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Sepia Saturday 254: Couples, Clinches, Crossings, Hitching a Ride

By Sheetar 15 November 2014 13 November 2014

This was as close as I could come to the prompt image for this week’s Sepia Saturday. A man helps a woman steady herself next to a waterfall! It doesn’t look like they were crossing the falls, maybe just standing near it for the photo, but it’s still a great image. We don’t know who this is for sure, but I have to assume it’s someone related via my husband’s paternal grandmother Hilje “Hilda” (Dijkema) Jaarsma. I have a hunch, based on another photo that’s labelled, that the woman may be one of her aunts (either Ellechien VanEerden or Gertrudia Dijkema Visser). It’s really hard to tell, and of course none of hte photos are labelled. No clues on the man though. I don’t think Ellechien was married, so it points to this more likely being Gertrudia, but then again I could be completely wrong on all accounts! It was likely taken in Holland, sometime around 1935. A quick search, and it looks a lot like the Sonsbeek Waterfall in Arnhem!

This appears to be the same man and woman as above. If you look closely, you can see the man is holding a walking stick behind his back, possibly the same one he had in the photo at the top. Again, I can’t verify anything about the photo, but hey, it’s a crossing, even if assisted by a bridge. I thought the bridge may have been unique enough to turn up in a google search, but I’d searched for it for a while and came up empty. Then, after stumbling across the image for the photo above, I found it’s a bridge in the same park (Park Sonsbeek) in Arnhem! So, now I’ve got the where, but still no who! Maybe if one of Wessel Visser’s relatives happens to stumble across this blog, they be able to confirm or disprove my theory. Wouldn’t that be great! So, yet another Sepia Saturday that brings me a new snippet of information through careful examination of old, unlabeled photos.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 21

By Sheetar 12 November 2014 12 November 2014

Husband cannot get enough of cooking One Local Summer, so we’re still marching along! The idea for this one came up two months ago when we purchased a waffle iron. Husband spent a while researching irons to get the right combination of affordable, easy to use, and durable, and we came up with a winner. It’s surprising for a brand of appliance I don’t generally associate with reliability and quality, but hey, nearly 1500 amazon reviewers can’t be wrong! Anyway, in case it’s not obvious at this point, we made Chicken and Waffles! The version we’re familiar with is the PA dutch version that used something that looks more like pulled chicken with gravy (or creamy chicken soup) instead of fried chicken. Adding a little more food history for you, the PBS program The History Kitchen has a great article on the origins of Chicken and Waffles (thank you again, Holland). In any case, they came out DELICIOUS and so very filling. Both of us barely managed to finish off one waffle heaped generously with the chicken mixture and we both quickly lapsed into a deep food coma post-dinner.

Ingredients:
Raw Milk – Camp Hill Kimberton
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Chicken thighs – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Eggs – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Leeks – North Star Orchard
Red Onion – Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, pepper, beer

Subscription Boxes

Petit Vour October 2014

By Sheetar 10 November 2014 8 November 2014

This box didn’t wow me as much as the September one did, but let’s face it – there’s probably not another box that will ever top September’s for me! It was simply perfect. This one though isn’t bad. I must’ve been at the tail end of the shipping window because this showed up at my doorstep on November 1st. Oops. The theme of the box this month is, “Beauty Thrillers.” Anyway, on to the contents!

Pacifica Deovean Natural Lipstick – .07 oz / $14 – (Full size sample, value is $14) I really like the formula – it’s creamy without feeling sticky and thick like regular lipsticks and I can barely tell it’s there which is a total win. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sold on the color I received (Rebel Sol) since it’s coral-ish and way too yellow for my face. I tend to do best with berry colors, but there doesn’t seem to be one in the line. The bright red Firebird color is way too intense for me, and XOX might be a little too pale. No happy medium! If they expand their color selection, I’m totally in. Really affordable too for a lipstick.
Flo + Theo Body Butter – 4 oz / $28 – (Sample is 1.5 oz i think, value of $10.50) Oh man do I love this. The body butter is really rich and thick so while it’s not great for hands because it can be a touch greasy, it’s perfect for overnight on hands or elbows, knees, dry legs, etc. The scent is out of this world! I love lavender so much, and this one has a warm, botanical lavender scent instead of a sweeter lavender which is wonderful. And, just FIVE ingredients!
Forager Botanicals Natural Eau de Parfum – 2 oz / $98 – (Sample size is 1 mL, value of $1.66, also available as a four fragrance sampler for $25, so value between $2-$6) I received “Nectar” which isn’t really my sort of scent. The citrus just seems off for me. The scent is light and subtle, and a little goes a long way. I do like the warmer notes in this scent though, and I may spring for the sampler to see if I like the other scents!
Lavina Argan Oil – 60 mL / $35 – (Sample is approx 6 mL, sample is worth about $3.50) The only full size I could find was on Lavina’s website for $35 as opposed to the $20 on the product card. I’ve never used Argan oil before, so this is a real treat! The ends of my hair have been SUPER dry since I’ve been dyeing them blue. There’s no strong scent to the oil, and my hair did soak it up right away. I’ll have to see how it works out on wet hair too since I could see this working best post-shower.
Schmidt’s Natural Deoderant – 2 oz / $9 – (Sample size is .5 oz, value of $2.25) Oh man, just like November’s Goodebox, here I am with another natural deoderant sample. I still haven’t found a natural deoderant that actually works, even if the scent on this one is really great. None of these manage to keep my pits dry because none of the ingredients actually stop perspiration which leads to the bacteria on your skin creating an odor. Most natural deoderants only mask the odor and don’t effectively stop sweat or bacteria for a full day. It sucks, and I hate that none of these work for me because I’d love to switch to a natural deoderant, but it has to actually be effective and still working at 5pm without reapplication. Also, I’m really grossed out by the idea of spreading deoderant on my pits with my hands. Stick only, please! I’m still going to try this, but on a day when I don’t have to worry about walking around in public smelling like I just left the gym. For the meantime, you can hold on to my natural products fanclub card when it comes to deoderants. They just don’t get the job done.

It was neat to see five samples in the box this month, adding up to around $35 which well covers the cost of the box. Can’t wait to see what they put together for next month!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 253: Miners, Angling, Fishy Tales, Three Men

By Sheetar 8 November 2014 7 November 2014

Well, no anglers, but we have miners in every section of the family tree for this week’s Sepia Saturday. The majority of my family lived in or around, at one point or another, central Pennsylvania, well known for its coal mining industry. There are SO many photos I can add in here, so I’ve picked out a few of the best, including a link and update to an old post. This is going to be a huge post, so bear with me.

This photo was originally posted here a few years ago. The label on the back reads, “Herb and D. Alexander on the way home,” and was written partly in great grandma Olga’s younger handwriting, then clarified below with, “on the way home,” in the handwriting more characteristic of her older years. Herb is definitely Alfred Herbert Powis, Olga’s brother, sitting on the left. D. Alexander is likely to be Dempster William Alexander (1898-1978) since he’s the only one from the local censuses who fit the age and name. Both boys grew up in Clearfield County in Pennsylvania and while I still can’t tell which mine this is, it’s just a fantastic picture of the equipment, the soot on their faces, the lunch pails, and everything. They’re not clean and posed – it’s more a relaxed sort of photo and one of my favorites from the collection. For a date, I’d estimate it around 1916 or so, prior to Herb going off to war.

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Fairly recently, I was going back through the scans of great grandma’s photo album when a pretty faded photo caught my eye. I’ve done a little bit of photo magic to increase the contrast, but it’s a really fantastic photo. The boy on the mining cart is Earl Powis Jr, son of Earl William Powis. You can see rails in the background and even what looks like a donkey about dead center above the cart. It’s neat to see the other side of what appears to be a similar car to the one at the top of this post with all the controls and whatnot. This one probably dates to 1927-1930.

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My grandfather, Leon Kitko (Olga’s son), ever the joker, wrote a few notes in his mining log book for the Ebensburg Coal Company. If you can’t read that, after the last printed line, it says, “and all the other ways in which you could kill yourself without even trying.” It was undoubtedly not the safest of work environments even if you followed all the safety precautions in the booklet. He grew up fascinated with coal mining and the machinery that went along with it, leaving behind a scrapbook full of photos of the machinery including photos of him as a child playing with replica toy coal shovels he built himself.

Two images Grandpa Leon took of coal miners and their families. Fred Frye on the left with a D-8 Bulldozer, and John Ruffin and family with a shovel in the background. One has the date of 1948, and I’m assuming the other is about the same date.

A Bay City Shovel at work in the coal mines. Most of these operations were strip mining, cutting away or stripping the side of a mountain to get at the veins of coal. Hardly glamorous work, and you can see a man’s rear sticking out of the door of the machine there, checking something or another.

Finally, the Bituminous Miner’s Certificate for my other grandpa, John Rachocki dated 31 October 1939. This is just a great document because it shows his birth date and place as well as the position he held (Mine Foreman). Grandpa John died when I was four, so I don’t remember him that well, so having paperwork like this is really precious to show who he was and what he did throughout life.

And that’s it! Just a few pieces of history for the mining industry in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 20

By Sheetar 7 November 2014 7 November 2014

DSC_1294-rgb Meal 20. Meal TWENTY. Thanks to the husband’s big interest in One Local Summer and his culinary creativity, we’ve pushed well past the goal of 14 meals and made it to twenty meals with still more planned. He’s back home again and decided to work up a meal he remembers fondly from his childhood. His mom was regularly cooking for a table set for 10 or more people, so recipes that were cost effective and served lots of people at once were the standard. This is called Hutspot, a Dutch meal consisting of mashed carrots, parsnips, potatoes, and topped with bacon. It actually dates back to the 1500s in Holland and was no doubt a part of Doug’s paternal family that came over from Holland in the 1950s. History and dinner! I’ll admit that it’s kind of bland (that’s the point though) but the bacon on top is a nice touch and the use of root vegetables means you could’ve likely made this most of the winter as well when fresh vegetables were scarce (pre-electricity). Perfect time of year to introduce this into our One Local Summer set of meals. On to the ingredients!

Ingredients:
Turnips – Jack’s Farm
Carrots – Jack’s Farm
Potatoes – Our Garden
Bacon – Countrytime Farm
Maple Syrup – Miller’s Maple
Non Local – Salt, pepper

Subscription Boxes

Goodebox November 2014

By Sheetar 4 November 2014 9 November 2014

Another new fulfillment company this month (First Mile), but the box arrived on November 3rd without an issue! It’s also a much better box this month with a range of products from face/skin to bath/body which is nice. No real theme this month, other than a general idea of dry, winter skin and taking a break from the havoc of the holidays. Anyway, on to the contents!

Zosimos Raspberry N Honey Face Mask – 4 oz / $28 – (sample is 1 oz, value of $7) I’ve mentioned before that I love clay masks, and I generally use one about once a week. That fresh, clean, tight skin feeling after the mask feels great, so I’m happy to see this sample in the box! The price is pretty reasonable for the volume. There was a little kerfluffle over the labelling since the product card said the product was vegan, but honey is kind of a hot button issue in the vegan community and from what I can tell, is largely not accepted as vegan. It doesn’t make a bit of difference to me since I don’t follow a vegan lifestyle, but just in case you do, this product is definitely not vegan. I gave this a test already (right after using the Tatcha powder). I added enough water, but it clumped up in a few spots and the clumps wouldn’t work into the mask nicely – maybe those are the honey bits? Not sure why it came out lumpy even though I mixed it in my palm well, squishing out the lumps as best as I could. It’s definitely not as smooth as other masks I’ve used. Dried up nicely, washed off easily, left me with that clean, tight skin feeling. Followed up with the DN Unik day cream from last month.
Tatcha Polished Classic Rice Enzyme Powder – 2.1 oz / $65 – (sample is .35 oz, value of $10.83) I wasn’t sure at first what this was, but it looks like a face wash/scrub. A really expensive face wash/scrub. It’s not something I’d buy because it’s crazy expensive, but it will be fun to try something so spendy. I did give this a try and didn’t notice any difference – it didn’t feel like it even cleaned or exfoliated. The powder is very fine instead of coarse like a sugar scrub, so it doesn’t feel like it had the same effect that a coarser scrub would. There’s also an offer for a free travel size product with purchase.
MyChelle Clear Skin Spot Treatment – 15 mL / $16 – (sample is 15mL, full size, $16) A full size sample! And, something I’ll definitely use. Even though I’m in my mid-thirties, I have breakouts (making up for my teenage years when I had so few pimples, it was almost criminal). I love that it’s sulfur based because sulfur products seem to work better and quicker than anything else I’ve tried. I gave this a quick dab on a spot and it doesn’t smell strongly of sulfur like other products do. There’s also an offer for a free Argan Oil with purchase of the Perfect C Serum.
Lauren Brooke Corrective Concealer – 7 g / $14 – (sample is approx 3.5 g, value of $7) I ended up liking the Finishing Powder from the July Box more than I thought I would, so I’m willing to give this a go! I do have pretty dark under eye circles, but I find most concealers to be thick and cakey and feel weird. We’ll have to see how this one works out. There’s also a code for 20% off all products.
Update 9 November 2014 – I actually really like this! It’s not too thick of a concealer, so it tones down the dark circles without feeling cakey and blends in really well with my skintone. Lauren Brooke is on the fast track to becoming a favorite brand!
EO Everyone Yoga Bubble Bath – 600 mL / $12.99 – (sample is 44 mL, value of $.95) So here’s where I admit that I hate taking baths. The idea of sitting in warm water in our teeny bathtub does nothing for me, and I can’t wash my hair in the bath tub, I have to shower because of my long curly hair. If I’m using that much water, I might as well have clean hair too. So, I don’t use bubble bath, except maybe once a year on vacation if the place we’re staying at has a fancy whirlpool tub. I may try to use this as just a regular body wash instead and see how that goes The scent is nice, herbal and fresh with just a hint of citrus. The ingredient list though is amazing and I’m thrilled they don’t use SLS or ALS in the product at all. There’s an offer for a full size bubble bath with $20 purchase.
Blissoma Scentless Stick Natural Deoderant – 2 oz / $14.99 – (sample is .15 oz, value of $1.12) Yet again, I hand over my natural fanclub card when it comes to deoderants. These just NEVER work on me, and a scentless one is going to have no smell to even try to cover up any stink that is bound to happen. Also, the information on the sample says to wait several hours after shaving before using. Just how is that supposed to work? If I don’t put on deoderant right after a shower (which usually involves a pit shave), I start to stink within the hour. Do you go out of the house without deoderant on and then apply it at 10am? No, that just doesn’t work. I do appreciate that the sample is in stick form instead of in a pot (smearing deoderant cream on my pits is just the grossest thing ever). I mean, I’ll give it a fair try, but I’m not holding out hope that this will actually work at all. There is a coupon code for 20% off.
Update 9 November 2014 – Yeah this didn’t work beyond two hours. It’s weird. I’m not the sort of person who needs clinical strength deoderant.. good old standard Dove is fine. This stuff went on chalky and left bits all over the floor and then offered no protection from odor or wetness. Total failure. If someone knows of a natural deoderant that works, I’d love to try it, but so far, I’m striking out.

Final tally gives us a box worth $42.90 (calculated by volume, not taking into account sample size packaging costs). Aside from the deoderant, I really like everything else and will definitely use up the samples. Even if some of them are things I wouldn’t buy or use in my daily routine, the box still brings me some nice treats and splurges that I get to try for the fun of it!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 252: Help yourself, name tags, 50th Anniversaries, serving line, marquee, pots

By Sheetar 1 November 2014 29 October 2014

You know when you feel like you’re on a roll with themes? Yep! Two weeks in a row and I feel like I’ve got a perfect photo for the theme. Even better, this is an update to an older post.

While these two folks don’t appear to be related to me, they played a part in my great grandmother’s life and kept in contact for a number of years. I know I’ve mentioned before about how blood relatives weren’t the only people in the lives of our ancestors and it’s easy to forget that neighbors and friends played a role in their lives as well. This is another example of that. My great grandmother, Olga (Kitko) Powis, apparently referred to the daughter of Mr & Mrs William Howell as “Aunt” Nellie Eimer, but I don’t think they were actually related. The term appears to have been symbolic. Nellie was the daughter of William H Howell and Elizabeth “Lizzie” Smith who were married in 1863 in England and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on 17 September 1913, just a year and a few months before Lizzie died on 1 December 1914. Both came to the USA from Shropshire, England, bringing their two daughters, Nellie and Sarah, with them. I found an article about their celebration in the newspaper, and you can even see in the photo above that the roses mentioned in the article appear on William’s jacket and Lizzie’s lap. Pretty neat to be able to connect the article to the photo to have a very exact date for the photo! From other photos, I know William made several visits to my great grandmother and her mother over the years – he shows up in a few photos with them before he passed away in 1920. The trip is about 3.5 hours by car today, so I have to imagine they had some sort of special relationship to make that kind of journey a number of times though I’m not sure how or where they crossed paths. William and Lizzie arrived sometime around 1882 or so, and Olga’s mother Jessie didn’t arrive until about 1890. Jessie was only two years older than Nellie, but they lived in very different areas in England. I’d love to figure it out one day, but it doesn’t appear that the Howells have any living descendants. Nellie never had children, and while her sister Sarah had two children (Wilfred McCoy and Lucy Elizabeth McCoy Knickerbocker) it appears that Lucy’s child Frank Knickerbocker never had any children, and neither did Wilfred. It’s sort of weird to think that folks who made such an impression on the lives of my ancestors have no living descendants of their own.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 19

By Sheetar 29 October 2014 29 October 2014

Still chugging along into October. We should be winding down in the next month or so since the availability of fresh vegetables tends to fall off after the first hard frost. Fortunately, our mushroom guy grows indoors in a climate controlled environment and still has PLENTY of fresh mushrooms every week. I used a recipe this week, kinda. As usual, I used the recipe as an idea and then modified it to suit the local ingredients available, putting the whole thing into one large casserole dish instead of individual ramekins to save on cleanup time. What I should’ve done is made mashed sweet potatoes and made a sort of mushroom shepherd’s pie, adding in other root vegetables, but this still came out really great and surprisingly filling. I used three types of mushrooms – Shiitake, Crimini, and Chicken of the Woods. I’d never had Chicken of the Woods before, so that was a new mushroom to me. It cooked up a lot like chicken with a thicker, more solid texture that was a little reminiscent of extra-firm tofu. The beer used was our “house” beer, the Flying Pig Stout named for a hilarious incident involving a pig shaped dog toy on a rope and a pot of boiling wort. We pretty much keep a keg of that on tap throughout the year since stouts are a big favorite in the house. It’s not really local, but it is brewed and poured in about a 50 foot radius which is far fewer food miles than trucking in beer from California. What’s best about this is it’s all for me! Husband would never touch a meal made nearly entirely from mushrooms, so the leftovers are safe. Add some butternut squash ‘fries’ and a couple of slices of asian pear on the side and it’s a full plate!

On a side note, my annual saffron harvest is now over and I need a recipe that uses saffron and local ingredients. I’m open to suggestions! Keep in mind that I don’t/can’t eat anything that once lived in water, but will eat every vegetable available! In past years, I’ve made saffron pasta and saffron polenta, so something new would be fun. Maybe blue potato saffron gnocchi?

Ingredients:
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Leeks – North Star Orchard
Garlic – Jack’s Farm
Butternut Squash – Jack’s Farm
Asian Pear – North Star Orchard
Tomato – Our Garden
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Sweet Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Non Local – Beer, salt, pepper, oil, thyme