Category Archives: Parents and Grandparents

Who Doesn’t Love Dishes/Sherbet with Fruit

Posted in Childhood memories, Family Stories, Parents and Grandparents, Siblings, Uncategorized by

imageI love dishes and I think it runs in families!! My mother and sisters and daughter and daughter-in-law all love them!!  I have special occasion dishes, birthday dishes, Christmas dishes and fall and winter ones. Some dishes come with flowers and others with stripes. Of course solid dishes of all colors. But the most dearing of all are the ones passed down from my mother and grandmothers. It would be easy to put them away in a safe place and not use them but what purpose would that accomplish? My mother always said no one was more important than her family, so I took her advice and I use them. When I do, I like to share a story or a recipe from the person who owned the dishes before me. Someday, I hope, my children and then their children will do the same.

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Hot tea and tea cakes

Posted in Childhood memories, Cookies, Family Stories, Parents and Grandparents, Siblings by

img_7171-1I grew up in a household that loved hot tea. My maternal grandmother, Dessa Marie Tracy, enjoyed the English side of her heritage and served hot tea with sugar and cream in her prettiest tea cups every day around 3:00. Even my sister and I were allowed to drink from those cups. Coffee mugs or metal or plastic cups would never do. Grandma knew the tea would not taste the same. And you need the saucer to hold your spoon after stirring all that sugar we would add. My younger siblings continued to enjoy this treat after school with a slice of fresh homemade bread. She must have prepared early in her day to have that bread ready to come out of the oven at just the same time the school bus arrived at our door. 

These are English tea cakes that are perfectly paired with a cup of hot tea.

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Grandma Dessa’s favorite Bible verse:


French Heritage/Pork Normande

Posted in Dinner, Family Stories, French recipes, Parents and Grandparents, Siblings by

imageMy sister and I love to fix French recipes. Maybe it’s because on our Dad’s side of the family from all we’ve been told through the years, his grandparents came from Niece, France and met on the ship. The ship’s name was Louis and that’s where our dad got his middle name, Paul Lewis Brevard. They changed the “o” to “e” to make it more Americanized. So needlessly to say my sister and I both love French food and cook it whenever we can. Here’s a  recipe for you that’s ” delicieux ” and so easy even my husband could make it. It is called Pork Normande. My sister says to flatten the pork medallions with a rolling pin and then sauté them in olive oil and a little bacon grease about 4 minutes on each side. Remove the pork and put them on a plate or pan with a lid. Turn the heat off and add about 1/2 cup of apple brandy. Turn the heat on and scrape up all the pork bits and bring to a boil. Add 1 cup cream and any juice on the plate from the pork. Boil again. Buy Stouffers wonderful baked apples and cook it in the microwave or canned apples work as well and then add it to the cream sauce. You can cook your own apples of course and sweeten with brown sugar and cinnamon. Serve the pork on everyone’s plate and pour the sauce over it. If you can’t find medallions, thin boneless pork chops work well too.

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#Frenchfood

The Christian Gentleman I Knew As My Daddy/ Date Shakes 

Posted in Childhood memories, Circleville, Dessert, Drinks, Family Stories, Parents and Grandparents by

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Rev. P. Lewis Brevard

There are so many fun and good things that I will  say of our “Daddy”, Paul Lewis Brevard. He was the only child of Joel and Callie Brevard, born with a separated lip and cleft palate. But his parents made sure he never felt sorry for himself, and they did a good job of this, too. He told me that on his first day of junior high, kids were making fun of him and he went home crying day after day until his father told him enough was enough! My grandfather, Pap as I called him, said “you come home one more day crying, I’m going to spank you hard enough you’ll have something real to cry about.” So the next day when he went to school and the same teasing happened, he knew he had to take care of things for himself. So he did. He gathered up all the courage he could muster and tore into the boy who was doing the most teasing!! When my dad did this with all he had, he won the fight. And he said from then on, that boy became his best friend, and he never had to fight again because his friend would do it for him. With that hurdle behind him he could concentrate on other things he enjoyed. He found out he had a natural talent for playing the guitar, and play he did. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania could hear his music from one end of the city to other. The more he played the better he became. He could play by ear and read the notes. He played in high school and college, forming groups and traveling to Cuba and other foreign countries. He even played at the Grand Ole Opry with other guitar greats like Chet Atkins. Once he was asked to be in Hank Williams band, but he chose to go the Christian route instead .

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The trio is Barney Pierce, Buford Cruise, Lewis Brevard

He was always happy and loved to play jokes on people. On his 21st birthday he was standing at the bottom of his parents stairs calling up to them saying, “Mom, Dad there’s a man down here!! Hurry!!” His father came running down the stairs, past my dad, looking franticly and turned back to asked my dad, where ? My Dad said pointing to himself, “right here, Dad. I became a man today.”

After college in N.Y. he went to Cincinnati, Ohio to God’s Bible School, and that’s where he met my mother. She had heard him play on the radio when she was in high school in West Virgina, and when she heard him again she remarked to a friend how much she enjoyed his music. The girl said, “I know him and he’s playing right now at the radio station. Would you like to go meet him?” Well, you already know her answer, and meet him she did!  They eventually married and moved to Circleville, Ohio where he managed the printing office for the Churches of Christ in Christian Union. Along with this, he continued to play his guitar as much as he could, going from church to church all over Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and sometimes to several other states as well. We as a family would go along with him and sing and mom would play the piano. This was a fun family activity we enjoyed together for many, many years.

Through the years Dad would get the chance to work in Washinton, DC, for the government printing office, and we almost moved there. But after doing this job for awhile he decided it would be better for us kids to grow up in Circleville, Ohio so he returned to the publishing department there. He also was given the chance to work in Columbus for the Weekly Reader and enjoyed that until they wanted him to move to Connecticut. He had grown up in a large city, Pittsburgh, Pa. and now enjoyed the smaller city life. So again, he turned that down. He was a happy man and I think the decisions he made through his life came with a lot of prayer first.

Paul Lewis Brevard, Lew to most people, was known as a Christian Gentleman who wore a black hat with his suit, had a song in his heart and a joke in his pocket.image

In 1946 when Mom and dad were on their honeymoon in Southern California, they drove by this quaint little place called Orange Inn. They were advertising “date milkshakes”. Who had ever heard of that unless you lived in California? Immediately they drove in and drank one! It became my Dad’s favorite milk shake forever.image

 A date farmer in Southern California created it in 1930. It is very tasty and very rich so you don’t need a large one! For your information, every year in Indio, California in February there is a date festival, featuring, of course, date shakes! Anyone want to go? Let me know and we’ll go together.

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