FRUGAL FRIDAY

Oops! I missed Friday, but thought I would post this today anyway.


One of the advantages of having my Christmas gifts ready early is that I can avoid mailing them when I can give them to guests at Thanksgiving who are not returning for Christmas. This year it did not work out too well because my sister and her family did not come due to illness, but I have her gifts ready and she may come for a visit before Christmas. I did have gifts ready for Son #3 and was able to send his box of gifts home with him. He also has an early December birthday, so we had his birthday party while he was here.



My Thanksgiving company (Son #3 and Nero) left about noon and it is a cold, dreary day, so I am busy making up some of my soup mixes and cornbread mixes for future gift giving. I will include these gifts in boxes that I am mailing to friends and relatives, but will also give them as gifts here in town. I put the mixes in plastic bags with directions, put them in red paper sacks and attach one of my hand-painted Christmas ornaments. I am making up a bunch, labeling them for people on my list and will keep a number of them for those surprise people who turn up with a gift for us at the last minute. I will include one of my recipes below.


Recipe for Texas Two-Step Soup Mix

1 package brown gravy mix (regular or no-fat)
2 tablespoons mild red chili powder
2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried minced onion
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
10 to 12 tortilla chips, crushed
Enough medium-size pasta (such as wheels, shells, macaroni) to fill jar or plastic bag.

Pour gravy mix into wide-mouth pint jar. In small bowl, stir together chili powder, oregano, cumin, onion and garlic salt. Pour mixed spices into jar to make second layer.
Add tortilla chips and pasta to fill jar or plastic bag. Seal.

Attach a gift tag with the following instructions:

Texas Two-Step Soup

Brown 1/2 pound ground beef in a large saucepan or Dutch oven. Add contents of jar and 7 cups water; heat to boiling. Stir in 1 (15 ounce) can corn with red and green bell peppers and 1 (16 ounce) can chopped tomatoes. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes or until pasta is tender, stirring occasionally. Serve with tortilla chips and shredded Monterrey Jack cheese, if desired. Makes approximately 8 servings.

Frugal Friday

Today I realized that I was much farther along in my Christmas preparations than I usually am this time of year. How unusual! I was wondering how that happened and I have to credit my family for that! Late last summer we began talking--my daughters-in-law and I, about how we were going to cut back on our Christmas giving, spend a specific amount for each person (my goal has been about $10 per gift) and make gifts, if possible. My daughter-in-law, Kara, tells on her blog about some of the gifts she and her girls are making for the holidays. That has worked out really well for me since I have found some really neat things to make for the grandchildren and for my daughters-in-law. I wish I could tell you about them, but I am afraid they will read the blog and the Christmas surprise will be gone.

Along the frugal line, a friend asked me this week for the recipe for a great candy that I made last holiday season. I took a cup of dried cranberries, a cup of walnuts (chopped) and put them in a bowl. I melted a bag of chocolate chips (bought on sale and stored in my freezer)in the microwave and poured them over the cranberries and walnuts and stirred. I then dropped the mixture by the teaspoonful on waxed paper and let them cool. They make the best little chocolate bites and are SO EASY! Nice for the holidays to EAT or to GIVE!

OUR ELECTRIC TRAIN

Daddy first bought our American Flyer electric train for my brother the Christmas he was two. We spent that Christmas at our grandparents house in Amherst. On Christmas Eve I was supposed to be asleep in the bedroom next to Grandmother's living room, but I was not asleep. I climbed out of bed and peeped around the door to see Daddy and Granddaddy down on their hands and knees having a wonderful time putting the electric train together on Grandmother's floor. We had fun with my brother's present that Christmas.

When we got home, Daddy made a big plywood board for the train. He took the dining room table and chairs out of our small dining room and stored them in the garage. The dining room became our "train room." We started with a steam engine that put out real smoke (sometimes) and a few train cars. The train became a huge family project. My dad sold electric trains through his hardware company, so he took great joy in bringing home new cars, a new diesel engine with a real headlight, neat lighted passenger cars with people in them, a circus train complete with animals and crossing signals with lights.

Daddy loved all the action parts of the train set. He liked the switch that uncoupled the cars and he eventually made the track large enough that we could run two trains at one time with two control boxes at the edge of the train board. Mother was the electrician in the family and she often crawled under the train boards that Daddy held up to wire and rewire the accessories that Daddy brought home. We children scampered across the train boards to decorate with small buildings and bushes, toy people, and railroad signs that Daddy brought to us. Note my brother's western village in the picture on the left.

Looking back on the experience, I think it was wonderful the way our family took the toy and made it a family project that pulled us all together much better than the dining room table ever did.

Aunt Patty

Aunt Patty was my mother’s unmarried younger sister. I was named for her. She was really an unusual person and when I was young, she lived with us and often went on vacations with us. As I grew older, I really enjoyed talking to Aunt Patty because she never seemed to see things like other adults. I think she never quite grew up and retained some of a child’s way of thinking about the world.

Aunt Patty was short and petite. She wore thick glasses and had beautiful skin—even up until the time she died. She always dressed well and collected many things. Her house was filled with tiny ceramic animals, owls, statues of saints, medals, and unusual musical instruments that she never quite mastered.

When I was seven Aunt Patty let me stay with her for a while after my brother was born and Mother was sick for several months that winter. I resented having to stay with Aunt Patty because Mother took my new brother and my sister and went to stay with my grandmother. I loved going to grandmother’s house and felt left out. I stayed with Aunt Patty in her tiny apartment with the Murphy bed and I slept on her couch. She always cooked a post roast on Sundays and then it seemed like she fed me ground roast beef sandwiches every day. I cannot stand the thought of those sandwiches now. I was so glad when my mother returned and rescued me from those ground beef sandwiches.

When my grandfather died, Grandmother moved in with Aunt Patty in Pampa. At first they lived side by side in the Kelly Apartments, just a block from our house. However, they soon moved to a house that Grandmother rented at 1901 Duncan Street. I am not sure Aunt Patty was all in favor of that, but Grandmother thought that was the way things should be. Grandmother and Aunt Patty lived together about twenty years. After about five years of living near us, Aunt Patty decided to move to Colorado Springs where we had spent some of our family vacations, and, of course, Grandmother went with her. During those years, we got lots of letters from Grandmother and Aunt Patty and we visited back and forth.

Looking back on it, I think Aunt Patty was never too happy during those years of her life. We always received lots of letters filled with grave details of her many and various ailments. I believe she was always looking for a fairy tail life with a “living happily ever after ending” and she never found that kind of happiness. She continued to live alone in Colorado Springs even after Grandmother died. We visited her the last time in 1999.

Through the years the unusual letters, antics, gifts, and activities of Aunt Patty always amused us. Most special to us were her Christmas presents. We miss those crazy gifts now that she is gone. Her gifts at Christmas (and sometimes on birthdays, too) were large boxes of the most unusual things imaginable—inexpensive things she ordered from mail order catalogs and magazines plus things she bought from Wal-Mart or the drug store. Her gifts to our family rarely ever matched the person she sent it to. We usually saved her box of gifts until the last to open with groans and then laughter at what she had sent. We giggled as we unwrapped the packages and tried to figure what they might be used for—often trading out our gifts. Christmas has lost some of its fun in the years since she died.

My final laughter came when Aunt Patty died and everyone gathered for her funeral and burial. I am told that the cousin in charge of her affairs opened the envelope containing her last wishes and began to roll his eyes. He told us that Aunt Patty wanted to be buried in a plain pine box standing straight up facing Pikes Peak in a plot she had specifically chosen at the cemetery. The funeral home people also rolled their eyes and said, “No!” The plain pine box did not meet funeral codes and they would not even consider the “standing straight up” part of her wishes, so Aunt Patty is probably resting uneasily, having been buried in the “normal” way—but “normal” she was not and I miss her in our way-too-normal family!

All gone...

Our nest is empty once again, but we had fun with son #1 and his family until they had to leave this morning--sigh!

We had Christmas presents,

lots of good food, some shopping and visiting in the neighborhood.

Happy New Year from all of us!