Week 48 - Family Recipe - Conner

When Doris Daly met and fell in love with Ken Conner, she never dreamed she would step outside the limits of the small town of Columbiaville, Michigan that she had been born and raised in.  

Kenny always loved the lure of the sky. He spent most of his extra cash on flying and his airplane. Ben Scott taught him how to fly, and he proceeded to do whatever needed to be done to accrue flight hours. He started as a crop duster and flew in Beaverdam, Wisconsin from April 1952 - August 1952 before heading to Hartsville, North Carolina for one month during the summer of 1954.  He then went to Texas in 1955 to get his Instrument rating.  Following that he worked for Trot Brothers in Almont for extra flying time.  When Kenny started with North Central Airlines in September 1955, they packed up their small family of four and moved to Belleville, Michigan. 

Doris happily settled into their small trailer in the park there and did what all the pilots wives did that lived there. (I think the park was called Town & Country Mobile Home Estates)    

                            Trailer in Belleville                                                      Kenny and Doris
 

They did Tupperware parties, card parties, helped each other out by watching the other women's kids. All those things that young women did in the 1950's.  Oh, and they exchanged recipes.

My husband Dan has always loved two things his mom made...Salad Dressing Cake (with cooked frosting) and Congo Bars.

The recipe for Congo Bars came from another pilot's wife from those few years in the trailer park. I had heard the story about it but never thought to get a name or any heavy particulars.  His mother made those bars for everyone. A new baby - Congo Bars. A sick neighbor - Congo Bars. She even would bake them for the girls in the dentist office every time she went.

She shared that recipe with me when I was a new bride in 1974. 





THE recipe

I didn't attempt to make them often, but I did make them occasionally.  But they never came out like hers. They were not done in the middle, too cooked, too flat....one time I even mixed up the salt and the baking powder! Yuk. Needless to say, they weren't on the top of my baking list. 

Mum always baked up high, cakey, totally fabulous Congo Bars. There was a secret to them.... there had to be! But what did she do differently than what I did? I used a hand mixer just like her and I hand chopped the nuts. But still not the same.



I once made a family cookbook for my Sheridan family and forgot to put THE recipe in it. I heard about that mistake for a long time. Now the recipe is widely shared, and many have made them. But are they as good as hers?

I don't think so. There is more research (and baking) to be done.

Barbie



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 43 - Urban - Lorraine Sheridan

Image
In 1942, a 19-year-old woman left her small rural hometown of less than 400 people and boarded a train bound for Detroit, one of the busiest urban centers in America. The city was alive around the clock, its streets glowing with factory lights and the constant hum of war production. Her name was Lorraine Sheridan, and she was the youngest of six children of John and Pauline (Prince) Sheridan. And my mom.  A recent graduate of Fulton schools in Perrinton, Michigan she decided to head to the big city. She found work at the Lyon Manufacturing Company located at 151 South Waterman St along the waterfront. It had turned from making farm equipment to producing 40 mm cartridge cases. It was her first time in a big city — and her first time working the midnight shift. Inside the vast plant, the air smelled of oil and hot metal, and the noise of machines filled every corner. Mom worked six days a week in a relief position and would take over for other workers that were going on breaks. She ...
Read more

Week 42 - Fire - Conner/Graham

Image
Isaac Graham was around 19 years old when he immigrated from Canada into Marion township, Michigan to join his older brother John in 1862. The two brothers had purchased land using funds that their father had supplied. Land was becoming too expensive in Canada, so he had sent them to Michigan to settle. Isaac's twin brother Charles had come with them, but after a bad winter and getting sickly from working in the woods, he decided to go back to Canada. Isaac purchased 80 acres in what became the town of Deckerville in Sanilac County, located in the thumb of Michigan. He cleared some acres, planted an orchard and built a small wood frame home. In 1871 Isaac returned home to Taylor's Corner in Victoria county, Ontario, Canada and there he married Charlotte Harmon on July 17th.  During the year of 1871, there was a severe drought that ran from the Dakotas, across Minnesota and into Wisconsin and also included the state of Michigan. Following lightning strikes in the Dakotas, fires ...
Read more

Week 32 - Wide Open Spaces - Prince / Bliss

Image
Uriah Bliss was the son of Jacob and Bethiah (Brown) Bliss, Jr. He was number seven in birth order of 11 children and one of seven that lived to adulthood. He was born 4 May 1803 in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. When he was a young boy his parents and his siblings traveled from Massachusetts to Huron County, Ohio. The trip would have been by wagon and taken 4-6 weeks over rugged terrain only to arrive in an area full of dense forests that would have to be cleared, and a log home built. The Bliss family settled in the Firelands of Ohio. The Firelands make up over 500,000 acres of land in northernmost Ohio and was land given by the government to those who had been burned out by the British during the Revolutionary War. March 10, 1836, Uriah married Sarah Inscho in Greenfield, Huron County, Ohio. After the birth of their children: Pardon, Miles, Asa, Uriah, Jr, Caroline, Lucinda, Charles and Sarah the family pulled up roots and headed to Jefferson County, Kansas around 1854. They left behind t...
Read more