Another family reunion today. We started with a visit to cousin Jerry’s llama farm in Heyden—check back later for a video--and then drove up Highway 31 through Garden City (which doesn’t seem to have changed at all in the last 20 years) and Hanceville, and after a confusion between two different streets named “Park” (two streets with the same name in a town of less than a 1,000 people?), found Jimmy and Doris’s house. There we met Jane and George, Tater and Bonnie, and Mary for a generous potluck lunch of salads (one was a “pretzel salad” which is made of red jello and strawberries with crushed pretzels, among other ingredients—see recipe below) cold cuts, and for dessert. . . coconut cake, turtle pie, white cake with strawberries. . .my stomach hurts just writing down all the names. . . We sat around and talked as we often do at these reunions, agreed to visit one another sooner next time, and headed back to Mt. Olive mid-afternoon.
On the drive back we stopped at Grandad’s old house and the highway bridge there on old Highway 31—very, very sad to see how run down that area has become.
Tonight Laura treated Carla, Diane, Donna Crouch, Donna Marks and me to dinner at one of Frank Stitt’s restaurant, Botega in Birmingham. A lovely way to spend our last evening in Alabama.
We’re on the road tomorrow back to Cincinnati and then I fly out to SFO Saturday morning.
Here’s the recipe for Strawberry Pretzel Salad:
5 oz pretzels, crushed 8 oz cream cheese
1/3 cup butter melted ¼ cup powdered sugar
3 T brown Sugar 1 16 oz package frozen strawberries
1 large and 1 small box strawberry jello 12 oz Cool Whip
1 cup boiling water
Mix pretzels, butter, and brown sugar and press into bottom of 9 x 13 pan. Cook at 350 degrees for 8 minutes and let cool. Mix cream cheese, powdered sugar and Cool Whip and spread over crust. Dissolve jello in boiling water and add strawberries. Pour mixture over cream cheese mixture. Refrigerate until set.
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