Holiday bread! Many years ago, it seems almost in another lifetime, I received a small book whose title was the Tassajara Bread Book. Well, my memories of childhood include those of my mom’s fresh, home baked bread which, straight out of the oven, slathered with butter, I enjoyed more than any store-bought bread. With my new cookbook, at the advanced age of thirty, I was off on a journey which I’m still following in my chuckwagon biscuit research and sourdough bread baking “experiments.” Though I have either lost or loaned that stained, dough-crusted, dogeared little book long since, I still remember with fondness the “the sponge method” and the holiday fruit bread!

Ingredients: 4 cups of flour, 3 tbsp sugar, 1tsp salt, 3 tsp yeast ( rapid rise, which we call “rabbit rise”) 1 ¼ cups warm water ( like a warm shower), 2 eggs, beaten, 2 tbsp olive oil.

Cinnamon, raisins, sugar, candied cherries, citro, candied orange peel, pecans and almonds, two or three tablespoons each. Or any other favorites.

Put the fruit and nuts in a bowl and add 2 teaspoons of flour, a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of cinnamon and mix them together to coat the fruit and nuts.

Put all dry ingredients in a bowl and blend them with a wooden spoon. Then pour in eggs, water and oil, fold them in and knead for at least 10 minutes. Rest for 10 minutes. Finally, fold in the fruit and nuts. Knead lightly again and seal the loaf. Put in a loaf pan to rise. When puffed up to twice the original size, put in the oven at 400 Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes or until nicely browned. The cooking thermometer inserted into the loaf should read higher than 195. Take the loaf out of the oven and let it cool. You may want to glaze it by mixing 4 tbsp milk, heated on the stove, with a cup of confectioner’s sugar!

Joyeaux noel, y’all

50 years ago, I was nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. At the tender age of 22, this cowpoke was on the eve of getting branded for life. On December 23, 1967 I was going to get married.

For a little over a year, I’d been deepening my friendship with a dark-haired gal who shared my addiction to horses and my love of the outdoors, the mountains, and travel. We had sung folk songs together, sitting on tombstones in the moonlit graveyard, and on the steps of ancient university halls. We had ridden cowponies on trail rides at my folks’ ranch in Wellborn, and boiled and picked crabmeat in her folks backyard in Fort Worth. There were dances, and nighttime walks in crisp winter air to get ice cream at Vandervorts in Waco. There were sunsets over the Bosque River, with sharing secrets being interrupted by a cow clambering up the riverbank.

Now, we were about to make it official. Our families and friends were gathering in Waco to wed us together. Even though it was a bit scary to both of us, neither of us could begin to imagine what life would be like without the other. We still can’t. Through the joys, jokes, laughter and tears, miracles and losses, children and grandchildren, good weather and bad, it’s been quite an adventure. A lady that I’ve always thought was sharper than a sheepdog, ain’t had no better sense than to stick with this cowboy for fifty years.

What a ride!

I just received my first shipment of copies of my first book! Woo hoo!  I’m published! I’ve even got the Library of Congress number!  

It all started when I was working cattle, actually penning and loading steers in New Mexico for shipment to the feedlot in the panhandle of Texas called Caprock Five. One of the other cowboys muttered something about one of us being clumsy as a cowboy dancing in long shanked spurs. Well, the saying stuck crosswise in my brain. It kept coming back to my mind, and as time went on it grew like cobwebs in an old wooden barn. Finally it came busting out as a story, and I realized that there were other stories I wanted to share. Some of these  stories were actual experiences I have had over the years. Then, some were based on Stephen King’s premise “I wonder what if… “ Anyway, I finally scraped five of them together and with the help of my English teacher- editor running buddy, Sallie, and my computer whiz son, Bill, and encouragement from daughter Clover and daughter-in-law Sylvia, we published our first book. Its title? Dancing in Long Shank Spurs of course. The stories are pretty much cowboy. It’s out in time for Christmas 2017, but in true cowboy form “just barely”. Like Willie says about cowboys “Sadly in search of and one step in back of themselves and their slow movin’ dreams.” Yep, it’s true, most of us cowboys are so slow we couldn’t out run a glacier!

Pre-Order Here!