More than you ever wanted to know about Alabama native Joe Watts
Above right: Aunt Gladys Waddell (my father Clark Watts’ sister) on top of a mountain in Alaska. The back of the photo has writing: “On top of Bangmeter, the highest mountain here.” The writing is faded, so not sure about the mountain’s name–I couldn’t find it in google.
Imagine how adventurous that must have been.
This newsletter is one that I do only about 2 times each year. It is a pretty good sized newsletter with lots of input, so it takes a while to complete: very pleased with this issue, both design-wise and content-wise. We managed to add in more reference, teaching-oriented information into this issue than ever before (at least since I’ve been doing the newsletter–and that’s been about 5 years).
Wow. Looking back on some old CD backups from the late 1990’s, I found about a dozen letters I sent to family (mainly Mama and Papa but also Aunt Gladys and others). Interesting stuff. I also found some old recipes I developed when I worked at Weight Watchers. This Bread Pudding recipe actually got a perfect score in the Test Kitchen–I don’t think it ever managed to get printed, though. It was for a section of the magazine that was, I believe, abandoned. If it ever ran, it did so after I had moved on to work at Scenic Alabama. The recipe was a good one, though, so thought I would share it here.
Bread Pudding With Whiskey Sauce
3 cups milk
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons butter, melted
9 (1-ounce) slices French bread, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
Cooking spray
Whiskey Sauce
Preheat oven to 350`.
Combine first 8 ingredients in a large bowl; stir well. Add bread cubes; toss gently. Let mixture stand 30 minutes.
Spoon mixture into a 13-x9-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350` for 45 minutes or until pudding is set. Serve warm with Whiskey Sauce. Yield: 10 servings (serving size: 1/10 of pudding and about 3 tablespoons sauce).
Well, I’ve been rummaging about on an old hard drive and came across several dozen letters I wrote back in the late 1990’s. The following is a letter I wrote to my Aunt Gladys (I’ve mentioned her in my blog several times and included photos her husband, my Uncle Edward, took while they lived in Alaska in the 1940’s and 1950’s). You can see some of his old photos here and here.
Ann and I went to Alaska on a cruise for our honeymoon in 1997–one of the best trips of my life. Here’s the run-down:
I thought that I’d write to you about our adventures in Alaska. I enjoyed talking to you over the phone about them, but I thought that you would enjoy a slightly more detailed description of our trip.
On Saturday, we flew to Vancouver, British Columbia. I wish that we had more time to spend here, but we hurried to the ship. Riding through on a bus was interesting, however. It is a beautiful city and one that I hope to see again, and in more detail. We got on the ship down by the docks, just blocks from the downtown district. The ship was huge, 11 stories tall and 941 feet long. It was very nice and we went to our room to rest after the long flight.
We got up in time to watch as we sailed out of the Vancouver harbor. Leaving Vancouver was beautiful and we sailed past Stanley Park. It’s amazing to see that much green, undeveloped land in the middle of a city. I really liked that and would love to have time to explore the park some day.
The next day, we spent the entire day on the ship looking out at the mountains, which got larger and taller as we sailed north. There really wasn’t a lot to see on this day because we weren’t very near the shore. As a result, we saw mainly commercial fishing boats and sea gulls. It was nice though, because it gave us a chance to rest.
