I'm Tired Of Looking At A Weather Update...

So I thought I'd play catch up.

Yours truly and the baby brother. This was taken in the master bedroom of the home that we were raised in. Bennett would have been about 3 and I would have been about 6.

Continuing on...








This photo was taken after we got home from a trip to California to visit relatives in Santa Monica. We also went to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco... check the hat.

This was, I believe, in the summer of 1955. I would have been 10 and Bennett would have been 7.

Moving right along...














This picture was taken later in the summer after we had gotten back from our California trip.

We were at Turner Falls, outside Davis, Oklahoma, a place we have enjoyed a number of times over the years.













This picture was taken on our birthday, yes both our birthdays, in 1960.

If you don't remember or missed the posts where I've talked about it, my baby brother was born on my third birthday, a Friday the 13th. I've teased him that it took me years to decide that the 13th was good luck.

As you can see from this picture, for a lot of years momma made our birthday cakes... in the shape of hearts because we were born on the day before Valentine's Day, me in 1945 and Bennett in 1948.

Our friends, Ronnie Friend and Selene Main, and two of our nephews and a niece were there to enjoy the cake with us. We have tried over the years to celebrate our birthday together but this year it didn't happen. The weather was bad a few days before and I was not comfortable to make a quick trip.
Bennett only had a couple of days off from work and he has been working a lot of extra time and I felt he would be better served relaxing and not worrying about entertaining me on a short break. So we will enjoy playing catch up on our birthday on a later trip but I wanted you all to know what has been happening the last couple of weeks.

Celebrating my non-birthday birthday because I didn't feel like having a birthday this year. We did go out to my choice of restaurants for dinner... bar-b-que, mmmm good and Carol cooked my request for a birthday cake, chocolate pound cake. My sister and her SIL and BIL came up from Texas on Monday to go check on another brother-in-law that is in the hospital and she bought my lunch at an old hamburger joint in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and we went from lunch up to Cuz's place in the country to visit with our cuz Carol and our brother Walter. We had a really good visit and Walter had cooked a ham and fixed soul sweet potatoes, Spanish green beans, home made bread and a rum cake for our supper and my late non-birthday supper. I was so full from eating everything that I didn't even have room for a piece of the rum cake.

So next year I'll get back to celebrating birthdays but this year the birthday didn't excite me so I decided that I'm old enough to decide whether to have a birthday or not and this past year hasn't been the most wonderful of my life so a non-birthday was my choice and it turned out pretty darn good.

Soon I'll be able to start digging in the dirt and that is always the way to soothe the savage beast in me. Thanks for hanging in with me. It's got to get better!

Whew...

Well, I've survived another Christmas at my baby brother's in Ft. Worth. I say survived because, literally, there is a whole mess of kids and grandkids. Since my brother and his first wife divorced, the kids split time at Christmas and this year they all came over in the late afternoon for gifts and supper. There ended up being about 50 of us. What fun.

Ben smoked pork loin, pork chops, ribs and chicken breasts, turkey breasts and then everyone brought something to go with it, mac and cheese, green beans, potatoes and so on so forth. We all ate until we foundered, then ate desserts.

Home-made banana pudding, turtle cheese-cake pies, cookies, fudge, turtles, more cookies... I couldn't bend over to tie my shoes for two days. We have some folks in our family that can flat out cook.

Then, on Friday, all of us sibs got together. All three of my brothers and my sis and I met for lunch to visit and we got one of the nephews to take our picture together. My sister went home after lunch because she was suffering with a pulled muscle in her back from lifting something too heavy (probably a grand baby) on Christmas day, and baby brother and his wife went home because her back was needing heat.

Bro and I went over to our oldest brother's home and visited with them for about an hour. It was so nice. I hadn't had a visit with them for much longer than to say hi for about three years. As soon as I get photos, I'll post one or two up so you can all share.

In the meantime, I'm going to play catch-up on my reading and see if I can come up with ideas for my blog. It is good to be back.

Is It Cooking, Or Is It Memorex....

Silly me... you know how I am about fun titles. I try real hard to amuse myself figuring that I will amuse anyone that stops by in the process, but I would like your opinion...

I am, what I fetchingly like to call myself, a survival eater. Basically that means I eat when I'm hungry. I rarely plan a meal and at times in my life when I've lived alone and been responsible for my own survival, food-wise, I'm very off the cuff, as it were... I can cook a passable meal, but I really don't much care to about 97% of the time. I am fortunate enough (or smart enough) to be surrounded by people who can cook. My friend that I have lived with for years is an excellent and creative cook. Same with my middle brother, Bro, who lives with us. I have a multitude of family and friends that are good cooks, and in our discussions about meal preparation the question arose, "what is cooking?" My contention is if there are three steps involved it is cooking, such as getting a can out of the pantry, opening the can, dumping the contents into said pan on the stove and turning on the fire under the pan, that's more than three steps, so that is cooking, plus an extra step. Missy, my wonderful cooking roomie, and other friends have decided that cooking requires more than one item, adding one or more ingredients into the basic mix, before it can be called cooking, instead of just heating food to eat. Last night we had what we affectionately call a 'root-hog' night which basically means no one is in the mood or feels like whipping up dinner and everyone is left their own devices to root around in the fridge or pantry to find something to eat. I got out a can of spaghettios, opened it, put it in the pan, turned on the stove... therefore, in my opinion, cooking. Then I got a hot dog out of the fridge, cut it up and put it in with the spaghettios, turned and asked Missy and Bro if that meant I was cooking by other people's standards....

Now back to the question... what, in your esteemed opinions, constitutes cooking? Or have you all gone to sleep after trying to read through all the above idiocy?

I thank you all and appreciate your opinions...