Reflections of myself...

Over the past summer I have learned a lot about myself. I decided that I would share a few of those things with you. Some are funny, some silly, and others serious and heartfelt. I hope you enjoy and maybe learn a few things about yourself as well.


I’ve learned...

... that frog legs are something I will NEVER eat again.

... that I am not the only person who can still recite the “Gettysburg Address” by heart. Thank you, Mrs. Turner.

... that when you’ve been out of school for seven years you start to forget people’s names. You talk to them, and know you went to school with them, yet you just can’t seem to remember exactly who they are.

... that I can now tell you almost every member of the Cincinnati Reds, Texas Rangers, Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals. Thank you, Timmy. 

... that trying new foods really isn’t that terrible. I still don’t like cheese, but alligator isn’t that bad. 

... that having your purse stolen still hurts your feelings six months after it happened.

... that taxi rides aren’t so bad, unless you get the young Indian driver in Nashville who made you car sick before you made it out of the parking lot.

... that sometimes reading a few pages of the Good Book can change your whole perspective.

... that there is power in prayer.

... that people can change. All they need is a chance to prove themselves.

... that when you really need someone to be there for you, you find out who your true friends are.

... that a friend can be someone so unexpected.

... that sometimes taking a ride down the back roads brings back childhood memories you had forgotten.

Our ride down the back roads. Makes me miss my childhood home.

 
... that even on your worst days, someone can call or say something to you that makes everything better.

... that family is sometimes taken for granted and you always need to find time for them.

... that sometimes laughter is the best medicine, and other times tears.

... and that no matter how old you are, sometimes there is nothing better than getting a phone call from the people you love.

Just remember, “Life ain’t always beautiful, but it’s a beautiful ride.”

***

Oh, and I still haven’t made it across the railroad bridge, but it looks like I’m going to have to since people keep saying, “I’ll walk across the bridge with you.” I’ll let you know.

Facing my fears one bridge at a time

When I was young, I wasn’t afraid to do anything. I would stand in front of large crowds, singing and dancing. I would talk to anyone who would lend an ear and I never met a stranger.

After I got sick in ‘07 all of that seemed to change. I’m not as outgoing as I used to be. I have a hard time being around a lot of people, crowds make me nervous, and singing in front of people, even singing at our church, is really hard for me.

Me making a CD at The Ryman!

So this past summer, I decided to conquer some of this fear. I tried out for NBC’s The Voice auditions in Nashville. I’ll go ahead and let you know that I didn’t make it, but I had a great time being apart of the process and I loved meeting all the other people trying to make it big.

I met people from New Jersey, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and of course I was the Kentucky girl in my group. As we sat there for what seemed like hours waiting for our turn, we all got to know each other. We told where we were from, what we did for a living, and all the others told how they had all tried out for American Idol or America’s Got Talent, and decided they would give this contest a try.

Only one person from our group made it. He was originally from New Jersey but had been living in Nashville for years trying to catch his big break. He was an amazing musician, but so were all the others in the room.

After it was all over, I realized that I had faced some of my biggest fears. I had overcome all of the things that I said I couldn’t do. I had been in a stadium full of people I didn’t know, talked to new people, and I sang in front of a crowd. I did all of these things without a second thought.

It’s amazing what you can do when you set your mind to it...

And then along comes another trial.....

The old railroad walk bridge that connects River Drive and Kirkland Ave.

They say you come to a point in your life when you just can’t take another step. No matter how hard you try or what you keep telling yourself in the back of your mind.

This past Monday, I came to that point in my life, while standing on a bridge.

This wasn’t just any bridge mind you, this was the old railroad bridge that connects River Drive and Kirkland. You know the one that I’m talking about. It’s been there for as long as I can remember, and as long as my mom can remember and the train passes beneath it... well, I couldn’t go across.

I stood there and watched as two of the women from work took their time and walked across that rickety thing, and I just kept thinking, “I am too fat for this old bridge.”

This voice in the back of my mind kept telling me that I could make it across, but my feet wouldn’t follow. So as I stood there, half way up the other side looking across, this girl walked up to me and asked what was going on. I stood there talking to her and I said, “We are here to report the news. The other girls went across to see what was going on and to take pictures, but I was afraid that I would end up being the news. The headlines would read, “Large woman causes historic bridge to break.” She laughed and said, “Well, I wouldn’t have walked across that either.”

I stood there feeling like a fool. I had watched both ladies I work with cross the bridge, a man walked across while I was standing there, and yet, I just couldn’t do it. I just knew that if I started across that bridge it would be all over. I even knew that if something should happen that rescue workers were standing less than 100 feet from me, and yet I still couldn’t cross that old bridge.

Finally, the ladies made it back across without anything falling or breaking. One told of how she thought she was afraid of bridges but once she walked across that one, she realized she wasn’t afraid to walk across bridges, just afraid to drive across them.

So in the end I really didn’t feel too bad about not being able to make it across. Except for the fact that I’m not afraid of heights or bridges. So what am I afraid of? I guess the whole moral of the story is that I’m afraid of being fat and breaking old things.

A person once said, “If all my friends were to jump off a bridge, I wouldn’t follow. I’d be at the bottom to catch them when they fall.” To that I would add, “As long as the train wasn’t going underneath.”

Jack of all trades

I am what my daddy considered a “Jack of all trades, yet a master of none”.

I can cook just about anything you ask me to fix. I can even cook it for you on a wood burning stove (got pretty good at that during our last ice storm a few years ago). I can clean anything within an inch of its shine.

I enjoy drawing and crafting which I get from my mama along with her competitiveness.

Sewing is something I know enough about to get by with. I can sew on a button, make curtains, and I’ve even made a few halloween costumes for my friends Faiths kids (simple patterns).

I enjoy working in the garden during the summer months and then canning everything I can think of. If not I give stuff to people I know who need it. I can’t stand to waste.

All of these “life skills” come from my love of our local culture and history and from the love I have for my families own history.

My daddy trapped and sold furs in the winter time and then he dug plant roots and all the wild herbs of the woods when he wasn’t working his day job as a painter.

I’ve seen him take three or four different types of plant roots and make a tonic out of it that would just about make you better thinking about having to choke the stuff down. But, it worked.

My granny and poppy always had a garden and what they didn’t can they would share with the rest of the family. Poppy would also collect hickory nuts and walnuts from the woods and use them.

I just love learning about how people did day to day things in the past. Which brings me to this past weekend.

I was a bit bored so I decided that I would do something that I have never done. Bake my own bread.

Now, I have made zucchini bread before, but I consider that more like a cake that is just baked in a loaf pan.

So, I dug out all of my cook books and laid them out on the counter top. I flipped each one open to the bread section and stood there amazed.

I didn’t realize you could make a loaf of white bread so many different ways. Each recipe was completely unique.

Some recipes called for lard, some called for potato flakes, some called for things I’ve never even heard of. And all of the recipes yielded at least six loaves of bread.

That’s when I decided that my bread making adventure would have to wait a few weeks. Honestly what am I going to do with six loaves of bread that may or may not taste good.

So I decided the best thing for me to do would be to ask you. I would love for our readers, to start sending in your favorite bread recipes.

If you don’t bake but can the items you harvest from your garden, send those recipes in as well because canning season will be upon us before too long.

I’d also love to hear from our quilters and crafters. Send in your ideas so that we can share them with our community.

You can send in photos to share of your quilts and crafts or take a picture of a recipe you made and share that with us! We’d love to hear from you.

You can send your recipes and ideas to CV&T c/o Megan PO Box 660, Irvine, KY 40336 or you can email them to me at cvtads@windstream.net.

I can’t wait to hear from you!

01-20-11

Columnist recounts a decade worth of memories

As we roll into the new year, I took a few minutes to reflect on the past 10 years. A decade, and the events that seem like they happened last week.

Preston, Andrew, Whitney, me and Daddy in '01.

It’s amazing how much can happen within those 10 years that can change your life completely.

In 2000, I was a freshman in high school who had to rely on my older (yes, Whitney is OLDER THAN ME) sister to drive me around.

In 2001 we found out that my dad had small cell lung cancer, 9-11 happened and life seemed to crawl by.

In 2002 my daddy passed away and I felt as though I lost a part of my heart. I was Daddy’s girl and everything changed after he died. Things still aren’t the same to this day without having Daddy around.

In 2003 my sister graduated high school and headed off to college and for the first time in my life, I had my very own room. I was excited for about a week and then it lost all it’s joy. We’d shared a room for almost 18 years and even though I haven’t admitted it until today, I missed her.

She won’t read this so I won’t have to worry about her holding this over my head. Sister rivalry and all.

Candace, Kayla, Jess and me at Graduation in '04.

In 2004 I graduated high school and the real world began.

Since 2005 and 2006 didn’t amount to much, because I didn’t amount to much, I’ll skip over those unmemorable events.

Except the fact that I moved to Michigan in 2006.

In January of 2007 I came back to Kentucky to visit my Poppy who was sick and in the hospital. While we were here visiting him, I was put in the hospital. I was given a less than 40 percent chance of making it through.

On the day that my Poppy passed away I started to pull through and it was a long recovery. Even though I miss him everyday, I know that he was my angel looking out for me.

My Poppy, James "Rabbit" Tipton.

Later on in 2007 my sister had my nephew William Allen and her life changed completely.

August 2008 changed my life in a completely different way. I married the love of my life Timmy, and nothing has been the same since.

My Granny Mary and nephew William.

Spring 2010 brought around another large blow to my family. We lost Granny Mary and my heart broke again. She was always there when I needed some advice, and trust me, she didn’t beat around the bush. She’d tell it to you straight.

And, on what would have been Granny’s 72nd birthday, my sister Whitney gave birth to my niece, Kenlee Marie and we all smiled a little bit more.

You may be wondering why I put all of these scatter brained memories together. The good memories along with the bad, and I’ll tell you why. Life isn’t all full of the good memories and moments. It’s made up of the sad ones as well. Full of the ones that knock you to your knees and make you doubt whether you can get back to your feet.

Eventually you manage to get back up. You are able to plant your feet on solid ground and take that first step. Standing beside you are the ones you love. Your family and your friends and your faith in God hold on to you and help you find your way.

All of these moments and all of these memories and challenges in life help to make us who we are today.

Lisa Baber told me something very wise the other day. She said, “My mother always said that ‘life is nothing but a memory, so make sure that each day is worth remembering.’”

Happy New Years and God Bless.

12-30-10

Falling for recipes

Its that time of year again. My favorite season, fall.

I just love it. Cool mornings, colorful leaves, pumpkins, mums, fodder shocks, scare crows... Well, I think you get my point.

My husband Tim loves this time of year as well. Hunting season kicks off in full force. Which makes me enjoy it so much more since he goes on a week long hunting trip at LBL (Land Between the Lakes) with all the men in his family. It’s my own vacation!

Fall means that school has started back, Friday nights are spent bundled up at football games and the holidays are all closer than we realized.

When the weather gets cool, I think everyone begins craving those fall flavors, pumpkin pies, and my specialty which is homemade apple pie.

My crust, made from scratch. I don’t like the prepackaged dough. Doesn’t have the same taste. The apples, ones that I have put up from the previous year. The recipe, a mixture of two or three different ones that I’ve combined to make my own.

And those few factors, they make the pie taste even better.

But this week I’m going to share a different recipe with you. While looking through old cook books and recipes I found one that is over 300 years old. The early settlers brought it with them when they settled in Kentucky. It was a cake for special occasions.


Appalachian Apple Stack Cake 


3 1/2 cups AP Flour

1tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt


* Stir dry ingredients and blend well

In a separate bowl -

2 eggs (beaten lightly)

1 stick of soften butter

1/2 c. Brown Sugar


* Cream butter and brown sugar together then mix egg in. Add in

1 c. Sorghum Molasses or regular molasses


Mix these ingredients well. Add dry ingredients and alternate with 1 cup of buttermilk


Preheat oven 355º. Divide cake batter into 9 inch round pans. You need 5 cakes - thin. Grease your baking pans and dust with flour. Since they are going to thin layers.


Filling for between the layers

1lb dry apples

4 c. Apple Cider

2 c. Water


Add into a pan and bring to a boil. If you want your apples to taste jammy then add in 1/2 c. sugar.

Let cool before adding to cake.

Place one layer, add in filling, cake, filling, etc. You need to divide filling for 4 layers with a cake on the top.

Once made let your cake sit for 4 hours. The cake is dry and the filling will be absorbed into the cake and taste delicious.

Before you serve, make sure to dust your cake with confectioners sugar.

So, this weekend I’m going to make this recipe and I’ll take a picture to let you see the finished product. Everyone tells me this is a delicious cake. Most say it’s something they remember their grandma making. So, lets see how it turns it.

9-23-10

A touching letter from father to daughter

I am blessed. I have a wonderful family, a strong faith and the love of wonderful friends. Recently a real good friend of mine shared something very dear to her heart with me. Her father is very sick and any child who has a parent who is dying knows the pain of feeling helpless.

We only want to do what is best for those we love. We feel as if the time has come that they need us. Yet, we don’t want to be pushy.

So her father wrote her this letter and she shared it with me. I’d like to share it with you. I hope that it opens your heart and makes you think about your family and your time here on this earth.


A Father Needs His Children


I needed you when you were born.

You showed me there were more important things in life than myself.

Because of you I learned tenderness, caring, nurturing.

You made me responsible for my actions because they now affected more than just me.

I needed you when you were starting to grow and learning to walk.

I needed to see that look of trust in your eyes that I would catch you if you were to stumble and fall.

Your faith in me to do what was best. I needed you at the end of the day.

I knew no matter how badly the day went that a simple smile, a laugh, a “Daddy I love you” would make everything better.

I needed you to know that I would walk in front of you to protect you from whatever lay ahead.

I needed you when you entered the uncertain years of being a teenager.

A time of more questions than answers.

I needed you to test my resolve and faith in you so that I could show you I believed in you.

To show you that now I would walk beside you and that you are not alone.

That we would face, together, whatever came our way.

I needed you when you took your first steps into adulthood.

I needed you to see my look of pride.

To let you know that I now walked behind you to give you support and encouragement on the path that YOU chose.

To applaud your successes and if you were to stumble, to help you get back up, dust you off, and with a fatherly nudge, get you back onto your path.

I need you now in my later years when my health and age are taking their toll.

I need you to walk beside me in case I should stumble.

I need you to let me choose the direction my life will take.

To allow me to face whatever comes with dignity.

To allow me to do as much as I can for myself so I can maintain my self respect.

A time may come when you will have to decide for me, but it is not now.

I will need you when my days finally come to an end.

I will need you to be strong.

To mourn my passage, yes, but moreover to celebrate my having lived.

To hopefully remember fondly the times we spent together.

To smile at my all too human frailties.

To chuckle at my weak attempts at magic to amaze you.

My all-to-fatherly sense of humor.

To know that I have always loved you and if you need me you need only to close your eyes and think of me and I will be there for you.

Tara and her Daddy

Do I need my children, yes I do.

But then I always have. I always will.

All My Love,

Daddy

I read this and my heart aches for the love that this man has for his child. I feel blessed by her sharing this with me, and I hope that she knows how blessed she is to possess something of this caliber.

I would give anything to have something like this from my daddy, but even though I don’t have it in print like she does, I have his life lessons in my heart.

I hope that you have been blessed by this, and I hope that you, as parents, take a moment to sit down and let your children know why you need them. Let them know you love them and give them a special piece of your heart.

08-05-10

The house that built me

This was, and always will be, the road that leads home.

Like most kids around here, I grew up in an old house that was filled with love and laughter, sweat and tears.

I can close my eyes and imagine the house as it stood when I was small. Nothing fancy, nothing big, but home.

Recently I heard this song on the radio that brought me to tears and reminded me of the only place I will ever call home.

It’s the place where I learned what faith and love is really made of. What it means to grieve, and what it feels like when you have to leave something and someone you love with all of your heart and soul.

There’s the kitchen where our mama taught us how to cook and preached to us that she didn’t need a dishwasher because God gave her two. Then there was the kitchen table where we used to sit and do our homework.

The living room with the pink petunia walls and burgundy carpet is gone now, but I remember when daddy painted the walls that color. It was amazing because he usually didn’t paint our walls anything but white.

I know that there are nails from the old basketball goal still in the tree out front, and my old dog Dixie is buried underneath the cherry trees they finally cut down.

If you walk around back, you’d see the building that my daddy built and the green chair that he use to sit in when he worked. The chair is gone now, but the memory remains.

I learned what having faith was really all about, when I knelt down next to daddy to pray the day he found out he had cancer, and the meaning of the love the day he passed away in that living room with pink petunia walls surrounded by our family and friends and the presence of God.

If you look closely on one of the old door frames, you will find crooked lines showing how tall we had grown. There’s the dirt road, the old barn, the creek. All of these memories came flooding back to me.

I always said that I’d leave and never come back. Well, I guess I ate my own words because here I am. I’m thankful that I can live in a place where these memories of love can surround me at every turn.

If I could go back to that house and look for one thing, it would be that old rusted green chair of daddy’s. I wouldn’t take it with me, but sit it up next to the building where he would always sit to talk with friends, or to pray. How can you take something from the place where you know it truly belongs?

Maybe this song hits close to home because this past week my dad would have turned 62, or maybe it’s just the memories of the house that built me.




“I thought if I could touch this place or feel it

This brokenness inside me might start healing

Out here it’s like I’m someone else

I thought that maybe I could find myself

If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave

Won’t take nothing but a memory

From the house that built me.”

~Miranda Lambert, House that Built Me 

5-20-10