Shorts Corner Road, the house is no longer there but if you went over there and looked over the fence I'm pretty sure you would find a stone hard pile of failed yeast rolls. I did eventually learn to make them and while I would never say I could make them like June I could make them. Then I  got into making sourdough brea

Sometimes we think everyone knows so we don't bother to tell. But not everyone does know. There is always a new wave of people coming up who haven't done what so many take as ordinary. So today we are going to tell you how to freeze persimmon pulp. First of course you have to gather the persimmons. Now persimmons cannot be picked. They aren't good when they are all pretty and perfect on the trees. When they are ready and sweet they fall. When they fall it's not unusual for them to get a little banged up, don't worry about that. A banged up persimmon with a little dirt or a twig on it are the best ones. If you gather very many persimmons and can't work them up right away keep them in a shallow dish, don't pile them up and put them in the fridge. They will keep a couple of days this way. When you are ready to freeze them you want to sort through them and pick out any bits of leaf or twigs or dirt or maybe even a little bug.  Don't

I'm tired today. I've had it with Retroperitoneal Fibrosis. I'm ready for it to pack up and get out of here. When I was first diagnosed I didn't feel bad. I wouldn't have really know anything was wrong. Once I started getting treatment everything changed. I know that's common with several different types of illness's and treatments. There is a group of people who have this disease and they have a page you can follow. They all tell about what they are experiencing. I don't like the page. I looked at it and everyone went on and on. It seemed like a down place to me and besides that I wasn't having any of the things they were complaining about. Several of them talked of pain. They talked about having a hard time coming off the medications. Well now I know. Now I could post on that page. I have gone from no pain to pain. I have gone from a high dose to a low does and it's hard to adjust to. I swell like crazy. M

You know how they say gossip grows when it hits the ears of a fool and stops when it hits the ears of the wise? Well that is true.  I have been the fool at times and at times I've been wise. I was thinking this morning that fb sharing is a lot like gossip. Something comes up on our newsfeed. We don't know if it's true or if it's false. But we hit share. For all we know someone sat down to their kitchen table and make the whole thing up then hit publish and the whole world starts sharing it. This even happens with missing children stories. Then we share them and eventually people become immune to them. We need to know what we are sharing before we share. The same is true with politics. Know it's true before you share it or again there will be so much stuff out there no one will pay attention to what you are trying to say and you will again be a part of keeping something going that you think you want to stop. In a nutshell we need to be caref

Well after a year it's finally here, the cookbook is done and ready to order. It was a lot slower process than we anticipated. Lots of starts and stops. Sometimes I wondered if we would ever get here. I hope you will enjoy the book. It's very simple, and it's small. I pretty much sat down with my cookbook the one I have handwritten all of my favorite recipes in, the one I use all the time. My girls say it is the only thing they will fight over when I'm gone but to avoid that problem I plan to make them all a handwritten one and even though he didn't say he wanted one I'm going to make one for Lucas too. Anyway, I copied several of the recipes in this  cookbook right out of my handwritten book. With some of them I'v included a story about the recipe. I've tried to make the book be more about the time spent around the table than about what's on the table. I want you to be as inspired to make memories as you are to make food. The b

Someone asked if I had a good homemade cream of mushroom soup recipe and it just so happens that I do. We all really like this. Lucas really likes it. It's one of his favorites. This is the kind of soup that needs a sandwich to go along with it. Or at least around here anyway the soup alone isn't a heavy filling soup, it's warm and comforting but not heavy. Okay this is what you need. 1 large onion, chopped 2 garlic cloves, minced 1/4 cup buter 1 lb. fresh mushrooms, chopped or sliced 2 cups heavy whipping cream 2 cups beef broth 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp pepper Saute onion and garlic in butter over med heat until tender. Reduce heat to low add the mushrooms. Cook 8 to 10 minutes until tender. Stirring occasionally. Transfer to pot and add the cream, broth, salt and pepper.  Cook and stir over low heat until heated through. Garnish with grated parmesan cheese and parsley if desired. I usually double this recipe.

I listened to Joyce Meyer and she got me to thinking. Well actually I got to thinking a couple of years ago but Joyce reminded me. Two years ago when they told me they thought I had cancer and not just cancer but a lot of cancer . Well that got me to thinking. You know how when people  have something happen in life it  makes them consider life and how they are living? Often they  say something like, I want to concentrate on family more. Or they might say I want to stop and smell the roses. They could even say they realize things don't matter people do. Well with me it was the opposite. I've always been a little things person. I've always enjoyed and noticed the small things in life. Family was always first with me. Not because I had it figured out, I never knew to even figure. God just did that for me. I guess you could say seeing the little things and enjoying and being content was like a gift God gave me.  I didn't even think about it. Not

All of you have been so good to me. You have prayed and encouraged. You have sent cards and messages and flowers and food and gifts. So I wanted to give you an update on whats going on. As you know two years ago they found a mass in my abdomen. It turned out to be retroperitoneal fibrosis. It's rare. Not many people have it and so they don't know a lot about it. I had to have a scan back in the early spring, the first of March I think anyway at that time we found out the mass had grown five times bigger. That scared the doctors as they felt sure it had transformed into a cancer. So we had to have more scans more tests and wait. Then thankfully this month I had another biopsy. We went to the dr. yesterday and he said the drs at U of L could not tell what it was so once again they sent the tissue sample to the Mayo Clinic. Good news, wonderful news, it has not transformed. It is not cancer. It is still the retroperitoneal fibrosis. Bad news is it is

People are funny. Everyone loves an underdog until he isn't under anymore. If a person makes bad choices and ends up in a place in life they would rather not be they want to forget the choice but others don't forget it. When the person is struggling often times people bring up the bad choices they made but the person is trying to move past the bad choice. If someone makes good choices and ends up better in life people want to forget the wise choices but the person doesn't forget it. Remember the show Extreme Makeover? They would find a family that was down and out and they would go in and give them basically a new home. A wonderful home. Friends, neighbors and whole communities jumped on board to help. When the house was finished they all celebrated. But what happened in a few months? What happened over time? Some of those people who had been so excited started to think differently. They thought back to when that family didn't have anything.

I've posted about this before but my reading this morning brought it back to my mind. It's about the word, sure. Sure is a wonderful word. If we ask someone to do something and they respond by saying, "Sure" it makes us feel good. It makes us feel like they really want to help us or do what we ask. It sounds a lot better than, "Well I guess" or "if I have to" or " I guess I could". We all know that but somehow we give those other answers more than we probably realize. This blog post is about the word sure and our husbands. I want you and me as well to make it a habit to say sure every time we can. Mark loves Chinese, before that he loved Mexican. When he gets on a certain food he wants to eat it every time we go out. He will call me and say, hey get ready when I get home we will go up to the chinese.  I'm thinking, oh no not again. Sometimes I say that. Why do I say that? Why don&

These are rich cookies. Even a professional cookie eater like me can only eat one but oh the enjoyment of eating just that one. Heidi made them for our Mother's Day picnic. They are called the Ultimate Bar Cookie and they are the ultimate. We don't cut them in bars. We like to take a round biscuit cutter and cut them out in circles. I don't know why we do that, I guess we just like the way it looks. Granted they sometimes want to fall apart but oh are they good. You can save all the little crumbs and extra pieces  you have left after cutting them out and sprinkle them on ice cream for a topping or you can save them for when you have had a hard day and need some coffee and something sweet. Give them a try, this doesn't make a lot but since they are soooo rich you don't need a lot. 2 cups all- purpose flour 1/2 cup packed brown sugar 1/2 cup real butter, softened 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts One 3 1/2 -ounce jar macadamia nuts, coarsely chopp

Names are important. We spend a lot of time picking out our children's names. When we marry, our husbands give us their name.  It's not just our names that are important but the name of everything. Every known thing has a name. Trees, paper, medicine, tv shows, hotels, games, and on and on. Every thing has a name even things like, worry, depression, hopelessness, financial stress. cancer, tumors, resentment, hurt feelings, laziness, sickness, learning disabilities, jealousy, anxiety. You could say, you name it and it has a name. Just a few days ago Mark and I had some distressing news. It felt like more distressing news on top of the distressing news we were already working through. We were sitting in the drive thru at McDonalds going over how it all seemed to much. If Mark hadn't had the steering wheel and if I wasn't digging through my purse we would have been wringing our hands. Then it hit us. What are we doing? We are too old to be actin

I often get messages from people telling me I hit the nail on the head. They say I said just what they needed to hear. I've been asked if I had a listening device installed in their home. I must have been a fly on the wall. I've even had a few people message me mad  because they thought I was targeting them with my post. If the posts are hitting someone where they need hit or if they are offering a hand up when they need one it has nothing to do with me. I spend very little time thinking about what I post, I know you are saying, "Yeah, we can tell." What I mean is if you read something here and it's good, it's from God. It might be a thought I had while I was doing my morning reading so I decided to share it. It might be something I saw or heard and it got me to thinking so I share it. Sometimes it's in response to a question someone has sent in. It has to be that way. It has to be God giving me thoughts. There is no way I can kno

I was talking to a sweet friend this morning. She was asking about some of the things I did with my children when they were small. Just yesterday someone told me I was a good mother, they even went so far to say they thought I must have been a perfect mother. I felt myself cringe. Whenever I'm complimented on my mothering I feel that way. I feel embarrassed because I know the truth. I know my kids know the truth. I made more mistakes than you can shake a stick at. Most of you watched me and probably knew I was making mistakes. The crazy thing is I made them because I was trying to do it right. I though if I did this or had them do that or didn't let them do this of did have them do something else everything would be okay. You know what made my kids turn into the man and the women they are today? It was God. He is so full of mercy and goodness and he has a place in his heart for mommas. He listened all those nights I went to bed and cried because I ha

Have you ever known a jealous person? Have you ever been a jealous person? We're jealous when we want what someone else has. We hear someone say something nice about another person and instead of hearing the other person complimented, we hear ourselves criticized. Has anyone you considered in your circle been kind to someone outside your perceived circle and you felt as if you had been left out or overlooked? It's been said that envy or jealousy is like drinking poison hoping the other person will die. We can go so far with jealousy that it actually becomes resentment or even bitterness. That's when we are not only upset we don't have whatever it is we want we don't want the other person to have it. The problem or well I should say one of the problems with jealousy is it keeps us from focusing on what we do have. It keeps us from seeing our own skills and abilites It will damage relationships. It will damage the relationship of the person we ar

I've been asked a few questions and I'm going to try to answer. The most freeing thing I have ever learned is that everyone is not like me. God uses people who think different and believe different than I do. He uses all kinds of people to reach all kinds of people. And it's none of my business who he uses or how he uses them. If only I had known sooner. Romans 14:4 says in a nutshell...Who are you to judge another man's servant? To his own lord he stands or falls. You know what that means? That means, mind your own business. It's not up to me to decide who God is using and who he isn't. I think about the Duggers from the tv show 19 and Counting and I think about the show Duck Dynasty. Now talk about a vast difference in christian families, thats a vast difference. Which one is more used by God? Which one has reached the most people? We don't know do we. If we are clean cut churchy people we might l

For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Wow. Did you read that. The way you think is the way you are. It's not only the Bible that knows that. Countless, psychologists,  counselors, therapists and so many others know this. You know this. Attitude is everything. The Bible gives us countless instructions about how to think and what to think about. The problem is we don't do it. It's like going to weight watchers and never doing the program. The program works but it won't work if you don't do it. I've been reading a book about self pity. We all know it's a waste of time and we all don't like to be around someone who is always telling you how bad they are treated or how unfair life is. No one ever admires that about anyone. The first thing to do is to examine ourselves, God said, a man ought to examine himself, and as always, he was right. We all know if we don't get real with ourselves we won't be able to see wh

My dad stopped smoking when he was 62 years old. He started smoking when he was 14. I love to hear him tell about the time he and my uncle Paul, dad's youngest brother were smoking in the barn. Dad said they had got some cigarettes and matches and went to the barn and got down in a stable and started trying to smoke. Pretty soon Grandma came into the barn and called out to them. She said, "What are you boys doing back there?" Dad said Uncle Paul jumped up and said, "We ain't smokin Mom, we ain't smokin." That made my dad so mad. He said it was just the same as running out and telling her they were smoking. I remember when I was in the fourth or maybe fifth grade and I tried to smoke. Mom and dad were some place I don't remember where but my older brother, my younger brother and my best friend Cindy were there with me. Cindy and I got the matches and cigarettes and decided to smoke. We were pretty smart though, we got a cup a

I've never really been a fearful person. I alway figured everything would be alright in the end. I used to tell the kids to remember that even if it wasn't alright here, it would be alright there. Alright there meaning in Heaven. You would think that my confidence would grow with age. You would think I would have been nervous our anxious when I was young and didn't know my LORD like I know him now. But the opposite is true. I'm more anxious now than I've ever been. It's everything around me that I allow to make myself be that way because nothing with God has changed. Somehow I have allowed the goings on around me to make me think God isn't capable or that he is not paying attention so I had better be on guard and be afraid. I never was the kind of parent to stay up all night worrying about the kids. I alway figured they would come home and they always did. I didn't always think going to the doctor  was going to result in them comi

Several of you asked about the chocolate chip cookie recipe the other day so here's the recipe. It makes a huge bunch so I often half the recipe. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. 5 cups oatmeal, the recipe didn't specify but I use quick cook oatmeal. 2 cups real butter, not margarine 2 cups sugar 2 cups brown sugar 4 eggs 2 tsp. vanilla 3 cups chopped nuts, I never use this many and sometimes I skip them all together. 4 cups all purpose flour 1 tsp. salt 2 tsp. baking powder 2 tsp. soda 1 ( 24 oz.) pkg. chocolate chip, I use milk chocolate but just use whatever kind you like best. Measure oatmeal into a blender and blend until it becomes a fine powder, almost like flour. It might not be as smooth as flour but it will be very fine textured. Cream butter and sugars together. Remember softened butter will cream better than cold butter. Also this isn't a quick done thing. It takes longer to cream butter and sugar than you think. You want to keep beating it