Christmas past and present

This is the first chance I have had to post in a while...I am using this photo from a post in the past...partly because I don't have my computer and partly because I just love the photo. It was taken years ago with my one of my Nikon cameras.

I hope all of you have happy and healthy Christmas and New Year...

I am thankful for many things, but foremost right now is that Sarah just came through her second surgery last week...all is going great in that department. One of these days things will be back to normal.

Lorelei is changing daily it seems...she is just so busy all the time.

She sings Jingle Bells, Happy Birthday, and other songs...

and has just been playing the drums and singing
She loves you, Yeah, Yeah, yeah
She loves you Yeah, yeah, yeah

Over and over.

She now tells me to 'Get up---I need you' She will get my hand and take me all over the place. Otto hardly has a moment's peace...and for the most part he enjoys every minute of it. This morning she went for a short but wild ride on him....unplanned. She was climbing on his back and was astraddle of him and up he got. She hung on for a second or two before falling off. I half expected her to get back up and try it again but she didn't.

Our oldest daughter will be here at this time tomorrow night...along with a bit more snow. I am not sure how much is in the forecast. I am hoping not much.

This will probably be my only post on here for a little while to come...one of these days I will get back to it on a regular basis I hope. There simply is not time to be on the computer...when there is I plan to try to catch up with everyone.

The man has been busy....

Between frequent trips to Indianapolis Roger has been busy. This is latest creation....he made it for Lorelei's dad.
This knife really has a nice feel to it....the wood for the handles is African Padauk. It is an an excellent hardwood with straight grain...it hard,heavy and resists decay.

You either love 'em or you hate 'em!

One day last week I was cleaning an onion--I was making spaghetti and even though I just buy sauce in the jars I always add onions, sometimes garlic. Spaghetti is not the subject of this post though.

It is onions. Just with the simple act of cutting into the onion, I am immediately ravenous! I don't care if I have just gotten up from a holiday feast, or if I have just had a steak meal, or barbecued ribs...if I smell an onion I am immediately hungry. I want cornbread! Southern style, I suppose, without sugar. I don't know if that is a southern thing or just from my particular neck of the woods. But I do know that I have yet to meet anyone up here, that makes our type of cornbread.

But back to onions. I want cornbread and a slice of pork shoulder or salt cured bacon, cooked over an open fire with onions to eat with it. Or if I smell onions, I want soup beans and cornbread and onions...and you won't believe this. I like them cold out of the fridge...one of my sisters used to come back home to visit and I can remember her/us getting up after everyone had gone to bed, and we would go raid the fridge and if there were cold soup beans, she would have cornbread, soup beans and onions. I had not had that in years and years, and last spring, I remembered and tried it again, and I still love it.

And let's not forget wilted lettuce and onions. With cornbread....

Or something my mom cooked and I do, too, that I have never seen anyone else cook...well, my sister-in-law might...but she would be the only one...but not sure if she does. I think I ask her a year or two or three ago, but forget the answer. Anyway, mom would get stew beef and cook it in the pressure cooker till tender, or almost tender....then add potatoes. I get a nice chuck roast from my local IGA store...cook it till tender in the pressure cooker. While it is cooking I usually have my potatoes cooking in another pot and once the meat is tender, I add the potatoes to the beef and add water if needed and cook a while longer.

I have my cornbread baking, and green beans in another pot...then when I sit down to eat, I have an onion sliced....there just isn't much better on this earth. I don't fix it often...but when I do, I am ashamed of how much I eat.

I don't cook like that all the time, but ever since I made the spaghetti I have been craving at the least, a pone of cornbread and a slice of onion.

When a kid, and my nephews stayed/visited in the summer, if there happened to be sliced, white bread, which we called light bread, sometimes for a snack we would have a mustard and onion sandwich. I still have that once in a blue moon....

And I love onions on a hamburger.

I suppose if I could have left the bit about having a mustard and onion sandwich and having onion on a hamburger, I could have titled this post With cornbread.

But since there are some people that just cannot stand onions, I will leave it titled as is...