52 Ancestors - Week 49- Handed Down

52 Ancestors – WEEK 49 – Handed Down

By Cynthia Keefer Patton 

On of my favorite things to "hand down" are recipes. With each recipe comes a flood of memories. Who made it, where we ate it, what the house smelled like while it was cooking. My late husband Shephard H. Patton, Sr. loved to cook. He cooked Southern and Cajun specialties because he was born and raised in Southern Mississippi.

While going through some boxes (yes 14 years since he passed away) I came across a notebook with some handwritten recipes. He wrote like this, mostly block letters. Not ever cursive. He loved this dish and we had it on a lot of Mondays. That is a New Orleans thing. Wash day. IFKYK.

I miss him a lot. He was a great man. Make these and I promise you won't regret it. PS You can use any type of sausage, even turkey sausage.

52 Ancestors - Week 8 - Heirlooms

 52 Ancestors - WEEK 8 - Heirlooms

By Cynthia Keefer Patton

My family does not have a lot of heirlooms. Not physical ones. Very little saved to pass down through the generations. Probably because my grandparents all lived in Pennsylvania, and we lived in Georgia and only got to visit at most once a year throughout my childhood. Other cousins lived close and had much more intimate relationships with them. So likely, they received more items that were "passed down". And that is OK. I am so relentless in my genealogical pursuits to learn more about them, to connect to them, to honor them. So, I will be creating digital heirlooms that others related to us can share.

The precious few I have, a small English tea set (I hope came over with a maternal line on their way to the New World), a wicker sewing cabinet that was my great-grandmothers from Wales, and some handwritten recipe cards from my sweet Mother. But in my heart are a million heirloom memories, that the smell of something baking or the sound of birds in early spring will bring back in an instance. Heirlooms.