Granddad JC Serving in the Church

I did some interviews with Granddad JC over a year ago, and never got around to transcribing them. Mary Ann was amazing and did them all for me! Here's the first one, Granddad talking about serving in the Church:

Oh-gahlee. You know we came back to Camden and we were members of the church and so they called me as Elders Quorum President. There was nothing going on. I said what’s goin’ on? There ain’t nothing goin’ on. So I said shoot, let’s go on and do something. And so we started going on fishing trips. We’d go down and set up appointments and we’d go down and go deep sea fishing. We’d catch a bunch of these big groupers, you know. Some of these beautiful red colored fish. I can’t think of the name right off. We’d catch a bunch of fish and bring ‘em back. We’d spit ‘em up or something like that. That was good.

We had a good active elders quorum by the end. Then they called me as bishop.

I can’t think of the president that called me as bishop. Now who was that? Anyway. He was the stake  president and he called me as bishop. So I started as a Bishop and that was really - from going from a sergeant to a bishop. I had some interviews and I must’ve been kinda curt with some of the people. But we had a good ward and it grew.

Actually when we joined the church there was only 4 or 5 families coming to church and then after I was bishop for a year or so. We started working every Friday night and all day Saturday, we would cut wood for the building fund. And we raised a lot of money cutting fire wood and stove wood and selling them by the pickup loads. We did that all day. The was a Okelberry* family here and he was a woodsman. He had a chainsaw, and he had - they called it a go-getter – his wife would drive it and she would go out and catch the logs from the trees that he’d cut down, and pull ‘em up. And their son was a big guy too and he would trim ‘em up and throw them in too. And then we would - all the members - would split ‘em up into small pieces. We would load the truck and so many truckloads of firewood.

What years were you Bishop?

From 1976 to 1982.

So your Mom [Grace] was in college for a lot of that time and then married. But things were moving in the church. We built the church and everybody worked on it. We did the lawn, we did the sprinkler system, and I put up the satellite dish. We just, everybody pitched in. We also had a farm out there to work, but we sold the farm. We had a well drilled out there and we had a shed to park the tractor or so out there.

The farm was on a road 5 miles out of town towards Bishopville of Hwy 34. But we did a lot of work. Going and doing all the time. I bought a truck, got a brand new truck, that we were throwing these rolls of hogfencing on there about 4 ft. high. It scarred that truck all up. I had it about a year, it was beautiful, and it was all scuffed up. But it ran good – I kept it a long time. In fact I think Nathan – White Datsun – used it.

The white Datsun

*Corrected from Huckleberry

Grandma Laura's Chicken and Dumplings

I'm all about easy, and I'm all about chicken and dumplings. The hardest thing about this dish is waiting long enough for the dumplings to cook before eating it! (and then probably wiping all the flour off the counter after you're done making the dumplings).

Granddad JC and Grandma Izzy have both said that not only did they eat chicken and dumplings often as they were growing up, but it was a staple at their family 4th of July celebrations when they were kids.

I learned to make chicken and dumplings from Mom (and she learned it from Grandma, and Grandma got it from Uncle Doug Connell, who got the recipe from his mother, Great-Grandma Laura! *source: Mom). I have modified the recipe to fit my own cooking techniques. If you want to see how I make it, go here. Below is the historical recipe as I know it:


Cook one whole chicken in enough water to cover the chicken. Add salt, pepper, garlic, and vegetables to taste (I don't know how Grandma Laura made it. I don't ever remember there being vegetables such as celery or carrots in the dumplings that Mom made).

Meanwhile, combine the following ingredients in a large mixing bowl*:

4 C all-purpose flour
1 T sugar
1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
2/3 C salad oil
1 C water

At the end, I generally have to finish blending the ingredients with my hands.

Flour a clean counter top, and roll out the dough to about 1/8 inch thickness. Cut dough into 3/4 inch wide strips at whatever length you like your dumplings to be. I like mine about 4 - 5 inches long. I've found that pizza cutters are the quickest and easiest way to cut my dough.

When the chicken has finished cooking, take it out of the pot to cool. Bring the broth to a rolling boil. Add strips of dough to boiling water, stirring periodically. At this point, the food is prone to boiling over, so keep a close eye on the pot. I usually turn the heat down gradually as I add the dumplings to avoid that problem.

Keep the dumplings at a simmer for at least 30 minutes, stirring occasionally so the dumplings don't stick to the bottom of the pot.

Meanwhile, de-bone the chicken and cut it into bite-size pieces and combine with dumplings in the pot. Add additional salt, pepper, and garlic to taste if desired. I like about 1/2 t of pepper and 1/4 t of garlic powder. Salt is just one of those things you have to taste for.

At this point, you just have to wait for the dumplings to cook. You can add flour to the broth if you want a thicker soup. The dumplings are done when they are soft and bend somewhat easily. I like to let them cook for at least 30 minutes, but I like them better when they've cooked longer than that, probably 45 minutes to an hour. This is a great dish to make ahead of time because it tastes better the longer the flavors have to combine.

Enjoy!

* if you want to make this dish even easier, you can buy frozen dumplings from some grocery stores, especially in the South. Don't use the refrigerated biscuit dough, though. It has sugar in it and tastes weird in this dish.

**if anyone reading this blog remembers better than I do what the dumplings were like or remembers any other details about them, please comment below!

EDIT:

Mom sent me an e-mail to let me know that she actually had changed her recipe and the above recipe is not Grandma Laura's recipe. Here's an excerpt from what she sent me:

If you use vegetables in the broth, take them out when you remove the chicken.

G'ma Izzy always used self-rising flour. She also used shortening and milk... sometimes buttermilk.

I changed the recipe for those who had milk allergies. I also doubled the recipe and used two chickens-- 12 hungry people meant no leftovers even then.

Eventually I started using this recipe:

2 C all purpose flour
1/2 t salt
water (Milk or buttermilk)

sift first two ingredients together. Add about 1/2 C water and stir. Form a ball and roll out on a floured, flat surface. Use a pizza wheel to cut noodles.

I add chicken bouillon to enhance the flavor. Or instead of water, I use chicken stock.

Grandma Lucy's Blackberry Cake

Renee sent me an e-mail with a couple of pictures and a story about how she was able to re-create one of Grandma Lucy's most famous cakes. The recipe she started with had ingredients, but no instructions!

Well, Renee tried it for the first time as a 13-year-old, and it turned out poorly. The cake was dry and the frosting was uninteresting. Something had gone wrong, but she wasn't sure what. Years later, Renee tried the recipe again, and got this delectable beauty:

Finished product of perfected cake 

How did she do it? Here is her story in her own words:

"Since Grandma Lucy owned her own restaurant, I felt that I wasn't doing justice to her cake. Granted I made the recipe as a 13 year old, and didn't have much baking experience.  

I received this recipe from Grandma Kathleen (Lucy's daughter). I received it on a visit to Florida in 2014.  

The way you make this cake is as follows: 

Make sure that you purchase heavy whipping cream for the cream. I also like to add a quarter teaspoon salt to the caramel sauce. Totally optional. 

For the cake, I found that it is best if it is baked in thin layers. So instead of baking and typical baking pans, bake it in four circular pans instead of two circular pants. You can bake them in thicker layers too, but you'll have leftover batter, and the cake may turn out dry, since it will need to be baked longer. 

Also, I line each pan with aluminum foil, spray with Pam, and dust with flour. You should do this step if you plan on making a layer cake. 

To make the cake, mix wet ingredients (except jam) in one bowl and dry ingredients in a bowl. I made my own sour milk. I placed 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar into a glass measuring cup. Then I poured in whole milk to the one cup line. Then I let it sit for a few minutes while I mixed together the dry ingredients, to let the milk sour. By the way, do not add blackberry jam until the very end. I am not sure exactly the best way to incorporate the jam. I put the jam into the cake batter by small spoonfuls and gently stirred the batter. Also, as in cake mixes, whisk the batter for two and a half minutes,. I did this before adding the jam. When the batter is ready, place into pans, and bake at 350 in a preheated oven. For the thin layers, you can get away with baking them for only 15 minutes. Bake them until done though, testing with a toothpick until it comes out clean. If you bake too long, it will make the cake dry. Sometimes very dry.

While the cake was baking, I heated up the cream on my stovetop. I added the cup of white sugar and packed cup of brown sugar and whisked it at high temperature, stirring occasionally until it was no longer grainy. After that point, I believe I only cooked it for three minutes. You want to have something similar to the consistency of caramel, but a little thinner. You want it to be thin enough that it can soak down into the cake. At this point, I have put the cake with bamboo skewers to make shish kabobs, and let the caramel ooze down into the cake. This cake is decadent, and delicious! Make sure that you pull the cake gently out of the foil soon after it is done baking. This is because the blackberry jam makes it stick to the pan, if you let it cool that for a very long time. The foil makes this much much easier. Feel free to simplify these directions. I have made this cake before, and made the caramel topping very thick. I don't believe that's how Grandma Lucy made it. I do like very much the consistency of the caramel topping oozing down into the cake."

What a treasure! I don't have very much experience with making cakes (box mix, anyone?), but it did occur to me that maybe the blackberry jam could be incorporated as something between layers. What do you cake-making people think? Would it ruin the effect of the runny frosting?

Also, anyone that tries out this recipe, feel free to let us know what you did and how the cake turned out. Happy baking!

EDIT: I asked Grandma Kathleen about mixing the jam in and the consistency of the frosting. Here's what she said:

"Mom's blackberry cake - yummy!

Yes, the jam gets mixed in with the cake batter.

Consistency of the frosting? Just like you are making candy (fudge). It gets sugary all too quickly. As I remember, it could be sort of saved by a spoonful of milk or cream at a time, stirred in. Good luck. It is certainly worth working for."

Ellen Eve Rowe's furniture

I remember this lovely old chair from when I was a kid. It sat in our storage room, unused. There was a large hole in the cane work of the seat. These pictures were taken after Renee had it restored.

This picture shows the chair with what I believe is the original cane work:

And this couch has a similar design at the top. This couch came from England with Ellen Eve Rowe around 1850, so we are guessing that the chair may have come over at the same time. However, there is no way of knowing for sure.