I am not sure who this is, or the year it was taken. It was in the box of Cleage photos and I think it is one of the Mullins branches children. I hope somebody recognizes him!
An Australian reader asked me how to make candied sweet potatoes after reading about the food we eat for Christmas. We have candied sweet potatoes at both Thanksgiving and at Christmas. The rest of the year I just bake them and sometimes mash them. The recipe my mother used is the same one I found in her old cookbook, although I’m sure that the one her mother made didn’t come from a cookbook but they tasted similar. Maybe Nanny’s were a bit sweeter.
The sweet potatoes are boiled and peeled. They are sliced and arranged in a baking dish with brown sugar and butter laid on top of each layer. They are then baked at 350 to 375 for about 45 minutes or until the syrup from the brown sugar and butter is as thick as you want it. I remember that sometimes parts of the sweet potatoes were crispy with the syrup. These days my oldest daughter, Jilo, makes the sweet potatoes for family gatherings.
Candied sweet potato recipe from my mother’s cook book with her note on the side. “Good, but not very sweet.”
Candied sweet potatoes made by my oldest daughter for Thanksgiving dinner,2012.
You can read about the history of the sweet potato here. I was surprised to learn that people candy sweet potatoes all over the world. I thought it was a recipe from the southern United States.
This post is in response to the Deck the Halls Geneameme over at the Family History Across the Sea Blog. To participate or find links to more blogs doing the meme, click on the candles to the left.Thanks to Pauleen for putting this together.
Christmas 2011
Do you have any special Xmas traditions in your family? In addition to having a Christmas tree we also set up a manger. When the children were home or my granddaughter is here we set it up at the beginning of Advent and move Mary and Joseph along day by to to arrive at the stable on Christmas Eve. Jesus appears at midnight and the three wise men start their journey, arriving on Epiphany.
Is church attendance an important part of your Christmas celebrations and do you go the evening before or on Xmas Day? Some of us attend Church services and some don’t. Those who do go to the night service on Christmas Eve.
Did/do you or your children/grandchildren believe in Santa? None of us believe in Santa.
Do you go carolling in your neighbourhood? There have been times when we caroled but not recently. Click on the link to read about my youngest son’s caroling experience.
What’s your favourite Christmas music? Click on the link to hear my favorite Christmas song which is Christmas in the Trenches.
What’s your favourite Christmas carol? My favorite Christmas carol is We Three Kings and you can click on the link to hear it played on hang drums.
Do you have a special Xmas movie/book you like to watch/read? In the past I used to watch It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol on television but since I no longer have a television, I listen to Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales, which you can hear by clicking on the link.
Does your family do individual gifts, gifts for littlies only, Secret Santa (aka Kris Kringle)? I have 5 children and 6 grandchildren who live in the same city my husband and I do, Atlanta, GA. On Christmas evening they all come over to my house. After we eat dinner, we open all the gifts. At this time my children, grandchildren and we the parents give gifts to everyone of us. They aren’t expensive gifts but there are a lot of them. You can see some of us just before opening our gifts on Christmas day in 2011 above.
Is your main Christmas meal indoors or outdoors, at home or away? Christmas dinner is indoors at our house.
What do you eat as your main course for the Christmas meal? You can read a description of our usual Christmas dinner, with a photo by clicking the link above. It is the same dinner my grandparents and my mother cooked, with a few changes – turkey with cornbread stuffing, greens, rice, green salad, rolls (my grandmother had biscuits), cranberry jelly (my grandmother’s came from a can, we make ours with fresh cranberries), candied sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese. We also have brisket and various desserts – sweet potato and mince meat pie, or cheesecake, pound cake, fruitcake.
Do you have a special recipe you use for Xmas? I make my own fruitcake from a combination of various recipes and changes I make. Click on the link to see me mixing it up. I have a bowl of mixed dried fruit and I need to go on and finish the cakes! I am so late.
Does Christmas pudding feature on the Xmas menu? Is it your recipe or one you inherited? We had no Christmas pudding on the table.
Do you have any other special Christmas foods? What are they? Not that I can think of.
Do you give home-made food/craft for gifts at Christmas? Sometimes I give fruitcake and sometimes various children or adults make cookies to give. Click the link to see some of the gift cookies.
Do you return to your family for Xmas or vice versa? Our family is mostly in Atlanta. One son and granddaughter live in other cities. This will be the first Christmas she hasn’t spent with us in 5 years. He is living far away in Seattle so often doesn’t get here. Our parents are no longer living so this is “home”.
Is your Christmas celebrated differently from your childhood ones? If yes, how does it differ? When I was growing up we went to both grandparents house, my maternal grandparents in the afternoon and my paternal grandparents at night. Aunts, uncles and cousins would be there. Food and gifts were eaten and exchanged along with conversation and laughter. We were in Detroit so we usually had snow for Christmas. Here we are more likely to have rain.. We’re the grandparents now so our children and grandchildren come here. only one daughter has in-laws in the city so the others do not make visits to two houses on Christmas day.
How do you celebrate Xmas with your friends? Lunch? Pre-Xmas outings? Drop-ins? I don’t have any friends that I celebrate Christmas with. The closest would be my sister and her husband. We go by there during the holiday and they come by here on Christmas day after dinner at her daughter’s house.
Do you decorate your house with lights? A little or a lot? We never do and never have decorated with lights. Click to see a short post about lights in my Christmas.
Is your neighborhood a “Xmas lights” tour venue? Our neighborhood is far from a tour venue. There are very few lights in this area.
Does your family attend Carols by Candlelight singalongs/concerts? Where? There are Christmas concerts at the various schools my grandchildren attend and sometimes we attend. This year I went to a French caroling concert at one school. If we go to a Christmas church service there will be carols to sing along with there.
Have any of your Christmases been spent camping (unlikely for our northern-hemisphere friends)? Although my youngest son and my husband received boy scout Polar Bear Badges for winter camping, none of us have done any Christmas camping.
Is Christmas spent at your home, with family or at a holiday venue? Here at home.
Do you have snow for Christmas where you live? There was a snow scare one year and everybody spent the night with us but since we have left Michigan we have not had a white Christmas. It’s raining outside right now with no predictions of snow. The temp is 55 F right now on December 16.
Do you have a Christmas tree every year? We have a living tree every year. We tend to wait until the last minute to get it and put it up a few days before Christmas. When we lived in the country my husband would cut ours or we would buy a $5 scotch pine from a roadside stand. Now that we are in the big city we buy a pine and it costs more than $5.
Do you have special Xmas tree decorations? We save the decorations from year to year so some are from when my own children were small and some were bought and some were made by my grandchildren. I wish I had a few from my mother’s tree or her parents tree but those disappeared long ago.
Which is more important to your family, Christmas or Thanksgiving? The meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas are identical. This year we ate at one of my daughters for Thanksgiving. New Years Eve is also a family celebration with everybody who doesn’t have plans sleeping over here. The grandkids consider the New Year sleepover perhaps a higher point than Christmas. Click to read something about my Thanksgiving memories.
Six months pregnant wearing overalls and Jim pulling up his sock.
We moved to Simpson County, Mississippi in November of 1975. Jim was in charge of the Emergency Land Fund’s Model farm. Our daughter Jilo was 5 and Ife was 2.5. I was 29 and Jim was just about to turn 31. This was before we had goats, chickens or rabbits. The greenhouses weren’t in production. I remember several of the farmers Jim worked with gave him gifts of money for Christmas. It didn’t amount to more than $30 total but it paid for all the gas we used.
A gift from my mother-in-law that Christmas.
We decided to drive up to share the holidays with Jim’s family in Rock Hill, MO. They lived at #1 Inglewood Court, right outside of St. Louis. Seventeen year old Micheal, fifteen year old Monette and twelve year old Debbie were living at home. We made the eight hour trip in the little gray Volkswagon that came with the job. We took food to eat on the way, left early and drove straight through. I don’t remember anything specific about driving up. As I recall we got to St. Louis before dark. Jim’s parents gave us their bedroom. They were always so nice about that. Jim and the kids and I shared the pushed together twin beds. There weren’t presents for us but Jim’s mother looked around and came up with some. I don’t remember what she gave Jilo and Ife but she gave me two copper vases and Jim two glass paperweights. I don’t remember what we took as gifts.
Jilo, Ife and Debbie Williams.
I remember going to see Jim’s brother, Harold, at one of his jobs. He had several, just like his father always did. We also stopped by his studio where he made plaster knick knacks. Or was it cement bird baths? Or both? There was a Salvation Army or Goodwill store nearby and we stopped and I got some shirts for the kids and a dress that Ife wanted. Mostly we stayed around the house and visited.
Three of Jim’s brothers – Micheal, Chester and Harold Williams at Harold’s place of work.
We stayed until New Years Eve and left in the evening. There is never enough food or time to prepare it for the return trip. We stopped at Howard Johnson’s somewhere on the way home and I remember getting fried oysters. It was cold and dark and clear. There were stars. And there are always trucks. We listened to the radio and talked and maybe sang some. The kids eventually fell asleep in the backseat and we welcomed the New Year driving through the night.
To see more people in overalls and other work related outfits CLICK!
I did not go caroling when I was growing up but most of my children did, sometimes with Church groups and sometimes with community groups. In the photograph above my son Cabral (age 6) was the only one in the family to go caroling. He decided he wanted to and he did.
It is now 12:15 AM… we just got home… (and I have to get up at 7!!) … having been interrupted in our “spending Christmas quietly at home.” A boy named Lee and his girl, Naomi, who are studying Cinema at school dropped by for a Merry Christmas. (They’re Jewish). They brought me a Christmas present … two books on Cinema published by the Museum of Modern Art… very nice of them… and as usual I had no presents to return … being somewhat flabbergasted by the whole thing …anyway …we bulled for some little time …and then went to the Faun (the 4 of us) again for dinner …and had a very nice dinner… and then (still the 4 of us) went downtown to a little show that has foreign films and saw a Russian Film “The Rainbow”. It was very good… the dirty nastys killed and shot and poked out eyes until everyone was throwing up all over the place or crying (Naomi and Doris) and then the Russians came skiing down the mountain and gave the dirty nastys a taste of their own medicine while we all cheered (Me and Lee… Doris was still crying…and you can’t cheer and cry very well at the same time… she tried but ’twasn’t much of an artistic success. So we came home. (Just thought Barbara would like to know what happened to her Christmas present… it was quite nice, however, kept my little spouse from having time to get homesick as she is very wont to do what with Christmas trees about and that there… and her wonderin’ every ten minutes what you-all are doin’ at that particular minute.)
Speaking of Christmas presents Mr. Moore, the head of the Cinema
department gave me a Christmas present the last day of school. The best
book published about cinema is now out of print (collectors item and
that) well, I’ve been a tryin’ to find one in a used book-store…but
Moore had already bought up every copy on the West Coast…so I couldn’t
find any. Well, anyhoo…he gave me one of his copies for Christmas!
Surprised me…don’t know yet whether I thanked him or not or just looked
stupid (O.K. Louis, “as usual”) ‘Twas nice of him, anyhow…especially
with folks all trying’ to buy the few copies he has left after stocking
up the Library.
Before I was interrupted I was telling about the Grahams present…Doris got some slips or something like that etc. etc….and we both got a large box of cup-cakes we are in the process of devouring with the Cherry Jam Mrs. Graham sent us a bit earlier. Speaking of food…Did you-all can any chicken this year…WELL!!! (Can’t you take a hint!) (‘Splain it to ‘em Pee-Wee. Pee-Wee ain’t home, she’s out amongst em’…well, you ‘splain it Gladys…She ain’t home either…O.K.) Find attached sugar stamp which we let the OPA slip by us… Thought maybe you-all could still find some use for it… (Know what I mean.) Mrs. Graham’s got (or had) 5 pounds for you-all.
Really ain’t no need for no nother sheet of this!
To be continued.
Related Posts
You can read a review of the movie Raduga/The Rainbow from the October 1944 New York Times by clicking HERE.
oh my, i love your new look and your new neighborhood. i’m thinking of moving my blog, too, and was wondering if you could give me some pointers on how to do it so seamlessly as you have!
Last year I shared a letter my mother wrote home to Detroit on December 17, 1944. This year I am going to share a long Christmas letter my father wrote home on Christmas day of the same year. Because it is three pages long I am going to break it up into three posts. This is the first.
1944 was my parents 2nd Christmas together. My father, Albert, had taken a year off from the ministry to take classes in film making at UCLA. He planned to use it in his church work. My mother, Doris, was working as a social worker. The “Junior Doctor” mentioned in the letter was his brother, Louis, who had recently joined their father as a doctor at Cleage Clinic on the west side of Detroit. Barbara is his sister and the Graham’s are my mother’s parents.
“MERRY CHRISTMAS ‘N’ THAT…”
It’s Christmas afternoon…that’s what folks out here tell us…but it’s really June..the sun is shining and its warm and folks are out without their coats trying to play like it’s Christmas (full of Christmas cheer, howsoever…the liquid variety)
Their apartment – 2130 S. Hobart Blvd. #4. Window upstairs between trees.
We ate supper at the Restaurant last night…”The Faun”, everything was quite festive…with Christmas carols… and folks being “elite”… Doris wanted to telephone you-all COLLECT to say Merry Christmas … Suggested that we put through a person to person call to the Junior Doctor (knowing that he would refuse to accept a collect call … and thus you-all would guess that we said Merry Christmas without anybody payin’ anything Smart little wife I got ain’t it. But we didn’t…the war effort ‘n’ that, you know. On the way home we saw a woman stealing a Christmas tree from a stand which had closed thinking that all the trees had been sold that anybody wanted (I guess). She was back in the dark picking over the trees big as life … getting a good one with a solid stand … she looked sort of scared but determined … Last we saw of her she was truckin’ on down the street with the biggest and best one on the lot under her arm.
We got up LATE … about twelve or so… and ate like hogs… DORIS is now engaged in “repairing” one of our “electric plates”… in the middle of the floor barefooted…she and it ((the electric plate) are now sitting in the middle of the front room floor… she has the plate hooked in to prove that it works… she works just like Louis… mess, mess, mess everywhere. She can start on the Radio now… The Christmas carols seem to have burned it out… this morning it refused to play… just smoked when we turned it on … she says a condenser… and only by the hardest can I disuade her from “fixing” it too. (She is now lecturing on how fortunate I am to have a wife who is both smart and beautiful and can fix things about the house.)
We received the presents ($10 from Barbara, $10 from Daddy & Mama, and $50 from Louis) THANKS! Sorry we couldn’t give you-all anything but love. We received a package from the Grahams… shirt tie, hankerchiefs, and CIGARETTES for me…
I don’t know why, but your father saying that they “ate like hogs’ just made me laugh…eating like a hog sounds like eating more than if you eat like a pig.
Congratulations on the move. I’m hanging in with Blogger until I can learn to use the other, self-hosted WordPress. Might be a loooong time. I’ve got my blog backed up (I think) and that will have to do for my sense of security now.
It’s snowing on your blog here – is that a feature you can turn on and off?
Zann, I turned it on until Jan. 3. Probably will be all the snow I see until later in the winter. I plan on going the self-hosted route too. In fact I tried one out but decided to move here for now. It wasn’t much different then this WordPress is to work with.
Looks great, Kristin. I do truly love keeping up with your family history. You are doing such an amazing job with documenting all this. It will be treasured by your descendants for many years to come. What a great gift.
I have all my blogs on self-hosted WordPress. With some of the latest versions, it has become a dream to use.
On December 29, 1990, Jim Williams and Warren Evans were in for a surprise! Nikki Evans (Warren’s daughter) and I (Tulani Williams, Jim’s Daughter) planned, with the help of our cousin Jann Shreve and her mother Jan, (Warren’s sister) a surprise birthday party. We got permission to have it at Hugh and Louis’ house. They are our great uncles. Then we began to get ready for the party. First we went into town to buy a few last minute things. On our way in we passed Warren on his way home. He saw us and stopped to ask where we were going.
Jan who was driving, answered, “We’re on our way to the store to get some eggs and hamburger buns.”
Warren then said, “Well, could you get me some ‘Stay alive food’. Some hamburger, fries or chips….you know?” He handed Jan some money and we were on our way.
Now we had to go out of our way to get Warrens “stay alive food”. At Ben Franklin’s (a dime store), we got a few presents and Jann looked at the cards and picked out one that said, “I was going to get you an expensive watch for your birthday:…Then you open it and it said “But at your age time doesn’t matter”. She showed it to her mother and they bought it.
After going to the grocery store for Warren, we headed home. Nikki, Jann and I started mixing up the cake. When we put the cake into the oven Jann, Nikki and I sat down with Kriss (Jan’s brother) and James (my brother) and started playing Seaga. We hadn’t got very far when the cake was done and we started the icing. After we iced the cake, we were going to get Jan to drive us over to Louis’. I went over to tell my mother (Kristin) and she suggested that we put the cake into a box and drag it over on the sled since the roads were iced over. So we decided to pull it over on the sled. When we got to Hugh and Louis’ we started decorating the house with balloons, and crepe paper. We even had a sign that said “HAPPY BIRTHDAY JIM AND WARREN!” that James and Kriss had printed up on the computer. When we finished decorating, people started to arrive. We were all brainstorming on how to get Warren to come over. Louis said that we should tell him that we were having a surprise party for Jim and then…the fire siren went off. Jim is a volunteer fireman so that meant he had to go to the fire. But lucky for us it was a false alarm. Jim arrived a few moments later with Kristin, who knew about the party and brought him over. We all hid and had the lights out and yelled “SURPRISE!” when he came in.
Gladys called Warren and told him that the washing machine was clogged up. When Warren finally got there we were in a dimly lit house. He came in talking about “With all these strong backs why… ” but then we yelled “SURPRISE!” and we sat down to have cake.
This post is in response to the Deck the Halls Geneameme over at the Family History Across the Sea Blog. To participate or find links to more blogs doing the meme, click on the candles to the left. Thanks to Pauleen for putting this together.
You do have the wealth of info on your family. And the way you present!
Your Father was quite the Guy back in the day, as in my time, too.
the book, if you don’t do it; who will?!