Last Minute Christmas Baking

Getting some last minute Christmas baking done...

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

(I only recently noticed that you can see a reflection of the photographer and his big camera in the background.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

 

An Untraditional 4th of July for Pink Saturday

Welcome to Pink Saturday sponsored by Beverly at How Sweet the Sound. 

I thought I'd share our family's 4th of July celebration with  you.  There was no parade or fireworks this year for us.  It was just too hot and humid.  So hot and humid that we chose to have a cook-in rather than a cook-out.

One of our favorite recipes is Roast Sticky Chicken.  I found this recipe online many, many years ago.  I think it was sometime in the 1990's.

I just googled and this appears to be the exact same recipe that I use.

Mimi's Roast Sticky Chicken - as posted by Anieema

I do not care for salt and always omit salt from my recipes.  I also don't bother rubbing on the spices and putting the chicken in a plastic bag overnight.  I do it right before cooking.  This time I doubled the recipe and used two chickens.  It cooks for five hours and the smell is so good.

I like gravy with the chicken so I just use a package of Pioneer Gravy Mix and add in some of the juices from the pan for a little extra flavor.

Then my son Reid made twice baked potatoes.  This was taken right before he put them in the oven for the second time.

YIKES!  I almost forgot to take a picture after they came out of the oven.  Fortunately there was still a few left.  I should have gotten his recipe to share.

Then I cooked some asparagus...nothing fancy.

We had two desserts.  One was the Nabisco Chocolate Wafer Cake again.  We had just made it a month before for Keith's birthday and wanted it again.  The recipe is right on the box. 

We also made S'more Cups.  Another big favorite with my family.  The recipe can be found on Coleen's Recipe blog. 

I enjoy Coleen's recipes and a few weeks ago someone notified her that someone else had taken over 300 recipes from her blog and put them up on a blog as their own.  You can read about it here.  Why would someone do that?    I was afraid Coleen might stop posting recipes, but she hasn't.

Everyone enjoyed our untraditional 4th of July meal.

After we ate it was time for Family Feud!

Yes, we played a few rounds.  It was Troy and Debbie against Reid and me.  Wyatt was the host.  Troy and Debbie won.

I should have gotten these photos up sooner, but I've been busy lately...

Yes, even I play Pokemon now.  I don't completely understand this game, but I do enjoy catching the little Pokemon characters.

I joke that I can bring home Pokemon now instead of cats!

This is Reid playing when we went down to Discovery Green Park in Houston.

Discovery Green is a park in downtown Houston located right in front of the George R. Brown Convention Center.

Houston is counting down the days until the 2017 Super Bowl.

Now head over to Beverly's blog for a list of this week's Pink Saturday participants.  Thanks for visiting...

"C" as in CHICAGO White Sox

Welcome to Alphabe-Thursday sponsored by Ms. Jenny at Jenny Matlock..."off on my tangent."  This week we are studying the letter "C" as in CHICAGO White Sox. 

My Dad was born in 1918 in Jersey City, New Jersey.  He lived most of his life in Westwood, New Jersey...a suburb of New York City.  Dad loved the CHICAGO White Sox and hated the New York Yankees.

When Dad was in Boy Scouts the kids in the troop decided to each pick a baseball team.  Dad chose the CHICAGO White Sox.  He told me that when they got to him there weren't many teams left, so he went with the White Sox.  The White Sox have probably never had a more loyal fan.  For the rest of his life he followed his team all the way into his 90's.  Win or lose he was a loyal fan.

I can remember Dad sitting in the garage in our 1956 DeSoto listening to the baseball game.  He had discovered that the car radio could pick up the Baltimore radio station.  So, when the White Sox played Baltimore he could listen to the games.

This was long before cable and satellite TV.  Dad mostly followed his team in the newspapers.  That was the only way back then.  Yes, when they played the Yankees he could watch the games on the New York television station or listen on the radio.  Sometimes he even went to Yankee Stadium and watched them play there.  Although he visited Chicago a couple of times it was never during baseball season, so he never saw them play in person at home.

His loyalty never wavered.  Yes, he'd get upset when they lost, but he'd be ecstatic when they won.

Over the years we always knew what to get Dad for Christmas, birthdays, Father's Day, etc.  It made shopping easy.

Dad was a good sport and Mom would send pictures.

In 2005 Dad's prayers were answered.  The CHICAGO White Sox were World Series Champions for the first time in his life.  They beat our Houston Astros.  Dad was still living in New Jersey and he would watch the games and call me in Texas afterwards.  Of course, I was watching from here.  I remember one game went into extra innings.  Fourteen to be exact.  It was very late at night when he called, but he was so excited.  He was almost 87 years old and I was so grateful when he finally got to see his team as World Champions even though it meant the Astros lost.

That Christmas we gave Dad a legacy brick.  The CHICAGO White Sox charities sold bricks to commemorate the team's World Series win.  Dad was excited when he found out that his name would be enshrined at Cellular Field.  None of us have ever seen his actual brick in CHICAGO, but I have a duplicate sitting on the bookshelf in my den.  It says, "BILL DURGIN OF NJ - LOYAL FAN SINCE 1932."  (If anyone reading this lives in Chicago and goes to Cellular Field please take a picture for me.  As I recall we were told that his brick is somewhere on the legacy brick diamond near first base.)

Eventually, Dad moved to Assisted Living in Texas.  I signed up for the CHICAGO White Sox games online.  I'd bring Dad over to my house so he could watch the games.  For the first time in his life he was able to watch most of them.  He'd sit in front of the computer and come to life.  It was like he was a little kid again.

Eventually, Alzheimer's took it's toll on Dad.  However, he remembered his CHICAGO White Sox.  Every day he wore his White Sox cap.  He even had the White Sox logo painted on his face at an Assisted Living event.

Eventually he had to be moved to a nursing home.  When we went to visit him the day before he died he was sitting in a wheelchair wearing his CHICAGO White Sox cap.  He was loyal to his team until the very end.

I still get online notifications from the CHICAGO White Sox when they play a game.  I had signed up when Dad moved here and I decided to keep following them after Dad died.  In a way I feel a piece of Dad is still with me when I get their box scores.

Now head over to Jenny's blog for a list of this week's participants.  Thank you for visiting.

"Z" as in ZIEGFELD

Are we really up to "Z" already???  Welcome once again to Alphabe-Thursday sponsored by Ms. Jenny at Jenny Matlock..."off on my tangent."  I have chosen to write about the ZIEGFELD Follies this week.


The ZIEGFELD Follies and The ZIEGFELD Frolic were the brain child of Florenz (Flo) ZIEGFELD, Jr. and ran for the most part from 1907 until 1927 in New York City.  ZIEGFELD has often been called Broadway's greatest showman.  In addition to the long running ZIEGFELD Follies revue he also produced the musical Show Boat.  His shows featured beautiful women, elaborate costumes, and amazing sets.

His "ZIEGFELD girls" were regarded as the standard of beauty for their day.  ZIEGFELD called himself the "glorifier of the American girl."  My great aunt was one of his girls.  Her name was Margaret Morris and family legend says she was discovered by ZIEGFELD dancing on a New York city street corner.  I'm not so sure about that story, but somehow she was discovered.

This is a photograph of her taken by the famous ZIEGFELD photographer Alfred Chaney Johnston.  I know he took a lot of nude photographs of other ZIEGFELD girls, but I've never seen one of Margaret.  (She was a good Catholic girl.)

I'm the unofficial family historian and have her old photo album and some other memorabilia.  Unfortunately, a lot of the photos in the album were unidentified.  I did meet someone online some years back that helped with some of the identification.

There were a couple of movies made about ZIEGFELD and his Follies, but they were made a long time ago.  I would love to see a movie made today about the Follies.  I can picture Tom Hanks in the role of Florenz ZIEGFELD.  After watching this season of Dancing With The Stars I've decided Rumor Willis should play my aunt.  I can picture in my mind the elaborate costumes and sets.  The musical numbers, the dancing, etc., would be so entertaining along with some of their interesting background stories. Come on Hollywood...get busy!

Look at some of these costumes my aunt wore.  This one was when they did some kind of balloon dance.  I believe I heard one time that the gentlemen could pop the balloons on their costumes.

Here she is wearing another rather unusual costume.

 I believe I found this online at the New York City Library site.  Maybe this was a proof sheet?  You can see the above photograph on this sheet.  They are standing on an elevated glass walkway that was part of the set.  This is from the Midnight Frolic.  Margaret appeared in the ZIEGFELD Frolic and the  Follies.  (You can click on it to enlarge.) 

 This is from the 1915 Midnight Frolic.  L-R: Olive Thomas, Muriel Hudson, and Margaret Morris

I've always liked this one.  Margaret is the second one from the left.  I found this in her photo album and either Margaret or someone else wrote the names on the back.  As you can see it's from the 1920 Midnight Frolic.

Margaret also posed for this ad during her career.

She appeared in at least one silent movie, The Gypsys.  This was also found among her things.

This must have been taken on one of her trips to Europe.  I've seen this photo being sold on eBay.

Eventually, it all came to an end for Margaret and the Follies/Frolic.  She worked for many years as a wardrobe mistress on Broadway.  At times she was on welfare.  I have a few childhood memories of her, but the Morris family wasn't close and I only saw her once in a while.  I remember her kind smile and I knew that she was always happy to see us.   Margaret was my grandfather's sister.


I think this picture was probably taken in the 1940's.  Margaret was a member of the ZIEGFELD Club in her later years.  I believe this is a picture of Margaret with her fellow ZIEGFELD Club members.  Margaret is in the center of the first row with her arm around the older lady.

While browsing the Internet I discovered that a revised version of the Midnight Frolic is playing this Spring in New York City.  The Yelp reviews sound good.  If only I lived closer!

Now get busy Hollywood.  I'd like to see a movie and I'm not getting any younger.

Please head over to Jenny's blog for a list of this week's participants.  Thanks for visiting.

The Latest Happenings...

We had a storm and just like that our TV, Internet, and phones were gone for 3+ days.

I've been watching Breaking Bad on DVD's, so I still had something to watch.  I never watched when it originally aired, but I kept hearing people talk about it, so I bought the first season.  I was hooked.  Normally I stay away from shows with violence, but I've made an exception with this one.  I'm up to season four now.

I also got quite a bit of cleaning done.  Then the family all came over for crabs.  (Keith came all the way from Austin.)  We hadn't done that in ages.  I've had the crab pot since the 1970's when we lived in Virginia Beach.  We used to buy crabs and sometimes crab there too.

Crabs are a lot of work.  It takes a considerable amount of time to get a little bit of meat out of each crab, but that's part of the fun.  You end up sitting at the table forever.

We had potatoes, corn, salad, and garlic bread with the crabs.

I can afford a tablecloth, but we always put newspaper on the table.   That way I can just throw out all the mess when we're done.

Somehow I missed getting Wyatt's picture, but I did get a shot of his hotdog.  (Not everyone likes crab.)

Yesterday I got up at 4:00 AM.  Reid had his six month scan, bone density test, pulmonary function test, and blood work at MD Anderson starting at 7:20 AM.  We left home at 6:00 AM because we expected a lot of traffic.  We were pleasantly surprised.  It only took us an hour to get down there.

The news was good!!  NO CANCER!!  His vitamin D was low and that might explain the fatigue, so he's started taking vitamin D.  His bone scan indicated that he needed it too and he is supposed to start exercising for bone strength.  The chemo has affected his bones and the radiation his lungs, but those are all things he can deal with as long as the cancer is gone.  He did get a call today and they want him back in six weeks instead of three months because one of the numbers that can indicate graft vs host disease was elevated and they want to watch it.  That's OK...it's better to play it safe.

It was a long day and Reid had gone without eating, so we went to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner.

I believe Reid is a miracle and I thank God every day.  Back in 2009 he was in Intensive Care with his chest cavity full of mass.  His one lung was actually pushed a little to the one side and the mass was pressing on his spinal cord.  Doctors were trying to decide what to do.  They were afraid to give him anesthesia because of the mass in his chest, but they had to do something because of his spinal cord.  Finally they operated and we learned that he had Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  Later, one of the radiologists at MD Anderson told me that the head of radiation there had never seen a case of Hodgkin's like Reid's in 25 years.  It is now 2014 and he's been cancer free for 18 months.  Yes, it has taken chemo and two stem cell transplants, but the cancer is gone!  One of the drugs he was given hadn't even been approved by the FDA when he was first diagnosed, but that drug put him into remission before the last stem cell transplant.

Do you believe in miracles?  I do.