December 26, 2008 at 11:21 pm (Michigan, memories)
Tags: Brookwood, recipe, squirrel stew
Recipes for a Hungry Michigan Woodsman!
This would be very similar to my Aunt Martha’s stew we ate at Brookwood.
Ingredients:
2 squirrels cleaned and cut into pieces
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 large onions, chopped
4 cups water
1 large potato cubed
2 large carrots, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
2 cups coral mushrooms, torn
2 – 14 1/2 ounce cans diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons flour
Directions:
Dredge squirrel in flour, salt and pepper
Heat oil and garlic in large Dutch oven and brown squirrel
Add onions and cook until soft
Add water, potato, carrots and celery
Cover and simmer for 1 hour
Add tomatoes, mushrooms and Worcestershire
Cover and simmer for 30 minutes
Mix 3 tablespoons flour with 1/2 cup cold water, stirring until smooth
Add to stew and simmer until slightly thickened
Season to taste with salt and pepper
VERY GOOD TOPPED WITH BAKING SODA BISCUIT DUMPLINGS!
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December 26, 2008 at 10:54 pm (Michigan, memories)
Tags: breakfast, Brookwood, family, memories, morning
You awoke in the morn at Brookwood to the smell of coffee and the sound of preparations for the day. On 
weekdays, the kids would have a breakfast of cold cereal, in those little boxes lined with wax paper that Dad had cut open and poured frigid milk into that had cooled overnight in the creek. Tang was the accompanying beverage. I always preferred it to be on the weak side.
After breakfast came time to do dishes. Using a dish pan in the big old porcelain country sink, we would add boiling water to, you would fill it with a mixture of hot water from the kettle on the big black would burning stove and freezing water from the old red pump at the sink to get a temperature that you could bear. With this you took a spongebath, and perhaps washed your hair. Then out would come the toothbrush and the tin of Colgate tooth powder (or if we ran out we used baking soda).
Tidied up and ready for the day it was time for chores. Emptying the chamber pot and slop jar from the night before (the job we ALL tried to avoid!) Making the bed, cleaning up our mess and sometimes 
sweeping the floor. Then out to the woods to gather kindling for the woodburning stove. We would fight over the right to feed that to the hungry mouth of the big black fire-eater. The older kids might go with Dad to the dump (on the property) to bury our garbage. The 
younger kids went out to dig earthworms for the days fishing, if that was to be on the agenda.
All simple, familiar parts of a childhood routine that I remember so well……
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December 25, 2008 at 4:43 am (Michigan, memories)
I have an enduring love of the real evergreen as a Christmas tree. This is probably born of my days in the woods, of my love of the smell of pine and the happy memories it brings me, and of course from childhood memories. We never had a foil tree as a child. Dad always bought us a lovely pine and would flock it with his Sears Roebuck shop vac. When I was a pre-teen we switched to artificial….a plastic fake tree that never stirred my soul as a real tree did.
Today we have a 13 foot pre lit artificial tree. It sits in the garage, unused as I buy smaller real evergreens, cut in Michigan. I can’t help but compare these sad examples however to the trees I love so well. These trees are sprayed with a fire retardant coating that is dyed green- and this colors the tree. Inside my tree this year it is sad and brown. The coating didn’t cover as much as one would expect.
If I still had access to Brookwood I might want to travel there to choose a tree from Grandfather’s forest…..a baby of one he planted perhaps.l would know I was getting a lovely, fresh example, and a piece of “home” at the same time. Of course, I would not be able to bring my husband along, for although he loves “live” trees he won’t “kill” it himself….he will just be an end user and pruchase it!
I would love to see our woods at Christmas. I imagine the sparkling snow, the crusty surface that would pop as my feet fell through to the softer blanket below; the shining ice that would drip from trees causing icicles to bounce in the breeze; the crisp, clean smell and the welcoming wafting scents of a fireplace keeping us warm inside the cabin. And the Christmas trees decorated with snowy drifts on their branches, ice gleaming in the winter light and pine cones accenting the overall effect.
Merry Christmas to all! Peace.
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