Sgt. Mom

Air Force veteran, historical novelist, and cat-person

Christmas Cookies

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Pecan Angel Cookies – packed in a tin for delivery
(This year my daughter and I decided to afflict our neighbors with Christmas cookies again – in years past we have done herb vinegars and oils, pickles and preserves and home-made cheeses and bread.)

Pecan Angel Slices
(from Joy of Cooking 1975 Edition)
Cream together until well-blended: ½ cup butter and ¼ cup sugar
Beat in well: 1 egg and ½ teasp vanilla
Combine and add to the above: 1 ¼ cup sifted flour and 1/8 teasp salt

Pat dough evenly into a greased 9×12 inch pan and bake at 350 ° for fifteen minutes. Remove from oven.

Combine: 2 beaten eggs, 1 ½ cup brown sugar, ½ cup flaked cocoanut, 1 cup chopped pecans, 2 Tbsp. flour, ½ teasp double acting baking powder, ½ teasp salt and 1 teasp vanilla.
Pour over cookie layer and return to oven for 25 minutes

Combine 1 ½ cup sifted confectioner’s sugar with sufficient lemon juice to make a smooth, runny glaze. Pour over warm cookie/pecan/coconut layer and allow to set.

When cool, cut into bars or squares. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays … and bon appetite!

Backroads in the Eagle Ford Shale Country

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Typical South Texas landscape – Taken north of Goliad

This last Saturday was the second day of Christmas on the Square in Goliad, Texas. I had a table there, as a local author, but the cold was so pronounced that the whole event was rather a bust … but it did mean that folding up and coming home early allowed some time for taking pictures on the way back. This is a part of Texas which overlies the Eagle Ford Shale formation, and over the last five years I have noted a good many changes along the route, and in the small towns that we pass through on a semi-regular basis.

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How We Deliver Santa in Texas

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On a longhorn, with an Army escort. (Today in Goliad – where it was bitterly cold and so the crowd turnout was minimal, and chilled to the bone.)

History Friday:The Sutton-Taylor Feud

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The feud between the Suttons and the Taylors was one of those epic Texas feuds which convulsed DeWitt County in the decade following the Civil War. It might even have begun earlier in a somewhat more restrained way, but there is nothing besides speculation on the part of contemporary journalists by way of evidence. Both families originated in South Carolina, both settled in DeWitt County … and in the hard times which followed on the humiliating defeat of the South and the even more humiliating Reconstruction, they squared off against each other. The feud lasted nearly a decade, at a cost of at least 35 lives. Participants in it included the notorious John Wesley Hardin, who was related by marriage to the Taylors. Some historians have described the feud as a bitter continuation of the Civil War, between die-hard Confederate partisans and those roughly aligned with the forces of Reconstruction law and order.

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Obituary – Historian and Writer T.R. Fehrenbach

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Late to the party on this one, since I dropped my newspaper subscription a couple of years ago, but one of the ladies of the Red Hat circle I belong to mentioned this to me last night at our monthly dinner out. She couldn’t quite recall his name, but outlined enough that I figured it out, and confirmed by routine googlectomy this morning. He was our own local Victor Davis Hanson; I never met him in person, but I had friends and associates who had. A fantastic historian,(and a military veteran as well, since he was of that era) but personally rather bland and plain-spoken. Two of his books, Lone Star and Comanches are on my desk shelf within reach, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

T.R. Fehrenbach, who made history read like news.