My Aunt Thelma's Paprika!

Last week I cleaned out my spice cabinet and when I reached way back in I found this vintage tin containing my precious Aunt Thelma's Hungarian Paprika! Memories flooded my mind of back in 2005, Aunt Thelma was living down the street in assisted living, my Mom, Dixie was here to visit and we brought Aunt Thelma to my house for the day. Our goal was to have her teach us to make her delicious Paprika Chicken! What an adventure that afternoon was.
My Aunt Thelma was known for her amazing cooking and her royal treatment of her many dogs over the years. She never had any children of her own so she also treated all her nieces and nephews like royalty too! I threw out all my very old spices but I think I will keep this one. That day, she had me retrieve HER Paprika from a box she had kept back her spices in when she moved to assisted living. This is HER Paprika. It must be decades old! I won't cook with it but, yes, I will treasure it, or at least the tin, and the memories it evokes.

I really can't imagine just how old this is! Very, very old, I am sure! We tease now, that everyone raved that she was such a good cook because by the time she got the meal done and served it was so late we were all starving!! She truly was an outstanding cook and entertainer!

Here is a recipe that is very close to the directions she gave my Mom and I that day.

I love this photo when she was young! This was taken at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. Aunt Thelma of course is the lovely one in the hat! That is my dad to her right in the Navy uniform.

She was a very elegant, regal, and refined lady! She was like a mix of Elizabeth Taylor and Martha Stewart!

This is Aunt Thelma's famous recipe in her handwriting for hot chicken salad! We all loved eating this in her home. She also made a mean carrot cake!

I still have this beautiful cotton handkercheif she gave me at my wedding and I carried it with my boquet as my "something old". My delightful Aunt Thelma was the only girl with three brothers. We cousins tease and yet truthfully say that we don't know for sure how many times she was married. Six, maybe seven? Our favorite of her husbands, and the one she was happily married to until he passed has to be our Uncle Fritz, or Fred. He was a criminal lawyer in Dallas and always had season tickets to the Dallas Cowboys!

Aunt Thelma and her brothers. Left to right, Robert, James D., my dad, and W.J.


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My mom, Dixie, Aunt Thelma, and Aunt Audrey. sister-in-laws

Aunt Lillian, Uncle W.J., and his sister, my Aunt Thelma.

Siblings and spouses. All in heaven now except the youngest, Aunt Audrey is still doing well and has survived them all.

This was at Aunt Thelma's 90th Birthday! Bill and I at her birthday luncheon in Kemp, Texas. She was very lucid and lovely as always, even at 90! This was in the summer and she passed the following November.

My beautiful mother, Dixie with Aunt Thelma at the Birthday party.

My oldest brother, Marc, with Aunt Thelma.

She was quite a lady! Many summers I flew up to Dallas by myself and got to spend a week with her. If my mother only knew what all Aunt Thelma taught me and let me do, I bet Mom would not have let me go! She taught me how to play poker, she let me drive before I was 16 and I realize now that my Uncle was usually pretty well inebriated when he came to pick me up from an afternoon of swimming at their country club! He drove me back to their lovely home in the country with a glass of scotch in one hand and the other on the steering wheel! I had no idea that was not really ok. I didn't drink, still don't and my parents didn't so I didn't really know that was dangerous. I must have had really good guardian angels! Aunt Thelma would cook, decorate, feed her dogs on china plates, garden, and entertain lavishly yet simply and elegantly. She worked at the court house several years and then got a job with her Aunt Sibil at the trade mart selling fine linens and the likes. She later ran a catering business and she bought, redid, and resold many darling houses in the Kaufman Kemp area. She delighted her siblings and their kids often with lovely weekends, holidays, parties, and various celebrations. Aunt Thelma touched my life by teaching me to live beautifully and savor every day. She demonstrated how to live graciously and how to make wherever you find yourself living, the most beautiful place you can and to entertain and love your family there often! She loved life, food, men, dogs, beauty, martinis, and much more! She said that she was really a Methodist even though the rest of her family were and are all Baptist! Laughter, good food, beautiful surroundings, and fun are all things that came to my mind when I found that tin of my Aunt Thelma's Hungarian Paprika.

Thank you Lord for my Aunt Thelma and how I have part of her in me today. Thank you for family and food and good memories!

I hope you all have an "Aunt Thelma" in your life. I hope you can be an "Aunt Thelma" TO someone in your life!

Things that are priceless...

Watching the Astros sweep the Brewers and get their 3rd grand slam of the season,

Time with Jonathan, Melissa, and Jonathan's dad, Randy,

Time with my son and daughter,

Visiting my daughter and seeing her so happy and married to the love of her life,

Having fun with my husband and kids at Minute Maid Park,

Getting to congratulate Drayton McClain on the Astros sweeping the Brewers and on the Astros 3rd grand slam of the season while we were sitting in his seats! He had gone up to a suite where his class reunion was taking place when the grand slam occured and his executive assistant, Eileen had moved us into his seats! During Pence's homerun Jonathan's dad was sitting there next to Bill if you watch the replay on the MLB website!

Time with my son, daughter, son-in-law,and husband,

Time with my husband, daughter, son-in-law,

Time with my one and only daughter! Priceless!

Why do I love the Astros so?

Yes, I live in the middle of the DFW metroplex and yes I like the Texas Rangers and enjoy going to their games. However, my first major league baseball game to ever attend was a Houston Astros game at the old Astrodome! Bill went to high school in Humble which is North of Houston and his dad worked at the Deer Park Shell plant. They were really Houstonians. After we married we moved to Missouri City, a suburb of Houston where Bill was a minister and I started my career as a speech language pathologist. We attended Astro games occasionally with his dad and sometimes his brother Keith accompanied us. I was wide eyed and amazed with the Dome itself, the Astro's huge bright scoreboard that ostentatiously displayed a snorting snarling longhorn when the Astros scored a run! It was truly a sensory experience like nothing I had ever seen out in West Texas where I grew up! The wonderful smells of hot dogs and nachos and the give aways on different nights drew the crowds in as if they were giving away gold bars! If it was hat night there was a frenzy of fans in droves to jockey to be the first thousand to enter and claim a coveted Orange Astros cap! I loved listening to the sports announcer as he called out the names of players coming up to bat! My favorite was when he'd introduce Jose Cruuuuuuuuuuuuuz!!!!! It was hilarious and yet respectful at the same time! Jose was so beloved and a great player! He became a coach for the Astros and his son came to play as an Astro. We lived around Houston for 15 years so the news and sports we watched every night featured all the latest about our home team, the Astros! We identified ourselves with this team and took pride in their success as well as sticking with them in the tough times too.
After we moved to Grand Prairie in 1999, we met a precious, lovely lady, named Joann. She was an active member at the church Bill was the new pastor of and she just happens to be a sister of Drayton McClain, the owner of the Astos! When she learned that we love baseball and the Astros she offered to send us once a year to enjoy a weekend of Astros games on the Diamond level, meet her brother, and her son who was at that time the president of the Astros operations. Her son is a successful lawyer, investor, businessman, and a fine Christian man and was a deacon at 2nd Baptist Houston. We have enjoyed our Astros weekends over the past 10 years. Sometimes Joann and her son Bob and his family would be there with us. Early on we got to meet Nolan Ryan and get his autograph and a photo! We always get to visit with Drayton McClain at the games. Mr. McClain is an amazing Christian man, a deacon at First Baptist Temple, a Baylor graduate, a brilliant business man, and a family man. He admits he is a workaholic and yet he is very personable and humble. He is gregarious and will walk right up, offer you his hand, and ask all about you and your family. He will get up from his prime seats during a game and go out and walk the dugout level among the fans and greet them stop and answer questions and pause for photos and autographs. He is truly a kind, smart, famous, and giving man of God. We are so thankful that we have been able to enjoy his Astros annually and grow to love them more and more every year. Minute Maid Park is air conditioned and beautiful! It is a fantastic experience to be in the park and partake of all the sights, food, sounds, and game! Does this help explain why we love the Astros so?