In my husband’s opinion a Thanksgiving dinner can NOT have too much dressing or stuffing! So I stuff the bird and then fill the crockpot with more! Here is the recipe I’ve used for several years not. HOWEVER, I don’t use the parsley, mushrooms or marjoram. So make your changes and additions and enjoy! Here’s the link to the full recipe.
And don’t forget to drop by my contest page (see tab above) and enter to win a book!–Lyn
Once again I’m bringing back a great blog from the past. Author Pamela Tracy was my guest in January 2009 and here’s Pamela!
“I’ve sat in front of my computer many a time making up stories, writing letters, doing interviews, writing blogs with a theme… Ah, blogs with a theme, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing today: some kind of blog.
Only this one is special.
It’s not about me.
It’s not about my books.
Today, I’m writing about my friend Sandra Lagesse. Sandra is a white-haired lady who I first more than a decade ago. I met her because of carpooling. See, I’m blessed to live in an area that has not one but two Romance Writers of America groups. There’s one in Glendale, where I used to live, and there’s one in Tempe, which is close to where I live now. When I first met Sandra, there was a carpooling group that would travel from Glendale to Tempe.
One evening, it wound up just Sandra and me. I didn’t know much about Sandra back then. I learned fast!
At that time, I was a thirty-something who drove way too fast and talked was too much. I was an elementary school teacher who didn’t make enough to live on. It was while we were driving home from the meeting that our friendship was sealed. See, I was busy talking way too much, and she was listening. We got on the subject of politics. At the time, Rose Moffort was in office. The puppet Madam was also enjoying a lot of exposure. I mentioned that I thought the governor and the puppet looked alike.
After Sandra stopped laughing, she reached in her purse and pulled out some pictures. Yup, Sandra’s maiden name was Moffort. Yup, she was related to Rose.
After I took my foot out of my mouth, we became great friends, the kind of friends that last.
The fact that Sandy’s father was married to a governor is not what makes Sandy great. Sandy is what makes Sandy great. See, Sandy is a writer. She’ll tell you the irony is that. She’s very dyslexic. Because of her dyslexia, she struggled in school – only in reading. Here’s proof. My book, Daddy for Keeps, has a banker hero. Guess where I got my information. Sandy. This dyslexic child grew up to be a banker. And, although she’s retired now, she’s on many a board (mostly for historic markers) and she acts as an advisor.
Another thing that makes Sandy a hero is the love she and her late husband shared. Most of her friends really don’t know her late husband’s name. See, he was known by all of us as Honey. That’s right. She called her husband ‘honey’ so much that pretty soon he became Honey. Honey was a retired fireman. He didn’t want to retire, but he had polio. When I met Sandy, he was pretty much homebound, but not quite. Sandy’s day was get him up, take him to the gym (See, he was a great man and tried not to let his sickness get the best of him), take him to the doctor, and maybe they went out to lunch. You get the idea… The last few years of his life, he was completely homebound. And so was Sandy.
Sandy never stopped calling him Honey.
Right now, Sandy is dating my father-in-law.
Earlier, we talked about Sandy becoming a banker. Well, Sandy is also a budding romance writer. She’s a lot like Honey. She’s not going to let something like dyslexia stop her. She’s taken no short cuts. She reads, she writes, she critiques… and Sandy a writing outlet that no one else but she could fill. Sandy writes a history column for a local paper. From her childhood – think Governor Rose Moffort, a father who was a lawman while Arizona was a young state, and from her Godmother a rancher who helped build a cabin from scratch – Sandy knows the history of Arizona. Marshall Tucker move over!
I am in awe of all Sandy knows and does.
And the best that she does is friendship.”–Pamela
About Pamela Tracy:
Her website: www.pamelakayetracy.com
Pamela Tracy is a writer and teacher in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she lives with her husband and son. She’s published many writings in suspense, romantic comedy, and Christian inspiration romance.
Thanks a lot, Pamela!
Click the cover to pre-order her latest book, out Nov 1st!–Lyn
Would you like to see where I live? I’m a guest on the Pink Heart Society blog today and my blog is featured in their At Home With section. Drop by and leave a comment.
https://www.pinkheartsociety.com/single-post/October2017/AtHomeWith
This story of a strong woman was first posted December 4, 2008.
Here’s Author Maureen Lang:
“When Lyn presented the idea to post an article about a strong woman, I thought it would be so easy to introduce readers to one of the heroines from my books. After all, they’re supposed to be strong. If they don’t start out that way, hopefully by the end of the story they’ve grown into someone who’s faced and conquered more than they ever thought they could endure.
But instead I’d like to tell you about my grandmother—a real person rather than one of the make-believe people performing scenes in my head. Do you know what makes a person strong? As the Bible says, it’s testing by fire.
My grandmother came from good American stock. When I was young she told me her family had left Ireland so many years ago one ancestor or another had fought in the Revolutionary War. She also said one of her forebears had been a mail-order bride from Scotland, another story I’d like to explore some day.
My grandmother Elizabeth (Bess as she was called) was born in 1894. The first fire Bess faced was at the young age of seven. Her mother became sick with TB, and one day Bess’s father, a country pastor, dressed in his preaching suit even though it wasn’t Sunday. He told Bess to comb her hair and put on her best dress, too, so she could say good-by properly to her mother. After doing that (combing her hair the best her seven-year old hands could do), her father pressed two silver dollars into her little palm and then took Bess to her mother. She was already gone on to Heaven. It was Bess who put the coins on her eyes, to hold down the eyelids she was told.
Bess’s sixteen year old sister helped to care for her until a few months later when she, too, became ill with TB and died, leaving Bess with her father and brother. Not long after that, two women from her father’s church came for a grim visit: they told him it wasn’t proper for a young girl to be raised in a household of only men, and they’d found a school that would take in girls. And so at seven years old Bess was sent away, to be raised by Episcopalian nuns. She was to see her father and brother only on Sundays for family day.
Bess was well educated there and grew up to marry. As a young woman she lived through the Great War and the Great Depression, bore two boys and a girl. When her daughter was six years old she woke up to another day only to become ill in a matter of hours. My frantic grandmother took her little girl to the local hospital and after waiting and waiting for help, the doctor finally saw them. But Bess was told there was nothing they could do. Her daughter died soon after the doctors examined her, a victim of what she was told to be 7-hour pneumonia. Bess continued to hold her daughter, and the staff was so busy they left her there for many hours, until she cried herself to sleep. As the family story goes, that’s when my grandmother’s dark brown hair turned the pure white she had for the rest of her life.
Bess gave birth to a third son not long after that, but when a woman brought a paternity suit against Bess’s husband demanding he support her and his child, Bess divorced him despite social condemnation. She raised three rambunctious boys on her own, all of whom became hardworking and honest, responsible members of society. Each of them entered the armed forces and she watched them march off to fight in the Second World War. By then Bess had a choice of two men who wanted to marry her, and she chose a First World War veteran who worked as a fine tool blacksmith.
But before they could be married he was recruited by Uncle Sam to go to the Panama Canal Zone to work on everything from medical to ship equipment aboard warships passing through the Canal. He reported for duty immediately and Bess soon followed—after a series of nasty shots and medical precautions against malaria. They were married by an American judge in Panama City. For four years they lived there, while one of her sons, my father, was taken Prisoner of War by the Japanese in the Philippines. Bess was given only scant knowledge of what he went through after that initial death march for the three and a half years of his captivity until the end of the war.
Bess and her husband made it back to the Midwest just in time to welcome him home after the camp he’d been held at in Mukden, Manchuria was liberated.
By the time I came along my grandmother was quite settled, still happily married to her retired blacksmith, and living near her three sons. Thinking back on my childhood I have few regrets, but one of them was that I never sat still long enough to listen to more of her stories. She died at age 89, having lived a full and interesting life, tested by the fires that made her strong.”–Maureen
Maureen Lang is the author of several novels, including Pieces of Silver (a Christy Finalist) and The Oak Leaves (a Holt Award of Merit recipient). Her books are both historical and contemporary and always include an element of romance with the promise of a happy ending. For more about her, visit
her website www.maureenlang.com
OR
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Maureen-Lang-77586161029/
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