Archive for April 5th, 2011

by Sherry Stocking Kline
April 1, 2011

Week #13 – Sweets Week 13: Sweets. What was your favorite childhood candy or dessert?   
Have your tastes changed since then? What satisfies your sweet tooth today? This challenge runs from Saturday, March 26, 2011 through Friday, April 1, 2011

Deciding what my favorite Sweet Stuff was when I was growing up wasn’t easy!   Several things vie for first, but the most special sweet that I enjoyed eating at Christmas when Mom made pounds and pounds of it,was divinity! 

White, airy, sweet, melt-in-your-mouth divinity!

Mom knew just when to stop cooking the corn-syrup-rich mixture, when to pour it over the whipped egg whites, and just how long to beat it.  Mess up, and it will become a sticky caramel-like substance that tastes good, but you need a spoon to eat it.

Get it right, and it’s the food of angels.

Mom usually got it right.

A favorite with many, it was a ‘best-seller’ at the Mayfield Federated Church Lord’s Acre sale, often bringing high dollar bids.  It was also a huge favorite of my nephew’s as well.  For many years while he served in the Navy, Mom sent him a large box of divinity at Christmas time.  Once he confessed to opening the box, hiding it from everyone, and eating the entire three pound box all by himself! 

Can’t blame him for that!

by Sherry Stocking Kline
5 April 2011

The past year has been full of neat genealogy happenings!  I asked several family members if I might borrow their older photographs so that I might scan them, or I’ve asked if they might scan and send me digital copies, and so it has been ‘raining’ photographs and memorabilia!

My expectations were that I might be loaned 3, 4, maybe even as many as ten photographs at a time.

I certainly didn’t expect one cousin to bring a six inch thick folder of photos that took hours to scan, nor a California cousin I’ve never met who sent pages of photocopied photos, and last week, my cousin and her son came by to visit, and he brought a large box, too heavy for me to lift, chock full of pictures and albums!

Excerpted from a 70+ year old newspaper clipping:

Alone

Before I heard the doctors tell,
The dangers of a kiss
I had considered kissing you –
The nearest thing to bliss.
But now I know biology
And sit and sigh and Moan,
Six million mad bacteria –
And I thought we were alone.
 – Exhange

Isn’t that a hoot!