How Grandma Lucy broke her nose

Here's an excerpt from story time with Grandma Kathleen. I love her unique style of telling a story and her expressive use of pauses.


While we’re talking about broken noses, I have a story about Grandma Lucy.

She broke her nose! This was way back, the roads weren’t paved. She lived on a gravel road. She drove an old, old car, and this was back in the 30s, I guess.

Anyhow, she was out on this dirt road, and I don’t remember if the car turned over or something, but she had a wreck. And broke her nose! The lady that lived at the house in front of where she had this wreck, came out--

“Oh Lucy!”

went back in the house and came back with a mirror. Mom’s nose: smashed all the way over.

Mom took a look at the mirror, straightened her nose back up again. And she did go into the hosp--not the hospital, back in those days you didn’t have a hospital around, anyhow, went in to the doctor, and the doctor said, it’s a good thing you did what you did. Because of course now it was all swollen and the doctor couldn’t do anything about it. But she had placed it, and yeah, she had a little bit of a crooked nose, it was okay, the passages worked okay, but anyway, it was a pretty neat story. I believe that my older brother was just a little baby in the car at the time.

You can see in these two pictures, her nose looks perfectly straight! Click the picture to zoom in.

Rabbits on the Henize farm

The Henizes raised rabbits on their farm in the 1910s. In the following photographs, you can see several of the Henize children (including my great grandmother Lucy) posing with the rabbits. I believe the structures in the first picture have the rabbit hutches in the background.

The very last picture is a bonus of Grandma Kathleen with what I believe was a pet rabbit, since it was named Hink.

Twins Beryl and Bedah with rabbit, dog, and most likely hutches

Beryl

It's overexposed and hard to see, but the rabbits are there! 

Beryl and Lucy with rabbits and chicken; barn in background.

Aunt Vesta (the taller girl) with other children holding rabbits in front of a giant pile of corn stalks.
That's some harvest!

Kathleen with Hink

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."

Peanut butter and young Grandma Lucy

When I mentioned the story about Grandma Izzy and the peanut butter stuck in her mouth to Grandma Kathleen, she laughed softly and said, "You know, my mother had a similar experience!"

Grandma Kathleen told me that when Grandma Lucy was a child, the peanut butter was stickier and had to be stirred up. Like Grandma Izzy, Lucy loved peanut butter, and would try to snitch it. Well, one day Lucy was in the pantry with a spoonful of peanut butter when she heard someone looking for her!

Not wanting to be caught red-handed, Lucy quickly put the peanut butter out of sight--in her mouth. Unfortunately, she couldn't swallow the sticky peanut butter and was caught red-handed anyway.

Pictures of pictures - Wallace side

So, here are some pictures of pictures for you to look at! I didn't have a scanner handy, so I just whipped out my digital camera and took some pictures. Therefore, the quality isn't as great as it could be (yay reflections!), but I wanted to have copies of these pictures for myself and for anyone else who was interested to see them. We have some good looking people in our family!

Lucy Henize

Cecil Denver Wallace, Sr.

No flash caught on this one, but it's a bit blurrier : /

John Henry Henize, Mollie Elizabeth Chambers

Minnie May Winspear and Clifford White

Recipes from Our Grandparents

So my sister Rachel has a food blog, and on it she has a lot of recipes from our grandparents. Here I'll make it nice and easy for you to access their recipes!

Tuna Cheese Swirls from Grandma Izzy. I remember my mom making these sometimes when I was little. I loved them! I tried a recipe I found in a cookbook, and it was disgusting. This recipe looks like it will be much more delicious.

Cheesecake from Granny Jo

Six recipes from Grandma Kathleen, some of which probably came from Grandma Lucy (her mother):

1. Pistachio Salad - one of my favorite fruit salads growing up
2. Pecan Surprise Bars - this looks delicious. I think I've been deprived all my life.
3. Amish Broccoli - I heard this one came from Grandma Lucy. 
4. Chicken Enchiladas - This one also looks really delicious.
5. Lemon Jello Cake - This cake is DIVINE. It's also dairy free!
6. Pasta Salad - also dairy free

Lucy Elizabeth Melissa Henize

Lucy E. M. Henize is best remembered for her excellent cooking and generous dessert portions. She ran a restaurant out of her family's home and made the most delicious desserts her children and grandchildren had ever tasted. When she served a piece of cake or other dessert, she wasn't stingy. My dad told me that many times, the widest part of the wedge of cake that she'd serve would be over three inches wide! Many of her recipes are still used by her daughters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Birth: January 2, 1908
Marriages:

1. March 26, 1927 to Cecil Denver Wallace. They had three children together:
   Cecil Denver Jr, Janet, and Kathleen Raye
2. February 3, 1963 to Lloyd Albert Bohl 

Death: September 1986

1910 Census:

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Something funny from this particular census page is that two other families--in addition to Lucy's family--had a boy named Ora. Since these families are on the same page as the Henize family, I know that they were neighbors. I wonder if there was a prominent man named Ora in the Amelia community that these boys were named after?

This census is very interesting. You can see that Lucy had a lot of siblings (eight siblings, to be exact), and that Lucy was the youngest. The two siblings just older than her -- Bery and Bee-- were fraternal boy/girl twins. I wonder if Lucy ever felt left out? Whether she did or didn't, she seems to have enjoyed being around her family as evidenced by the family reunions they had every summer that Grandma Kathleen remembers very fondly.

Another interesting thing is that although I'm sure all of the children helped on the farm, the older boys were listed as "farm laborers" on the census. You can also see that none of the children that Mollie, Lucy's mother, gave birth to passed away before this 1910 census was taken. She was very blessed for the time she lived in, since medical care and accident prevention weren't as good in those days as they are now.

1920 Census:

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In this census, we see that three of Lucy's siblings have moved out and probably started families of their own.   We also see that Lucy's sister Vesta is a teacher working on salary.

As you can see from the records, Lucy's paternal grandfather immigrated to America from Germany. You can also see that her maternal grandmother was born in Indiana. Something striking about the family that Lucy grew up with is that they owned their own farm without a mortgage. This is unique. The families of my other great-grandparents--probably excepting my granddad Broadus, who I haven't researched yet--either rented or owned with a mortgage.

1930 Census:

Click to enlarge

1940 Census:

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Something interesting from this 1940 census is that it lists the yearly income of the families. If you enlarge the picture, you'll see that Cecil's yearly income was $1,640. For comparison, a civil engineer on the same page of the census earned $3,000 and a store manager earned $2,400. The clerk at that store earned just over $500 a year. Also of note is that Cecil was a music teacher when his family was young as well as when it was more mature. As you can see, Lucy had not yet started her restaurant; the censuses show that she was a homemaker.

Aside: The restaurant was started when Grandma Kathleen was a teenager.

Pictures-Wallace and Henize

Grandma's home video finally got here! (I've had it for a little over a week now, I just didn't get around to editing it and putting it up). I now have a video editing program, but I can't get it to show more than about 13 seconds of the video. I have managed to get some screenshots from it, so here's a little preview for the video that Grandma sent to me:

Aunt Janet, Kathleen, and G'ma Lucy

John Henry Henize, Mollie Elizabeth Chambers

Julia Anna Peters, James Wallace

Lucy Henize

Aunt Bee (Dora Bedah Henize)

Uncle Paul (Aunt Bee's husband, Paul Liming)

Cecil Jr with pet dog

Kathleen

Janet

Cecil Jr.

Cecil Sr.

Cecil Jr

Kathleen on a scooter

Cecil Jr with Kathleen

Cecil Jr pulling Kathleen and Janet on a sled

Snowball fight: Cecil Jr, Kathleen, Janet

Cecil Jr

"WALLACE MUSIC SHOP" -sign outside their house

Cecil Sr's band

Lucy and Kathleen

Cecil Sr.

Uncle Ralph (Ralph Lawrence Henize)

Aunt Louise and/or Aunt Alverta (wife of Ora Bery Henize)

 I couldn't find a Louise among Grandma Kathleen's aunts unless it was her Aunt Hazel Louise, married to her Uncle Harley. But there's a shot of her Aunt Hazel that shows her a bit heavier than this woman.

Edit: Grandma sent me an e-mail telling me that Aunt Louise was married to Uncle Ralph.

Cecil Sr with pet dog

Janet

Janet making a fish face

Kathleen and Janet with pet dog and cat

Janet and Kathleen