45 Comments

Absolutely beautiful Richard! Merry Christmas everybody.

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Thanks. And Merry Christmas to you too!

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Do you grate raw sweet potatoes? Thank you!

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Yes. Careful with your fingers!

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Thank you! We will give this a try at Christmas.

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If the jackhammer guys had seen "Hamilton," they might have said: "Weehawken, donde Burr disparó a Alejandro Hamilton!"

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Loverly

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Great job on the piano as always. Thanks Bob.

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I love this. 🙏🏻

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how lucky you are that your mother wrote down these family heirloom recipes for you. My grandmother, Rosebel, never did and so things like her "Granny Soup" (which was made from Brisket leftovers) has been relegated memory. "Granny Eggs" however I have been able to reproduce perfectly. Make two soft-boiled eggs (I like them runny) and open them onto a torn slice of toasted bread (preferably seeded rye). Add some salt and pepper and stir!

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That Granny Soup sounds divine. I'll bet you could get close with some trial and error. Granny Eggs sound familiar!

From another branch.... Grandma noodles: wide, Pennsylvania Dutch egg noodles, a ton of butter, and lots of black pepper. And don't get me started on her chicken soup.

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anything with butter.....don't get me started...

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Thank you for placing Mahwah, which for years I have only known from Johnny 99.

I am from the South of England but have lived in Lincolnshire for 45 years. I still get "You're not from round here." Which is true, but I think one of the nice things is that I can incorporate both places into my identity as I choose.

Merry Christmas!

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45 years and "your not from around here"? Some accommodation should be made. Merry Christmas to you too!

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Lovely tune. We will be trying recipe too. Absolutely identify with impact of having a non-local accent, being North Eastern English living in South. After years living away there is also the issue that your accent isn’t quite as authentic to natives when you visit where you come from. In the U.K. there are prejudices about accents too, though not so bad as these days as in my parent’s generation.

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I grew up in the NY/NJ tri-state area, Long Island mostly. There was a very strong accent (to put it mildly) I could've picked up. But Mom made sure it never took! So I have a fairly neutral accent (in the US context). But I'm sure a linguist could name every geographical marker, and then finish with: "and did you grow up with someone from North Georgia?"

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Copied and printed. Please thank your mom for this and thank you Richard for sharing. If you like oatmeal raisin cookies or chocolate wonder cake, I’ll gladly share vintage family recipes! Merry Christmas, folks!!

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Thanks Gary. I may take you up on that offer.

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That song sounds just like a party. Merry Christmas, Maestro.

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Beautiful! Thanks for sharing. Have a lovely holiday :)

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Thanks for both of these, so rich with complex feelings, moving presences.

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great story and recipe! What about Hazel--from 'Hazel's House'-one of my all-time favorite songs--'who always has the crumb cake at the ready'--Entenmanns, you once said at a concert I attended. Is this 'the other' grandma? Or one in the same?

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Hazel was my great aunt on my father's side. The person I'm talking about in this post is my mother, on my mother's side. ;-)

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oh, i thought you mentioned your mom and a grandma too, in your post. Either way, cool.

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oh and PS: i recently traveled to British Columbia--one of the most beautiful places I have ever been--and possibly a good place to escape to if Gd forbid the Orange Maniac gets re-elected. But anyway, everyone there knew i was from NY because of my "NY accent" which i never knew i had.

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I've had that experience. I just tell them they're wrong. Don't listen to them. You don't have one.

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:)

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You know, I have everything I need for that except the sweet potato, and that's less than a mile away at Shop Rite. Yeah, we'll give that a try.

Feliz Navidad, Ricardo. See you in February in Tuckerton, Nueva Jersey.

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