For the Good Times: The Best of Fifty Years

By Tom Shipley and Virginia Shipley

If you are suddenly on your own or newly wed and your mother kept you out of the kitchen as you were growing up — all is not lost. With a teaching book, one which tells you how to chop, broil, bake, saute, boil, etc., a copy of For the Good Times ..., and a little application on your part, your fame as a cook could quickly spread through-o

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Jul 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643456713

Tom Shipley

During my engineering days (1950 to 1965) with General Electric Company, writing about evolving technology and industrial-automation activities was extremely important. Those who could use and needed automation, didn't know anything about it, machinery equipped with the new systems was much more expensive, and labor unions in the manufacturing sector, quite strong in those days, were adamantly opposed to its use. For these reasons, the company gave engineers, not known to be effective communicators, formal instructions in a wide range of subjects, one of which was effective presentation (oral and written). We were taught writing skills, but the importance of knowing what we were writing or speaking about was emphasized. It was more important to know the subject - what we were writing or speaking about, and to write or speak with clarity -- than it was to have journalistic abilities: to be able to present the story in the very best manner. My objective in writing or speaking was generally to describe some automated phenomenon, improvement in a production cycle, or the production of a miraculous product that I had witnessed; and readers of the publications, extremely interested in the advances being made in automation and machining technology, read my stuff and that of others religiously. It was only necessary to write with clarity and to avoid “engineering-speak.” In the `80s and early `90s, small-computer technology was advancing rapidly, and machine manufacturers and users of the machines thirsted for information. I was engaged by a trade publication to inform readers about these advancements. The editor sought me out because of copious material I had written about computers and automated machines - using words and terms that were understandable to interested people who were not engineers or professionals in industry.

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Tom & Virginia Shipley

FOR THE GOOD TIMES

Copyright © 2019 Tom & Virginia Shipley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Stratton Press Publishing,

831 N Tatnall Street Suite M #188,

Wilmington, DE 19801

www.stratton-press.com

1-888-323-7009

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in the work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-64345-584-6

ISBN (Ebook): 978-1-64345-671-3

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

In Memory

In Acknowledgment

Introduction

Cocktails and Beverages

Appetizers

Soups

Salads and Dressings

Eggs

Beef

Pork

Poultry

Seafood and Fish

Pasta

Vegetables

Desserts

Sauces

Breads

Lamb

In Memory…

It was late.

The twinkling lights of distant neighbors were gone

And the fire had dropped to a bed of glowing coals

Shooting out dancing little darts of flame from time to time.

The children were tucked in bed and sound asleep

And it was a time for quiet reflection.

Yesterday the children had asked questions.

Where do the stars go in the daytime?

How come worms don’t have legs?

Why can’t we fly like the birds?

The questions took my mind from the work I had to do

So I said, "Tomorrow—

Tomorrow we’ll discuss these things."

And then, at that late hour

And in the quietness of the night,

I examined my record of tomorrows

Extended because of the press of business,

And paid tribute to my wife.

She supplied the answers to the mysteries of life

In our children’s search for understanding—

As time slipped rapidly by.

The hour grew very late.

Now I was 40 years older,

But it seemed like only yesterday that, barefoot,

I was chasing rabbits through the fields

And hunting birds with a slingshot.

Playing ball in the street.

Where had the time gone?

Our children were grown, with children of their own,

And my wife, who made all things possible, had slipped away.

We had a good life and many friends.

So, I scarcely noticed the passage of time

Until suddenly she was gone.

For the first time I confronted the reality

That our time of life is measured and the end is final.

I wish that one of us had known the lateness of the hour

But we didn’t.

My best friend for over fifty years moved on

And I could only hold her hand.

Virginia Doane Shipley died January 29, 1992.

Virginia and I wrote this book together, starting in 1981, incorporating her expertise and recipes and our collective memories of people (many of whom are now gone), times and events. It was a happy review of our life together. I am pleased to finally publish it and to share with readers our memories of the good times.

Tom Shipley

In Acknowledgment…

Ed Berlin, a family friend since 1960, was to have edited this book; instead, he moved on to join Virginia and so many others who contributed to our lives and the book. Ed reviewed the first drafts and offered his suggestions and encouragement. After reviewing a portion of the final draft, his health deteriorated to the point that he was unable to continue.

Ed Berlin was editor of The Waynesboro News Virginian when Virginia and I moved to the city. He was a bachelor living at Julia Brand’s house when we arrived from Syracuse, New York, with our son, Doane, daughter, Ardin, and cat, Charley (more properly, Charlyne). We lived and ate at Julie’s table for over a year as our house was being built. The kids loved Mr. B (when asked to pass the biscuits at the dinner table, he sometimes pitched them one) and he reciprocated; he visited us after our subsequent moves – to Sidney, Ohio, in 1965 and Birmingham, Michigan, in 1973 – and attended both of their weddings, Doane’s in Atlanta, Georgia, and Ardin’s in Birmingham, Michigan.

We visited him whenever we could; in later years he cooperated with Vi Lunney, another good friend and contributor to the book, to arrange a get-together with other Waynesboro friends to celebrate the occasion.

You get better acquainted with the man from the stories which accompany his recipes, scattered about the book.

I visited him July 9, 1996. I rearranged my schedule to get there after talking to him on the telephone. I had to be in Tennessee on the 11th and a business trip was set for the 10th. I rescheduled the business trip for the 8th and left for Waynesboro on the 9th. I got there at 2:00 am, and Ed was waiting up – mad as an old wet hen. Didn’t you ever hear of telephones? He looked so much better than he had a year ago. The next day Ethel cooked breakfast and brought me up-to-date on her computer escapades, some visitors came by, and he took issue, as he usually did, with my opinions on the political situation of the day. He talked about the paper, some people called concerning his column Let’s Talk,… and suddenly it was July 11th – time for me to go. Once more I didn’t realize the lateness of the hour.

Edward P. Berlin, Jr. moved on to join Virginia on August 2, 1996. His departure leaves an empty space in the lives of the Shipley family and an even greater one in those of the citizens of Waynesboro, Virginia. He was uncommon.

Tom Shipley

Introduction

In writing this book, Virginia and I relived the good times of past years—the people, the food, the events; these are the basic ingredients of times to remember. The recipes which titillated our palates, stimulated conversation and formed the backdrop for our good times are presented in these pages. With them you can chart a similar course for the good times in your life—with special people, at formal business affairs or intimate family gatherings. Good food sets the tone, the mood, which can change a simple, pleasant evening affair into a memorable event. The recipes in this book set the tone for many of our good times; we hope they make the good times happen for you.

Cook books are generally written by creative professionals—people with skills, experience, and creativity who enjoy cooking, delight in developing new dishes, and make their living by presenting the fruits of their labor in books, newspapers, and on radio and television. Using well known, widely available ingredients, these people are able to invent new dishes with tastes which are different and uniquely appealing to the palate. Their creations have improved our quality of life to an exceptional degree. Food is a basic necessity of life, but it can serve the purpose without stimulating excitement. Through the efforts of these people, we have foods which sustain us and keep us healthy, but, equally important, present us with a prime source of pleasure—one of life’s simplest and greatest.

This book is different from most in that the authors are not creative professionals. Most of the recipes were given to us by other people; we accepted them and introduced

them to our family because of their quality and the pleasure they extended. Some were influenced by the efforts of working professionals; they pushed us into areas where we would never have ventured without their lead. After all, we were two mere pilgrims from the back woods of East Tennessee, trying to get along with the people we met in some of the strange places in which we frequently found ourselves. In addition to pleasing Virginia and me, these recipes have been approved by our son, Thomas Doane, and daughter, Ardin Leigh (Moenaert), most of them on numerous occasions. And all have been approved, at one time or another, by a host of friends and acquaintances in various parts of this country.

We emphasize this because we have found that the books written by many good cooks present some superior recipes, but in almost all cases, include many which are quite ordinary. We believe the mediocre recipes are not discarded because these talented people have feelings for their creations which are similar to those of mothers toward their children—they love them all, the good and the bad.

When we began this work, our plans were quite modest. We set out to develop a simple index to shorten our search-time for recipes. As the years had passed and our collection of recipes had grown, it had become more and more difficult for us to recall those which we had enjoyed in the distant past; then, even when our memory served us well, the problems of locating them had become insurmountable. Our sources included over 40 cookbooks which had been acquired over the years with hand scribbled notes of modification, explanation, and apology in abundance, scribbled notes on scraps of paper located in various places, yellowing newspapers stuffed in kitchen drawers, and several boxes of recipe cards.

The only index to the recipes and their location rested in our collective memories —highly unreliable when we were young, progressing to total disaster as the years passed. So, for our own convenience we decided to catalogue the recipes and arrange them and their sources in some semblance of order.

Thus, in the beginning this work was intended as a modest effort for our own personal use. The scope of the project became more comprehensive as it progressed. As we began the cataloguing effort, it became apparent that we had a uniquely interesting collection. All of the recipes had evolved from the standpoint of pure enjoyment alone; not a single one involved pride of ownership or the thrill of creation. So, it occurred to us that others might be interested in the selection of foods which had pleased us and our friends for lo these many years. The act of reviewing the material stimulated memories of people, events, and places associated with the recipes. Since these ingredients are almost as important to the pleasures of a meal as the food itself, we decided to record some of them. They take you back as much as fifty years, and times were certainly different then. We hope you like the stories; they have been told many times as we moved from place to place, met new people, shared meals, and exchanged recipes and ideas. Our new acquaintances, along the way, seemed to enjoy them. If some portions do not appeal to you, feel free to skip those passages. We will not be offended. If you find it difficult to skip the portions you don’t like without reading them, get in touch; surely we can work something out.

- - -

Our parents were born in Tennessee and lived their entire lives within 15 miles of their birthplace. When we started this task, Virginia’s parents, Maude and Toy Doane, were both gone. Mr. Doane died in 1966, and Mrs. Doane, in 1980. My mother, Mrs. Blanche Dykes Shipley, 92 years of age as we write (she was only 81 when we started this book), lives in Kingsport where Virginia and I both were born. She and my father, Tom Shipley, Sr., were married there in April 13, 1922, the night after the last day of school. She was a teacher at Chucky, Tennessee, High School until then. They never moved away—he died in 1972 and she lived there in a big old 12-room, two-story house (until she died on September 21, 1994). She was never able to understand why we found it necessary to move all over the country during our married life. She never said so, but I suspect that she felt our nomadic life was somehow due to some failing of her son’s.

Forty-odd years ago, in my infinite wisdom, it was obvious that when my company recognized past performance with an offer of a better position, it behooved me to accept, even if relocation were necessary. Career moves were a recognized fact of industrial life in the ’50s and ’60s—you either went where the work took you or, I thought, made plans for early retirement. Today, tempered by the maturity which time and experience bring, I am not nearly as positive that my analysis was correct. It is quite possible that our future would not have suffered had I refused a job offer, stayed in the same place and made life a little easier for me and my family. I can only say with assurance that regardless of whether we go where life seems to take us, or whether we stay (even in our old home town)—we gain some, we lose some. We really will never know the balance.

Contrary to the old saw’s promise, time will tell, time really never tells. We can only be sure that what might have been, never was. And we can only hope that it probably never should have been. Virginia and I know that as a result of our moving around, we missed the friends we grew up with in Kingsport; we had a definite feeling of loss as time moved on and we gradually lost touch. Yet in talking to our friends who stayed, we discovered that they had grown apart from the old gang themselves and really couldn’t explain why.

The life you lead in one place is very similar to that in another. When you move, you start all over with new friends, new church, new shopping facilities, new business connections, etc. Other than that, life is much the same—you make a living, raise your children, pay your taxes, grumble some, try to laugh more and do your best to enjoy life as it is.

In 1950 I joined the General Electric Company as an engineer-in-training, and Virginia and I moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, spent a short time in Nahant, near Lynn, moved back to Pittsfield, and then to Schenectady, New York, where, in November, 1951, I started my first assignment as an engineer. Except for six weeks in Chicago, Illinois, while in the Navy, this was my first introduction to Yankeeland and the people who inhabited that strange world; it was Virginia’s very first contact.

In addition to the odd customs and foods of the Yankee-types, the international makeup of the General Electric Company introduced us Tennessee small-town folk to the foods and customs of people from other countries. This association stimulated our interest in food and gave us opportunities to try new things in situations which, sometimes, denied the possibility of refusal. The door was opened to delicacies which we could enjoy which differed widely from coleslaw, country fried steak, fried chicken, pork chops, well-done roast beef, and other dishes prepared the way our mothers had always cooked them.

We learned to enjoy oysters on the half shell, rare beef, Italian and French foods of all kinds, chicken other than southern fried, baked or stewed with dumplings—well, you get the idea. We do not mean to imply that the food we found in the North was necessarily better than that enjoyed during our earlier years in Kingsport; it was just different and added a new perspective to the range of tastes to which we were accustomed.

But, as in all things, sometimes our willingness to experiment with the unusual produced results which were less than desirable. (In these modern times, our willingness to experiment would be excusable under the guise of peer pressure. Actually, everybody knows, except those engaged in the legal profession, that peer pressure is the only excuse which can be used as an explanation for weird behavior when no reasonable explanation exists.) At a party in Manlius, N. Y. (a suburb of Syracuse), our host, Hank Kemsley, who had just returned from a trip to Mexico, brought out a supply of unusual exotic delicacies which he thought might interest the group. In addition to canned rattlesnake, eels, snails, and other similar foods, he produced a can of chocolate covered ants.

To put the situation in the proper perspective, you should realize that we were engaged in a rotating neighborhood party held in the fall of 1958, and United States citizens were not nearly as international in their tastes then as they are now. We had visited one home for cocktails and appetizers, another for the entree and wine, and finally to Hank and Agnes Kemsley’s house for dessert and after-dinner drinks. At this stage we were all just shy of the point at which you giggle and doze off. We were receptive to almost anything as long as it didn’t involve a criminal act, didn’t harm anyone physically, and was in the spirit of the party.

When offered Hank’s delicacies, I tried the chocolate covered ants. To this day I recall the snap, crackle and crunch as I bit through the first morsel—and I have yet to learn whether the sensation came from the hard chocolate shell or from the ant, itself. That first sample was my last—I didn’t even reach for the second. I don’t really know what I expected, but I can assure you that this Tennessee boy wasn’t ready for what he got. I’ll never know what enticed me to try them—perhaps, as I indicated previously, peer pressure. That seems to be the most acceptable excuse now-a-days for doing something silly. The taste was only of chocolate, but…that crunch…I will never forget the sensation—the feel, the sound, and the weird thoughts that immediately ran through my mind.

There is nothing in this book to cause you grief of this type. We promise. We may write about some of the difficulties we encountered as the result of our poor judgment, but that ends it. This book is about the pleasures of good food and our experiences in finding it.

In the beginning it concerned us that this would not be a balanced book—a book for all occasions. But, after some thought, we decided that our concerns were unfounded. The purpose of the book was not to teach cooking, and it was not intended to serve as a sole source for meal preparation. It was to serve as a dependable reference for excellent recipes for the family and special occasions with friends.

There are many excellent cookbooks available on almost any type of food prepared in any part of the world, but we have found none which were written for the express purpose of presenting, from the author’s point of view, the best dishes which he/she had enjoyed over an extended period of time.

If you have been suddenly thrust out into the world on your own or are newly wed and your mother kept you out of the kitchen when you were growing up, you may need a teaching book—one which tells you how to chop, broil, bake, saute, boil, etc. With one or two of these how-to books, a copy of For the Good Times… and a little application on your part, your fame could spread throughout the neighborhood. A good, dependable source for recipes will more than make up for your lack of ability as a cook.

Just follow the directions, take all the time you need in the preparation, and lie about your innate abilities to everyone but your closest friends. These are important basic ingredients For the Good Times….

- - -

Cocktails and Beverages

A Little Background

When I was a small boy, I don’t think I ever heard a good word about ol’ John Barleycorn, but I certainly heard a lot about his evils. My mother was a staunch member of the WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) and our family belonged to the First Baptist Church of Kingsport, Tennessee, so I had been told on many occasions that one drink leads to another, and then another, and the first thing you know you’re lost. These sermons, at home and at church, were always accompanied by graphic descriptions of individuals who had tussled with ol’ John, had lost, and were doomed forever. These, coupled with the activities of certain neighborhood characters and my knowledge of their problems, painted a vivid picture which was so scary that I didn’t even touch the stuff until I was into my twenties.

My wife and I were born in Kingsport, Tennessee, which is situated in Sullivan County in the northeastern corner of the state. During the years we lived there and at the time we left in 1950, it was a small town. In those days the voters in each county decided whether the county was to be wet or dry. Our’s was dry, and this meant that alcohol for drinking purposes was an absolute no-no—legally speaking. In addition to county rules, the city had a say-so as to what was to be available within the city limits. The city declared at one time, in response to the voice of the people, that even beer and wine were not to be sold or served in public places within the city limits.

My parents didn’t allow booze in the house. And my mother still didn’t until the day she died. A few years ago, my brother Beryl and I and our families celebrated the fourth of July at our mother’s house. We had a cookout and, as the grill work progressed, we sneaked ice and glasses out of the kitchen and had a drink or two in the privacy of the garage. Beryl remarked later that there we were, grown men in our late 50’s, sneaking around the house the same as we did when we were still in high school, doing something we shouldn’t.

I always suspected that my grandmother, Lula Dykes, was more favorably inclined toward Beryl than she was to me or my other brother, Jack. Not long ago I established that my suspicions were correct. I was surprised when Beryl told me that as Grandma Dykes advanced in years (she was in her 90’s when she died) she was advised (supposedly by a doctor) to take a little whiskey from time-to-time for her digestion. This she did, mixing it with a little water and sugar. I was further surprised when Beryl told me that he used to bring her a pint, whenever he had the opportunity, and have a little drink with her. I can see it now, the two children, Beryl in his 40s and my grandmother in her 80s, having a little party together in her room. No wonder she liked him best.

Virginia’s mother was no more partial to alcoholic beverages than was mine. However, Virginia’s father enjoyed a toddy or two of bourbon from time to time. He traveled as a salesman for a Kingsport firm, the Slip-Not Belting Corporation. After Virginia and I were married in 1948, he would visit us at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia, where I was attending school, when his travels