Focused at Fifty

My mother had this recipe for a chilled carrot salad since the late 1980's.  I thought it was a bit odd and dated but after research, I found that it originates from the South and goes back quite aways. There are a number of variations online. It may also be known as sweet and sour carrots. I've seen versions made with brown sugar instead of regular sugar. There are also versions using white vinegar for a bit of a more sour flavor.  I mean, even Paula Dean has a version!: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/copper-pennies-recipe.html I'm not sure where Mom got her recipe. She never made it for us. I have a number of recipes from my father's side of the family from his family ranch in South Dakota. Alot of them are either salad recipes or cookie recipes. I am thinking maybe Mom's version came from out there. I made is skeptically and was quite surprised with how much I liked it. Since there is no mayonnaise in the recipe, it would really hold up on a spr...

Not all in life is sweet, happy, and nice. As we get older, most of us realize this. The trade off is that we gain wisdom from those parts of life which aren't so rosy. The other evening, John and I discovered a suicide note in an old book which he bought for me at a large church yard sale in Berks County, PA.  I hadn't looked at the book yet and had put it aside to look through at a later date.  I was putting clothes away when he picked it up off of the table. "Oh here is the book I bought you," he stated. "Yeah, I just haven't gotten around to looking at it," I replied. "Did you know there is a letter in it?" "Um no," I responded absentmindedly hanging up clothes. John began reading the note. At first, I thought he was making the contents up. I quickly realized we had stumbled on something grave.  Shivers went up and down my spine. The note was discovered in the beginning of a book he bought titled I Have Fought a Good...

  Ingredients for making matzoh ball soup My sister Sheryl came out to Lake Wynonah for Passover this year. I decided I would make a couple of family recipes for her and John while Sheryl made her famous apricot chicken and tzimmes dish.  I chose my family's recipes for matzoh ball soup and sauteed chicken liver spread. Now before you turn up your nose at the thought of sauteed chicken livers, I have to tell you that my Mom's recipe is soo good, you just may be won over.  But for the faint of heart, I decided not to show me cleaning up those chicken livers due to the ick factor! I remember my Nana Newman made matzoh balls or knaidlach  (Yiddish for dumpling) from scratch each year for the Jewish holiday.  Nana's were not too big and not too small. As a young child, my family would dine at the Ellisburg Delicatessen in Cherry Hill, NJ where they would serve one huge softball sized matzoh ball in a small bow...

Beautiful forsythias in our yard Ahhh, the Spring! .... sneeze, wheeze, cough, cough.  I think my allergies contributed to writers' block this past month! April was a hard month for me emotionally. It has been 5 years since Mom's passing and I think I was finding it still hard to deal with the anniversary. I did visit her at her gravesite up at Fort Indiantown Gap military cemetery and paid my respects. It can still be so difficult. This year's Spring brings much yard work needed to clean up the Winter's mess.  The Fall is my favorite season but nothing beats the Spring for breathing new life into you after the doldrums of Winter. Dead :( Last week John and I surveyed the yard to see what we needed to do in terms of clean up after that horrible winter. Lemme just say that there is alot! Some of it was upsetting. When temperatures dipped down to the negative digits over the winter, many bushes and trees suffered as a result. I think Mrs. Bentz's ros...

Mom's Chicken Soup (Marc-style) On cold winter days, Mom used to make Tabatchnick's brand vegetable soup. It was a family favorite. I remember smelling it while is simmer on the stove as I sat in the breakfast room doing my homework. She served it with a crusty French loaf.  Other than that, I don't remember her making her own soup except for matzoh ball soup during the Jewish holidays. One day going through Mom's recipes, I was excited to come across a recipe for chicken soup that I did not know she had.  I had found my next recipe. This is a great basic chicken soup recipe which you can definitely change up or add to OR just make it 'as is' for some good Jewish penicillin! I had planned to make it for John and I on a recent Saturday afternoon. After getting all of my ingredients out (except the chicken of course), I laid down on the couch to watch an afternoon movie for about 30 minutes. I couldn't even tell you wh...

Dad, Mom, Adam, & Sheryl @ Kit Carson home in Taos, NM Summer 1981 I recently entered a writing contest and was asked to relate "travel" and my writing to the contest. It brought back memories of traveling with my family in the early '80s when we took several month long vacations across America each summer. My father was an art professor at a local college and he would have off from June till September.This left 3 months to do my mother's "honey do list", gardening, or planning our annual summer road trip. We would head west through Pennsylvania with our first stop being somewhere right across the border in Ohio. It never felt like we were on vacation until we traveled through the 300 plus miles of "Pennsee."    From there, we would continue either towards my grandparents' home in Pueblo, Colorado or our cousins' cattle ranch in South Dakota. Driving through miles and miles of the Midwest, I would rest my head on the car door ju...

Thank G-d I had John's Mom's stoneware bundt cake pan! We often associate a particular meal with a certain family member or friend. My friend sister Sheryl makes an awesome chicken and tzimmes dish. Tzimmes is a traditional Russian Jewish dish of sweet stewed vegetables including prunes, raisins, carrots and potatoes. She first made it several years ago for Passover dinner and it quickly became a family favorite. (Mental note made to make sure that recipe gets up on my blog as well sometime!) I associate my Great Aunt Emmy with her angel food cake recipe. She would make it each time my family visited her and Great Uncle Chic at their home in the Millburn, New Jersey. Uncle Chic's first name was Henry but his nickname was always Chic. I never knew why and thought it perfectly normal to call him that. When visiting them, the family would always congregate into Aunt Emmy's small but inviting kitchen. Their home was a formal yet warm one with a deep backyard that Adam...