Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Nov 21, 2006

Today’s announcements

The American Thanksgiving is just around the corner and most of you are busy preparing for a big feast to serve family and friends.  I am tired just thinking about all the preparation that you folks will be doing.  As you know we Canadians have our Thanksgiving celebration in October.  The reason for the difference has to do with the harvest season.  Canada is colder than the USA and therefore our harvest comes sooner.  The Thanksgiving Day celebration is the rejoicing of the bountiful harvest that our forefathers were able to have in those first harsh years in a strange new land on North American soil.  Let us not forget, the pilgrims and the Native Canada/American peoples of this great land who helped us become the proud and wonderful nations that we are today.

I am going to start today with the wonderful Thanksgiving offers which our writers have provided for you.  I am pleased that Canadian and American writers alike have offered their gratitude and thanks on this joyous occasion.

Hi Ya''ll

The final test results are in for Skyler and he has NO FOOD ALLERGIES - yea ( I guess)

Their only guess why he throws up is maybe emotional and environmental stresses.... I knew he was sensitive, now I know for sure !!

The did say the organic foods were a big help in his condition - so at least I am doing something RIGHT - yea Mommy Acaysha !!!

He did not catch rotavirus or any other virus in the hospital -YEA !!!  Just a cold and he was sniffling prior to the hospital - due to the cold weather change

So a BIG THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU WHO PRAYED, SENT ANGELS, HEALINGS AND POSITIVE THOUGHTS - THEY ALL WORKED !!!

Have a happy Thanksgiving and enjoy your family & friends !!!

We love ya - big hug from both of us !!

Acaysha & Skyler

Acaysha Dolfin
President Of The Society For Authors And Writers (SFAAW) www.sfaaw.com
International Author, Motivational Speaker, Marketing & Publicity Guru, Radio DJ, Reiki Master, Ordained Minister,
CEO/ Founder of SHOW ME TEACH ME HEAL ME FOUNDATION  www.showmeteachmehealme.com
3209 Port Saint Lucie Blvd #134
Port St Lucie, FL 34953
772 336 8322  ** 877 ANGELS_5
772 343 8602 Fax
www.acaysha.com
acaysha@photon.net
www.sfaaw.com
Radio show Sundays 8-9 pm EST http://radio.photon.net/acaysha
Skyler's personal website:   http://impressions.babypeeks.com/adolfin/

^{Remember that all stories and poems were lost because of the computer crash, if you sent me anything in late August, September or October and you haven’t seen it published please send it back again.  Thank you.}

See below for Storytime Angels

Now onto the good stuff!

Today’s Queue Stories

~**~**~

 ValueSpeak

A Weekly Column

By Joseph Walker

valuespeak@msn.com

THE GIFT OF THANKSGIVING

Joe Walker

            Mom had The Gift.  So did Dad, only his gift was different from Mom’s.  But every Thanksgiving their gifts came together in a wondrous mix of the temporal and the divine.

            For Mom, that meant cooking.  Mom wasn’t just a good cook; she was an artist.  She could take Spam and do thinks with it that made you wish there really was such a thing as a Spam animal — and that you had been born one. She could turn a pot of beans and a few hot dogs into a dish so extraordinary you thought perhaps you would order beanie-weenies the next time you dined at the Ritz.  And her liver and onions . . . trust me.  Heaven.

            Thanksgiving, then, provided Mom with the perfect canvas for the full palette of her culinary colors.  The turkey was hand-basted and stuffed with made-from-scratch dressing.  The potatoes — real potatoes — were mashed and covered with her rich stewed chicken gravy.  The yams were brown sugar-glazed and covered with enough gooey melted marshmallows to almost make them palatable to a confirmed non-yammer like me.  Then there were the homemade rolls, apricot jam, mustard pickles and pumpkin, banana cream and coconut cream pies. It was always incredible — and incredibly good.  Think of her as Michelangelo, and Thanksgiving dinner as her David.  Only she created her David every year for more than 40 years.

            Dad’s special gift was less appetizing, but it was every bit as much a part of our Thanksgiving tradition.  Dad was a praying man.  And not your common, ordinary, “now I lay me down to sleep” sort of a praying man.  When Dad prayed, angels stopped whatever they were doing to take notes.  In my lifetime I’ve heard Dad pray lost dogs home, lost businesses solvent and lost children righteous.  He was to praying what Michael Jordan was to dunking.  If there wasn’t a God when he started praying, you just knew there’d be one by the time he said “Amen.”

            Dad was an articulate man who had a way with a phrase.  Folks who did business with him said he could tell you to go to Hell in such a way that you’d look forward to the trip.  So when Thanksgiving rolled around and it was time to give thanks for Mom’s latest gastronomical triumph, no one was better suited to the task than Dad.  His prayers were always ponderous and profound, but on Thanksgiving they became epic — The Lord’s Prayer Meets “War and Peace.”

            What can I say?  He had The Gift.

            Generally, Mom and Dad’s gifts blended remarkably well each Thanksgiving.  Dad made sure to be properly thankful for “the loving hands which have prepared this magnificent repast,” and Mom made sure to keep the things warm on the stove until God had been properly thanked for all the work that Mom had done.

One Thanksgiving, however, Dad was too thankful for his own good.  His litany of thanking and blessing continued for nearly 15 minutes (yes, I was timing him).  He was just blessing Congress, the Cabinet and the entire United Nations when a pungent odor filled the room.  Mom didn’t say anything, but we heard her dash for the kitchen and start slamming pots and pans together long before any of us had a chance to say “Amen.”  When at last we looked up and began trying to work out the kinks from our too-long-bowed necks, Mom was standing in the kitchen doorway with a blackened pan of burned stewed chicken gravy.

“Perhaps you could pray a blessing of healing on our gravy,” she suggested, fixing Dad with the icy stare of an artist whose finest creation had been sullied.

“There’s nothing wrong with that gravy,” Dad said.  “It's just the way I like it!”

            “Then I hope you'll enjoy every bite,” Mom said as she ceremoniously placed the smelly pot before him.  “The rest of us will be going without gravy this year, so it’s all yours.”

            I don’t know if Dad was grateful for Mom’s “gift’ that Thanksgiving.  But I do know that the next year our prayer was much shorter.  Dad made sure of that by asking me to say it.

            Even though I didn't have The Gift.

Joe Walker

~**~**~

 ****: MINCEMEAT AND APPLE BUTTER for Thanksgiving

In November, 1939, after a ten-mile drive on a cold gray afternoon, big red Ned trotted into the barnyard at our old home place just after Grandmother had taken six large loaves of bread from the oven.  Half frozen, we clambered out of the buggy and she met us at the kitchen door with hot slices of crust, generously buttered, and thickly smeared with spicy, dark brown apple butter. That was 67 years ago but I can still taste it.

There were many ways of making apple butter. It seems to have been concocted, independently, by housewives of several countries in the "apple belt" of northern Europe. The simplest of those recipes merely required "good sweet apples and pure sweet cider". The pared and cored apples and the cider were boiled, 'stirring constantly until the whole is a rich dark pulp.

Some folks believed that the best apple butter was made without cider.  The apples, cut in eighths, were boiled in a small amount of water until tender, and put through a sieve. After adding 4 tablespoons of sugar per cup of pulp, it was cooked and stirred until thick. They might put in a small amount of lemon juice and grated rind. German and Pennsylvania 

Dutch cooks used 2 quarts water and 1-1/2 quarts cider per gallon of sliced apples, 1-1/2 pounds sugar and one teaspoon, each, of ground cinnamon, cloves and allspice.  Sticks of cinnamon were "still better yet".

In early times most farms had an orchard bearing several kinds of apples from which, each year, they made barrels of cider, 20 or more gallons of apple butter, and mincemeat. Apple butter making was an event as important as butchering and maple sugaring. On the day 

before, bushels of apples were pared, cored and cut into pieces by the women folks -- including neighbors.  Some had little paring machines.

Copper kettles were preferred because the sticky stuff was less apt to be tainted by scorching, but grandma had a 30-gallon iron one, brightly polished inside.  It was set up in the yard and, before daybreak, we youngsters poured in the water and built a fire under it. After the water boiled, the cider and apples were added, and all day we took turns at 

stirring it continuously, with a long-handled, perforated, wooden paddle.   When it was dark brown, thick and smooth, that spicy butter was ladled into large stone crocks and jars to be stored in the cellar.

For dinner on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas, one of my grandmothers cooked a goose and the other roasted a turkey, but they both served pumpkin pie and hot mince pie. Grocery stores sold Nonesuch mincemeat then -- the same brand on sale in markets today -- but they made their own.

Recipes for mincemeat varied as much as those for apple butter.  Some housewives used more ingredients than others and took more pains in making it. The ingredients depended upon the tastes, traditions and prejudices of their families.  Straight-laced cooks used fresh sweet cider or none at all. Others, more tolerant, used hard cider and maybe something stronger. Nowadays, in Chicago, pie manufacturers add cheap brandy and rum to their mincemeats.

The basic constituents are meat, suet, and apples.  Most recipes specify lean beef.  My folks used pork. The "plain people" in Pennsylvania, pious Mennonites, used the most generous recipe of all.  In addition to 4 boiled calf tongues, 2-1/2 lbs. suet, 6 lbs. chopped apples and 4 lbs. sugar, it called for 1/2 lb. citron, 2 lbs. raisins, 2 lbs. currants, 1/2 lb. each of candied orange and lemon peels, 2 grated nutmegs, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, chopped almonds, salt, the juice and rinds of 4 oranges and 4 lemons, one quart of brandy and two quarts of whiskey.  This potent mixture was stored in a cool place at least four weeks before being used in pies.  Then they celebrated Thanksgiving.

WE’RE THANKFUL

For this Thanksgiving Day, oh, Lord, to You, our thanks we give.

We’re thankful for another year, we’re thankful that we live.

We hold that life on earth is blessed, that You have made it so,

That we should pause now to review before we onward go.

We also want to thank You, Lord, for this day set apart,

When families may meet again to reaffirm the heart.

When sons and daughters can return to spend a day once more,

And thankfully relive again those wondrous days of yore.

Hartson S. Dowd

hsdowd@telus.net

~**~**~

Poetry Corner

~**~**~

"HEART  OF  THANKSGIVING"
Mary Carter Mizrany

When  I see  a  woman weeping
that  no fruit her womb did bear . . .
I  thank   Father for my children
then take  her to HIM  in  prayer   ~

When  I  see  a young child weeping
from "dark secrets" causing  pain . . .
I ask   Father  to  send  angels 
to  prevent  ABUSE  again   ~

I  thank   HIM  for  the healings
my  own  life  needed  so  . . .
for  abuse  someone  I  trusted
perpetrated  long   ago  ~

That  left  me  broken~hearted
so  confused  ~  so  afraid  . . .
I  asked  Father   to  forgive  him
for   wrong choices that he  made  ~

When  the  horror  of  molestation
returns  to  torment  my  memory . . .
I  thank  JESUS  for  providing 
that  "guilt~eraser"  so  faithfully  ~

When  I  see  the  lost & lonely
poor  &  hungry  seeking  bread . . .
I  ask  the gentle  Holy Spirit 
provide  for  them, as  I  am  fed  ~

Woo  them  to  our  Saviour,  JESUS
who  gave  HIS life  on  Calvary . . .
who's  standing  at  their  heart's door
pleading  "Open now  and  see"  ~

And  so  MANY  other  blessings
Father  gives  to  me  each  day . . .
'twould  take  forever  just to count them
  billions  of  words  to  say  ~

Cherished  family,  friends  &  loved ones
top  the  list  for  which  I'm  blessed   . . .
Thank  you,  precious,  loving  Father  
for  these  AND  ALL  THE  REST !

Mary  Carter  Mizrany©

MusingByMary@aol.com
November 3,  2003

Readers Feedback

How sweet of Tannia to take the time to email.  How wonderful to have these memories of her grandpa.  I am finding that so many people are praying for my dad and it just makes me feel so much better about his situation.  I do believe that God can heal.   I also know that it is His will not mine.  Thanks Carol for sending me this lovely email. 

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