Home On The 'Range'

I am definitely winging the April A-Z challenge aka writing the posts the day before, but I'm still here so that's something. It's been kind of fun to think about the things I keep and try to match them with each day's letter.  Here's today's-

Day 18-R is for Recipes

How did you learn to cook? Well, first I suppose I should ask do you cook? I'm always surprised when I meet someone who says they don't cook. How do they eat? Lots of take out apparently, but that would be really tough where I live. 

I learned to cook by watching and helping my mama cook. And she learned to cook by watching and helping her mama, and my girls learned to cook by watching and helping me. I'm enjoying doing some simple cooking now with my grands and I hope they learn to cook by helping too. 

Circle of life. 

Growing up we rarely ate out. We were a family of six and dining out was a real treat. My mom cooked dinner pretty much every night and she was an excellent cook. I don't know if she started out that way, but her mom (my grandma) was also an excellent cook so I imagine she came into her marriage with some kitchen skills. 

One of my first 'cooking' assignments at home was making salad dressing. Good Seasons Italian which didn't involve any actual cooking, but you did need to read the directions, measure, and mix, all of which are a part of cooking. We had salad every night because my mom was ahead of her time in terms of healthy meals. She made almost everything from scratch too. 

When I was a young wife finding my way in my own kitchen I quite often called my mom mid-recipe to ask a question or  confirm some note written on the instructions. My own girls do the same and I love it.

Circle of life. 

I have always loved cookbooks and still enjoy browsing them for inspiration. I know when it comes to cooking we're all about the internet now, and of course I use that too. But there's something about holding a recipe card in my hand and thinking about the person who shared it with me, remembering when I've eaten the dish and the event or occasion it's associated with, that makes the cards feels extra special. 

I have a nice collection of cookbooks but my most consulted is the binder filled with hand written cards, recipes primarily from my mom's kitchen, but also from my sisters, friends, neighbors, and co-workers.  I refer to this collection so often that the binding is coming loose and I need to move the pages to a new book. 

I wish I had more recipes written in my mom's hand, but most of the time I would copy the recipe while she was cooking, or she'd tell it to me and I'd transcribe. 

A few years ago for Christmas I put all of our family holiday recipes in binders for my daughters. I wrote those recipes out by hand and it was a true labor of love. 

I won't part with my favorites. They're keepers. And now I feel the urge to make my mama's blueberry pie. 

Linking today with Joanne for Talking About It Tuesdays

For Keeps

Linking with Joanne for Talking About It Tuesdays 

As I mentioned in my post yesterday I've flip flopped letters K and L this week, which means that while it's L Day everywhere else in the A-Z Blog Challenge, I'm here blogging letter K. It's fine. Off we go-

 
Day 12-K is for Kids and Their Stuff and Also Their 'Stuff'

I have grown kids, and for the sake of keeping things simple I'm going to refer to them here as kids. In reality they are full grown responsible adults, but it's easier to say kids. 

Plus they're my kids. 

Hubs and I recently made a dent in the great attic clean out and much of what we have stored there belongs to our kids. Or it did at one time, when they were actual kids, and we their parents have hung on to things we thought they might want one day or that we couldn't bear to part with way back when. 

My granddaughters are going to love this glam Barbie who is fully clothed and still has a head full of beautifully coiffed hair. Such is not the case for all the Barbies I kept. 

Quite a few of the things in these attic boxes are mementos from our girl's childhood and teen years. There were yearbooks, ballet slippers, piggy banks, knick knacks and more. 

What do we do with it now? 

We went through a lot of this when we moved from the UK back to the states in 2009 and my girls were college students. The boxes had all been in storage for several years while we were overseas and it was fun to open them up and rediscover so many treasures.

Some junk too because one man's treasure is another man's junk, right? 

We re-boxed a lot of it because they were young and single and the future was way out there and who knows, maybe we'll want that kaboodle or the doll that was won at the fair?

Suddenly (not really) nearly twenty years have sailed by and my kids have kids which makes it a little bit easier to say keep this, toss that. 4th Grade report card? Toss. I mean it's fun to look over, but there's no real need to keep it beyond that. We've consolidated everything but the American Girl Dolls and all their furniture and accessories into one box for each daughter. They can decide for themselves what they deem worthy of keeping. 

The rest feels much easier to part with now than it did back then.  

But what about the other 'stuff' we parents love to hold on to when it comes to our kids? The things they deal with in life that we as their parents, the people who love them most, want to take on, fix, smooth, resolve...what about those things? 

I was brainstorming with my daughter2 about words I might match to the various letters in the challenge and I casually said something about how I might like to talk about grown kids and not taking on their stuff and she, a little too quickly I might add, started nodding her head, saying yes that. 

Hey now. I've come a long way in this department. A very long way, and that's the first thing I'd tell those who are a little bit behind me in the parenting game. It's a process. I have responsible, solid, well adjusted daughters and they manage their lives very well, but still sometimes my brain wants my mouth to chime in...

Have you figured out what to do about the dog while you're away? Your kids had the measles vaccine right? Measles are back ya know. Should you be traveling out of the country with the state of things as they are currently? Have you thought about this that the other?? 

Hubs and I are a good team in this department because we don't seem to be concerned about the same things at the same time. This allows us to keep one another in check. I tell him 'that's not our donut' and he tells me to 'let them figure it out'. 

We're parents. We'll never not care, right? Here are two things I remind myself of when I'm tempted to intervene...

1. I remind myself what it felt like to be a 35-year old mother of two. Did I want my mom piling on to my worries or telling me I should do A-B-C when I thought X-Y-Z was best? Or did I want my mom to say she was proud of how I was managing all the things there are to manage in any given season? 

2. I remind myself that as much as I love my girls God loves them more. That He has a plan for their lives and His ways are higher and better than my ways. I pray He opens doors, closes doors, protects, emboldens, and that they listen as He speaks into their lives. 

We all learn by doing, sometimes failing, but often succeeding beyond our wildest dreams. 

Once upon a time, I was a young mom who loved to cook, who dreamed of cooking alongside my girls. Tucked into one of those attic boxes I found an old cookbook-

Inside the cover was a love note, written in cursive to my three-year-old daughter who wasn't even old enough to read.

The note was written by a momma who somehow knew one far away day in the future, a box would be opened and that little girl, now a grown married woman with children of her own, would read those words and feel the love behind them.

That little girl cooks with her children now. 

I hope she adds her own note to the page. 

Looking Back And Springing Forward

With spring officially on the calendar it's time to re-visit my winter list, then come up with something fresh for spring. I know I don't have to make a list, but it helps

Especially if you look at it once in a while, which I need to be better about. I'll put that on my list teehee. Here's what my winter list looked like-

Read the first quarter of Grudem's Systematic Theology-Ive read not quite a quarter. The book is meaty and I don't want to rush. I've given myself the entire year to get through it which means reading approximately 89 pages each month. I'm enjoying it, savoring it really, and feel good about my progress even though I am not on page 267. Yet! 

Try a new recipe ✅...more than one actually and they were keepers. 

Try a new restaurant ✅ 

Celebrate Sugar's 2nd birthday ✅

Visit my mama ✅

Celebrate Valentine's Day ✅

Book hotel and details for wedding travel this summer ✅ so happy to have this one settled and off my brain. We're tying wedding travel in with a few days at the beach and now that it's all booked we can get excited. 

organize laundry room cabinets, bedding, and linens-question for you...how many times can you put something on a to-do list, then not do it, then move it to a new to-do list, but still not get to it ? Asking for a friend. 

shop for new bedding-I've been looking but haven't purchased 

clean out vanity, nightstand, and kitchen drawer (I know the one)-giving myself a C on this one as I did clean out my vanity, but still haven't tackled that kitchen drawer. 

hike a trail new to us ✅

see/hear live music ✅

Now to spring forward. There are some fun things to celebrate this spring and I've kept my list simple which is how I like it. No pressure. 

Except for maybe that attic and laundry room. Feeling some pressure not to add those to my summer list too. 

Do you have a seasonal-monthly-yearly-lifetime bucket list? What's something on your to-do or your want to-do list in these next three months? 

Linking today with Joanne for Talking About It Tuesdays 

Day Dating Episode Six

 Linking today with Talking About It Tuesdays hosted by Joanne

Welcome to Episode Six of The Dating Game. Hmmm...I like that. To catch you up, hubs and I are aiming for 52 dates in 52 weeks, and we're already a week behind because we had his momma here and leaving her home alone while we went out didn't feel right. 

We'll tack a week on at the end so all's well that end's well.  There will likely be a few more misses here and there, but if it's 52 dates in 55 weeks or 60 weeks that's okay too. It's not a test. 

If you read Monday's post then you already know we've had a lot going on here. Friday afternoon was our window and as both girls were leaving the house hubs looked at me and said, 'a nap would be nice'. Agreed. 

But the weather was glorious and we decided we'd feel better if we went out and we're both glad we did. Such a nice day! 

Daughter1 and her family had been to a nearby North Georgia town recently and seen a spectacular waterfall and a really cool museum, and we wanted to see it too, so that's where we headed. 

We left about noon and made the slightly less than one hour drive to a little town called Toccoa. Have you watched Band of Brothers? Toccoa is where Easy Company, 2nd batallion, 506th parachute infantry regiment of the 101st airborne had their basic training prior to D-Day. They're the focus of the series and their training at 'Camp Toccoa' included rigorous hikes up Currahee Mountain. It's where these soldiers became a literal band of brothers. The phrase Currahee became their motto and meant 'stand alone'. 

Hubs and I are watching the series start to finish now. The series came out in 2001, but I was unaware of the local connection until my son-in-law told us about it. 

Before going to the museum though, we had to see that waterfall. Toccoa Falls is oddly located on a small college campus. It's a 186 foot free falling waterfall, one of the tallest east of the Mississippi and it is positively stunning. The photos do not do it justice...this fall is actually higher than Niagara, but obviously not as wide or impressive. 

Still a beauty though! You drive on to the campus, park at the gift shop and pay a small entry fee, then take the short walk out to the falls. 

And there they are-

Just beautiful. 

We stood for a while, then drove into town to visit the museum (Currahee Military Museum).  I've been in a lot of WW2 related museums and this one, while small, is jam packed with so much. 

It's located at the site of the old train depot, which is where soldiers arrived before making the five mile hike to Camp Toccoa. The museum tells the story of trainees who went on to become some of the most physically fit soldiers in the army. More than 18,000 paratroopers trained here prior to and after D-Day. 

One of the best parts of the museum is an actual stable from Adlbourne England that housed paratroopers during the war. The story of how they brought it here is told too and it's really something. 

We had plans to get sushi for an early dinner back at the lake so we had about an hour to fill before heading home. We had seen a sign as we were driving around earlier for a winery and decided to check it out. Once we found it that is...GPS struggled and we went around in circles a couple of times, but eventually we got there. 

The sun was shining so we ordered a glass of wine, sat outside, and soaked it in. 

We left there and made our way back to laketown and a sushi dinner-

'Twas a great day. 

Day Dating Episode Three

Linking with Joanne today for Talking About It Tuesdays

Day date number three. To bring you up to speed we're aiming for 52 dates in 52 weeks. You'd think it would be pretty simple in retirement to make that happen, but sometimes it's a challenge here. 

Not all dates need to involve leaving town or an expensive meal, although stating for the record I'm not opposed to either of those things. The second half of October is jam packed so we opted for something in our own backyard last week. 

The lake. 

I know I'm like the blog world's version of your local weather reporter, but y'all the weather these past few weeks has been the nicest I can remember in all the falls we've lived here. Which would be nine!! 

Nine? Time flies. 

I talk about time flying almost as much as I talk about the weather. 

Anyway, back to our date. Somehow last week I'd scheduled my physical on Monday, the dentist on Wednesday, and then I had book club Tuesday afternoon and hubs was attending a work thing Tuesday evening so making space for a date required some figuring out. 

We persevered. 

I got home from the dentist around one on Wednesday and hubs had the boat ready to go. We had such a nice day. We rode north hoping to catch a bit of color, although it's still about a week away here. 

We passed some shoreline Halloween decor which was fun. 

We want to meet the people who live in this house. Not because of their Halloween decorations,  but because they have a wooden Chris Craft they've converted to a bar inside their house and we want a closer look. 

At one point we stopped in the middle of the lake and I did a 360 with my camera and did not see one other boat anywhere. It was like we had the lake all to ourselves. 

Later we did see a couple of fishermen, but mostly it was just me and the hubs. 

We had no agenda, just a ride on a sunny autumn day. We hung out at the mouth of a cove and listened to our Bible recap there which was nice too. 

And we took a selfie so we're 2 for 3 now. 

Day Datin' Episode Two: Highlands NC

So good news. I've talked hubs into 52 dates in 52 weeks. More or less. Probably less but we're going to try. I'm going to try. I'm not sure I actually told him the exact number, but whatever...he'll go along with it because that's what you do when you're married a long time. You zig and he zigs with you. Something like that. 

Also he loves together time while I'm a person who craves space. 

See? Zigging and zagging. 

Let's define the word 'date'. We're retired so we naturally spend a lot of time together. We dine out at some point every week and I guess technically you'd call those 'dates'. Except we don't. We just call it grabbing lunch or dinner. I'm going to use the word date here in a more intentional way. As in, we're going to put a literal date on the calendar. We're going to plan ahead. 

Well probably I'll be the one planning but that's okay. I told him we'll snap a picture every week too, because it you don't snap a picture did it really happen? 

Not in 2025. Plus how do I make a 'date book' if we neglect to photograph it in some way? 

Date number 2...

We like to drive into our favorite nearby mountain town every fall and last Wednesday was the day. You might have thought I was kidding when I said we were going to write these dates on the calendar, but we had this one written on our calendars. 

There was a little bit of rain in the forecast but we woke to sunny skies, and ended up having lovely weather the whole day. We wound our way up the mountain to the charming town of Highlands NC for lunch and shopping, and we thought maybe a stop at the waterfall. Construction was ongoing there so we didn't get to hike. Western N. Carolina is still recovering from Helene in so many ways.

We remembered to snap a picture this time. 

That's  Old Edwards Inn behind us, a very well known beautiful hotel, spa, fab restaurant. We arrived close to lunchtime but visited a couple of shops before heading to our lunch spot. Which was not Old Edwards, but still is one of our favorites-Wild Thyme Gourmet. The cuisine is American with an Asian flair. 

We shared an order of their spring rolls to start, then we both had their crab cake sandwich. 

I've said before we're crab cake snobs and these were excellent. All crab, no filler. We didn't have dessert because a pastry shop that's on the way out of town was on my agenda. 

We spent a leisurely afternoon browsing shops, holding hands, designing our mountain house (kidding!) and enjoying the beautiful day. 

We left the town square and started for home around three, but first! pastry. 

I want to come back here when that hydrangea hedge is in full bloom. 

The pastries here are works of art and after we got home I googled the shop and learned the pastry chef, Oksana Shchelgachova, is on the current season of Food Network's Halloween Baking Championship. 

I haven't been watching but will tune in now.  

I'll vouch for her too because her pastries are delicious!

We finally made our selections and took our dessert and coffee out to the big front porch. They serve their coffee in real cups and get bonus points for that. 

Hubs had the key lime tart...

 and I had the pavlova. 

We brought the pumpkin home to have the next day.

On the ride back down the mountain we stopped for the requisite photo of the lake. Never fails to make you exhale and be grateful you live in a place with so much beauty all around....

...and your favorite date to share it with. 

Linking today with Joanne for her Talking About It Tuesdays blog hop.