The Alamo

About Travel Tuesday

Do you have images, quotes or stories about trips your ancestors or family took during their lives? Or have to ventured out on travels to your ancestral homeland as part of your genealogy research? Travel Tuesday is a daily blogging prompt suggested by Susan Donaldson of Family History Fun.

Photographing headstones is a passion of mine — especially in Louisiana where subsidence and hurricanes can mean that a headstone might not be there in the future. Documenting the information on a headstone could very well help someone find clues to their past — and they can’t do that if the information from the headstone hasn’t been documented.

The Arlington Project

Rick Shulman writes on the msnbc.com PhotoBlog, “The sometimes eerie task to photograph more than 219,000 grave markers and the front of more than 43,000 sets of cremated remains in the columbarium is part of the Army’s effort to account for every grave and to update and fully digitize the cemetery’s maps. The Old Guard performs its work at night to escape the summer heat and to avoid interrupting funerals.“

Night by night, troops photograph Arlington graves.

 More Information

• MSNBC Photo Blog: Night by night, troops photograph Arlington graves
• MSNBC News: Troops photographing 219,000 Arlington graves
• NPR: Night By Night, Troops Photograph Arlington Graves
• Arlington National Cemetery
• FindAGrave
• Billion Graves

 About Follow Friday

Follow Friday is a daily blogging theme used by many genealogy bloggers to help them post content on their sites. Find out more about daily themes at Geneabloggers.com.

BBQ chicken, cucumber salad, black eyed peas and green beans

The BBQ chicken was moist and tender and had a delicious smoked flavor.

BBQ beef and sausage, fried okra, cucumber salad, cornbread, and fried squash

The delicious beef was moist and tender. The home-made sausage was flavorful.

So many choices!

The food is served cafeteria style, but you get to dish out your own vegetables and/or salads. And there are lots of choices.

Chisholm Trail BBQ in Lockhart, Texas

The selection of delicious-looking sides included:

• cucumber salad
• carrot salad
• potato salad
• broccoli salad
• lettuce salad with a variety of dressings
• macaroni salad
• cole slaw
• pickles
• lots of different peppers
• green beans
• black eyed peas
• macaroni and cheese
• hash browns
• corn on the cob
• fried okra
• chicken and dumplings
• fried squash
• pinto beans

Should Have Left Room for Dessert

The only thing I regret is that I didn’t save room for peach cobbler and ice cream!

Chisholm Trail BBQ in Lockhart, Texas

About Chisholm Trail

Website: www.chisholmtrailbbq.com

 Ingredients

• 5 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 celery rib, sliced thin
• 1/2 onion, sliced thin
• 1 jalapeño chile, seeded, sliced thin
• 3 garlic cloves, sliced thin
• 1 Tbsp tomato paste
• 2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 and 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable broth (use vegetable broth for vegetarian version, and gluten-free broth for gluten-free version)
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary
• 1/2 to 3/4 pound fresh okra
• 5 plum tomatoes, diced
• Salt and pepper

Directions

Heat 3 tablespoons of the vegetable oil in a large sauté pan or wide, shallow pot over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, sauté the onion, jalapeño and celery for 2 minutes, stirring once or twice. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute or two.

While the vegetables are sautéing, mix the tomato paste, broth and vinegar until they are combined. Add to the pan with the vegetables and bring to a boil. Add the rosemary and a pinch of salt.

As the sauce is boiling, slice the okra on the bias to create diagonal pieces. The reason for diagonal slicing is to expose as much of the interior of the okra as possible. Wait to cut the okra until the last minute because it helps make them less slimy.

Heat another pan over high heat for a minute or two. Add the remaining oil and get it almost smoking hot, which should take 1-2 minutes. Add the sliced okra and spread out in a single layer in the pan. Let the okra brown for at least a minute before you move them. The goal is to cook the okra quickly at very high heat without moving it too much. The high heat sears the okra and helps limit the slime factor. Sear the okra for 3-4 minutes, stirring only 2-3 times.

As soon as the okra is done, add it to the boiling sauce.

Add the diced tomatoes and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook for 5 minutes, no longer. The tomatoes should still be a bit firm, and you don’t want to cook the okra to the point it starts releasing slime.

Turn off the heat, grind black pepper over everything and taste once more for salt. Add if needed.

Serve over steamed rice or with lots of crusty bread.

More information

• Simply Recipes – Okra and Tomatoes recipe
• Okra – Wikipedia

From my dad Carl Armstrong's scrapbooks - Coca Cola Ad - 17 June 1943.

This was in my dad’s scrapbook with his other clippings of his time stationed in San Marcos, Texas. June 17 was his birthday.

About Military Monday

We all have ancestors who have served in the military. Military Monday is a place to post their images, stories and records of their service in various branches of the military. Military Monday is an ongoing series by Cindy at Everything’s Relative – Researching Your Family History.