Chocolate Cake

Oh YUM! 

Chocolate Cake!

Who can resist?

This recipe looks well used - I will have to try it soon!

It was in Wilma June Faires Parker Vissotzky's recipe box.

The mystery lies in where the recipe originated...

perhaps Bernice, her mother

Another relative?

A church frined?

A fellow school teacher?

The possibilities are endless and will remain a mystery!

Please go through some of your recipes this weekend

and write down where you got it or had it first! 

Someone down the line may thank you for it! 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Chocolate cake, anyone?

Family Recipe Friday - Polish Cold Beet Soup Borscht

Summer is HERE, and with a vengeance! 

Down here in the South, we are being treated to weather that feels like August already.

Hot and humid, with temperatures in the 90's

and the A/C cranked up high!

What on earth did our ancestors do?

The Poles and East Europeans made Borscht,

a beet soup. 

Beets are Sooooo good for you! 

And this recipe doesn't require cooking, unless you want

to count the hard-boiled eggs!

This recipe is from "ma"-

Hank's mother, Anastazia (Nancy) Kocinski Vissotzky. 

I think I'll plan on Cold Beet soup for dinner tomorrow,

with a big chunk of artisan bread,

and enjoy a  mint julep on the porch. 

It IS summer down here in the South, ya'll!!!!
(Haha - I just realized I posted this for Geneablogger's Family Recipe Friday..
trouble with that is, today is THURSDAY!
It is Friday somewhere on this Earth already!!! 
Did you ever have "one of THOSE weeks"?)

Deep Dish Dewberry Pie

Tell me true, tell me, dew! 

Sorry - couldn't resist! 

A dewberry resembles a blackberry...or a black raspberry...

only instead of having an upright growing habit,

sends out runners across the ground.  

Now it makes me wonder if all the bushes I walk

past are dewberries and not blackberries as I always though?

Either way, this pie sounds great. 

You could always substitute blackberries or raspberries for dewberries.

I assume this pie has a lattice crust...that's the way I'll make it anyway! 

Tell me, dew, how YOU make it!   :)

Mustang (Muscadine)Wild Grapes Wine

Hank Vissotzky wrote this down  on a memo pad from work at Tarleton State Univesrity.

Kind of puts a new spin on on "sour grapes" doesn't it? 

If you aren't lucky enough to have wild grapes in the area,

I guess you could always just buy some grapes at the store. 

They don't taste the same, but would work in a pinch.

Now to go out and find some wild grape vines and keep an eye on them until July.....

Way Out West Wild Mustang Grape Juice - Family Recipe Fridays

Summer's coming! 

With summer, comes berries, wild berries!

And grapes!  Wild grapes!

Sorry to not have posted anything for sometime, but life kidnapped me.

We took a trip to Texas, where we were met by my favorite college freshman (son!)!

We stayed on a family ranch, where I took a gazillion pictures.

All sorts of wildflowers provided a feast for our eyes!

Staying on the place brought back memories

of driving on country roads in the summer time,

searching for sand plums so Mom could make plum jelly.

YUM!

By the time there are sand plums, the grapes are usually in season too.

or close anyway!

I found this recipe that Henry Vissotzky had written on some memo paper

from his desk at Tarleton State University.

Maybe this will be the summer for me to try to make

Wild Mustang Grape Juice!

My Amazing Spaghetti Scallops

Life has been hectic, too say the least!

Just look at the time in between my blog posts!

Life is funny.

You throw together a recipe from things you have in the fridge,

because you are so darn busy!

All of a sudden everyone is telling you that you need to keep the recipe!

Only problem with that is there is NO recipe!

You threw it together from scratch.

So you grab the nearest paper -

which happened to be the back of a Rottweiler puppy shaped notepad -

 and write down the recipe.

I always meant to write it on a decent recipe card!

Really I did!

It never made it, and my college son really likes this recipe!

and he really loved our rotties.

So, in deference to nostalgia and telling it like it is,

here is the rottie notepad recipe! 

Cook with love!

Mrs. Richard (Betty) Berry Boiled Peanut Butter Cookies Bluefield College Virginia

Bluefield College is a small Christian Liberal Arts School in Virginia - it's on the border of West VA and VA.

  I figure this boiled cookies recipe is either June's or Bernice's recipe.  It may be June's, becuase she was a teacher, and intereacted with a lot of other teachers from all over...Or more probably it may have been Bernice's because she was a pastor's wife, and knew many other people from Christian backgrounds.  I tried to google Mrs. Betty Berry.  There seem to be several other Berrys still attending Bluefield College....but I still need to do an ancestry search on Mrs. Berry.  I am curious!  It makes me think I need to go back through all my recipes and put notes about how and where and when I got MY recipes from friends.  That way my descendants will know a little bit more about me and not have to wonder......