On a cold rainy night in the mountains of Appalachia it is a pure joy to sit by a warm fire and fellowship one with another.
One of my favorite phrases of hospitality is: “Won’t you come in and warm by the fire.”
Last night’s video: The BEST Sausage Balls with the Easiest Yummy Dipping Sauce.
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The home we had in WV we had a wood/coal burning stove called a Buck Stove. I loved that stove. I could put a tea kettle on the flat top of it to always have hot water for tea, once cooked a pot of pinto beans on it even though it took all day long, but it was worth the wait. Our current home has gas logs. It helps warm the house, pretty to look at, but can’t cook a thing with it. I’ve learned to be content and thankful I have another source of heat if the power goes out.
I grew up in a house heated by coal fires, usually just a single room; but the kitchen was always warm because the stove was in constant use to feed a family of eleven. We burned wood when there was a windfall. We burned oak and pecan for the whole year after Hurricane Hazel.
I’m going to try the sausage ball recipe, too.
We had a wood burning fireplace in our first house. There is nothing in the world like the smell and the cracklin of the wood burning. The house we live in now, we have gas logs in the fireplace. Just not the same pressing a button compared to starting a fire. Tipper, I watched last night’s video. I’m the sausage ball queen of my family, lol, the young folks don’t seem to want to make them, and they are so easy. I make mine like yours except for the parmesan cheese and milk. If you don’t leave out the sausage and cheese and get the chill off, it takes me forever to mix, so going to add some milk. I usually make around 100 and freeze them, if there are any left. It will give your hands a workout and these joints aren’t what they used to be. Matter of fact, that is what I am about to start doing this afternoon. Have a blessed day everyone!!
My wife could make the best sausage balls you could ask for. Her coworkers always wanted her to make the sausage balls for their Christmas get together. There was nothing special about her recipe, just Bisquick, sharp cheddar cheese and sausage. Her secret was fresh sausage from a hog butchered 2 days before she made them bought at a local meat processor. None of this Jimmy Dean type store bought sausage. I never did get her to explain or show me the law that said her sausage balls could only be made at Christmas time. Got a order in for several pounds of fresh sausage for next week. My son now makes them.
We don’t have a fireplace but my husband is installing our wood stove today…looking forward to having a fire goin when the temperature drops tonight!
This sounds wonderful! Take care and God bless ❣️
We have my grandmother’s fireplace insert. Even though our ranch-style house wasn’t originally set up to circulate heat from the living room fireplace, having a fire in the insert will raise the temperature in the house to 80 degrees, especially when the blowers are on. In a pinch, we can cook on top of it. Nothing beats a good woodstove for heat.
Oh I love a fire in the fireplace. We never had one growing up but we used to all gather around Grandmother’s gas heater. Not the same I know but the memories are for sure. She lived across the street from my elementary school and I would meet Mother there when I got out of school sometimes. The memory is so vivid it feels like yesterday. She always had fried apple pies and coffee too. Mostly cream and sugar with a splash of coffee for all us kids. It fills me with longing and makes me smile for those times were so simple but so precious.
You are always reminding me of all sorts of things from my family’s past whether it is the language or the food. Thank you for that! You are such a blessing to me!
I have natural gas logs in the living room and I think they are the cat’s pajamas!!! I used to have to haul propane tanks which isn’t easy. One can have electric heat but in my opinion (and I’ve lived 55 winters so I consider myself a cold weather pro) ya got nada unless you have a warming FOSSIL Fuel!!! Like Johnnie Paycheck- you can take electric and shove it! I ain’t warming here no more!!! Lol. And who doesn’t love a huge bonfire or campfire any night of the year????
There is nothing more comforting to me than the warmth of a fire. I have been enjoying your youtube videos!
Nothing better than a warm fire in the fireplace followed by a good woodburning stove. Simple pleasures.
Some of my favorite memories are by my mamaw and papaw’s pot belly stove. Papaw would add a piece of coal to the wood and it would get red hot and run us to the other room. We use our wood stove to het with and cook with if needed. It’s harder to put up wood as we age, but still find great joy and peace in the warmth of it.
We have a fireplace in our living room and a wood-burning stove in our family room, and there is nothing better. We haven’t fired up the wood burner very many times this season simply because it’s so warm still and we are getting by with just the fireplace (which does not have an insert or blower, just a full masonry floor and a fire just like you’d have on a pit outside.) I remember when we were building our home many people told us to not waste our money on a fireplace! Oh, how wrong they were, it is by far the best investment we have ever made, second only to purchasing a wood burnin stove a few years after we built the house. Of all the fires, there’s never a fire as great as our 4am Christmas morning fires, it truly wouldn’t feel like Christmas without a blazing, cracklin fire!
sitting by a warm fire on a cold night….heavenly
I love sitting by the wood stove in our living room on a cold day. There’s no better seat in the house and nothing warms you quite like a fire in the stove does.
I enjoyed last night’s video and your recipe for sausage balls is similar to mine except for the Parmesan cheese and milk. I will try your recipe today. I’m sure my husband will like it because he’s never met a sausage ball he didn’t like!
Nothing like a fireplace or wood stove to warm you through & through. My parents have a fireplace in their kitchen. It was supposed to be placed in the living room, but when my grandparents were building the house in the 60s my grandma didn’t want the carpets to get ruined. So they redesigned the blueprints to have it moved to the kitchen. Around our ways, no one visits in a living room. All the visiting happens in a kitchen, so I think it was a good move. You can sit on the hearth & warm yourself & watch the birds at the feeders out the big, sliding glass doors. My in laws have a small wood stove in their kitchen and I like to sit in the ‘hot seat’ right in front! One time, one of their barn cats jumped up on top & burned all of its paws. Gave a vision to the phrase, “like a cat on a hot tin roof”. I often wish we had a wood cook stove. I love the smell of the fire and the warmth. You can get lost in thoughts, watching a fire.
Patty, a couple of things, one is you comment about visiting in the kitchen, in my father in law’s home the kitchen and den are together. Most Sunday nights after church there would be around 15 of the family members together in the room eating up the leftovers from Sunday dinner. Pictures of Pap and Paul singing and playing with the kitchen in the background remind me of their home. The other is about a cat and a tin roof, my daddy like to say nervous as a cat on a tin roof hunting a sand pile.
I do not have a fireplace in my home. One of the great joys of my childhood was laying on the floor beside my daddy on those cold winter nights and sometimes eating parched/roasted peanuts and throwing the hulls in the fire.. We had grew and daddy had parched the peanuts. Daddy eventually closed the fireplace and got a wood heater. We had our own woods and did not have to buy wood. After his heart attack, I cut all of his wood, I would keep him and mother about a years supply of wood cut ahead of each year. This goes along with memories we write about, even though he passed away over 30 years ago, I never go to our woods and see some of the rotten tree stumps and don’t think of the times spent with my daddy. He would always go with me and sit on a stump or block of wood and sometimes cry and say it hurts to see you doing this and be unable to help you. I would tell him I am just paying you back for the things you did for me when I was growing up, don’t worry about it. Now I understand how he felt because I now have to ask my son or grandsons to do things for me that I use to do for myself.
Nothing better on a cold winter night in the mountains that to sit by a lovely warm fire!
Nothing feels as good as a fireplace or wood stove when the temperature drops. it’s always been our security blanket. we are independent of someone else to stay warm. There has many a blizzard over the years where that was all the heat we had for days. It’s also therapeutic for the mind, nothing like watching a good warm fireplace that allows the mind to wonder.
Once again a most enjoyable vlog. There are so many ‘shareable’ things this season…I am gonna try to do more ‘sharing’ during the entire year coming up. This is how memories are created. Thanks again.