Speaking of Ice...

Once upon a time in a land far, far away... ;o) Sometimes it feels like that.

We don't get snow or ice very often in my corner of Texas. I generally say something like once every five to ten years. When it snows, we get wet snow. Not that dry stuff they call powder at the ski resorts. As long as the temp stays below freezing, we do pretty good. BUT the temperature does NOT stay below freezing the second day. Then when the temperatures drop below freezing at night, we get black ice on the roads and white ice in the yard.

Hard, white ice. I have fallen several times. Seems that the first one was before Jonathan. We had horses (and dogs - mostly redbone coon hounds) that had to be fed. I carefully skated out to the storage building and filled the buckets. Gingerly stepped out of the storage building, went behind to the stalls and fed both horses. I'm smiling. Too soon. As I round the corner of the building to put the buckets away, I slipped. Which would've been bad enough, but I banged into a 'pry bar' Ron had stabbed into the ground. It was as firmly in place as if it had been cemented in the ground. Not one bit of give. Oh...a pry bar is a piece of solid steel. You can comfortably wrap your hand around it. The other end has been flattened into a wedge-shape. Truck drivers who work in the oil field industry use it to pry or break loose the pipe loaded on their trailers to start it rolling off the trailer and onto the racks.

Back to the story. The bruise! OMGosh! The side of my thigh was bruised from hip to knee. I thought I was dying! Needless to say, Ron was told about the pry bar being in the wrong place and it was removed. ASAP

December 1983. I believe we set a record that year. Twenty or more days that the temperature never got above freezing. I went into labor during that time. A normal 40-45 minute trip took about four hours because of the black ice on the roads. I did not fall that year. Ron would not let me out of the house unless he had a grip on my arm. He walked me from the house to the car...from the car to the office...and back.

Another time, the rural mailman pulled up in the yard and beeped his horn. He had a package that wouldn't fit in the mailbox. If I remember correctly, Jonathan was a baby or really small child at this time. I carefully walked out the back door and maneuvered the steps. Skated across the yard and just as I put my hand on the front fender of his car, down I went. I heard his car door open and shouted, "NO! Don't get out. There's no reason for both of us to hit the ground." I pulled myself up, got the mail, and skated back to the house. No damage that time.

While we were gone this past weekend, I was in the mall in Sherman Texas...poor pathetic mall. Didn't have much going for it. Anyway, Baby Brother Joey (once upon a time known as The Brat), called to tell me that he heard that Sean Connery had been voted one of the sexiest men alive.

Well DUH!

This is the first cookbook I had the privilege to work on.

Good for the Soul was compiled while I worked at U. S. Contractors in Clute Texas. Proceeds were for a charitable reason that I've forgotten now. I contacted the employees...in the main building, outlaying buildings, and the field...for recipes. They were typed, proofed, and bound at the office. The title was selected because not only was the food good for the soul, but blank spaces were filled in with Bible verses and hymns. (Family owned company...VERY GOOD people!)

We had such good cooks! Several employees in the main office had a Friday morning breakfast club. We rotated providing breakfast for the group; ie, four or five of us would cook for everyone this Friday...another four/five the next Friday...etc. This cookbook contains many of our favorite recipes.