Memorial Day

It's Memorial Day today and in my small town that means a parade that ends at the cemetery and a day in the village park. Community members who have been in the military or on active duty march in the parade, along with the high school band, the Girl and Boy Scout troops, riders on bikes and horses, and a few of the fire trucks, At the cemetery, an old family friend usually speaks and a wreath is laid at the memorial for the war dead.

After the parade, there is a chicken dinner sponsored by the local LIONs service organization, an ice cream social by the Boy Scouts and a bake sale for the youth services of one of the local churches. It is one of the social events that happens in small town America still and something I remember from my childhood. I went to the local park to get my dinner along with old friends and neighbors and caught up on local news.

Yesterday I planted flowers in the urns at my parents' graves and put out a new flag on the fence post. I couldn't help but remember the rows of white markers I had seen three weeks earlier at Arlington cemetery on a trip to Washington D.C. Thank you to all who have served in the military, it is your sacrifice that allow us to have those special summer days in small towns and large cities across America.

Snow, Comfort food and Kicking Back

Tomorrow, after running a few errands, I plan to take down the Christmas decorations outside and straighten up the garage before I put them away. It has either been too co-o-o-ld or snowing so a chore that is usually done right after the New Year was put on hold. Last week we had our first snow day of the new year when 90 schools in a five county area called off school.

I must admit as I saw school district after school district names scrolled across the local news, I was sure my district would be called next. Finally, I couldn't wait any longer and had started out the door when the phone rang. It was the school secretary and she was making sure I knew school had been called off before I made the drive. So I put on my lounging pj's and curled up with a comforter, two cats and a book. Certainly not what I had orginally planned for the day.

A few hours later when the sun came out, I put on my boots, heavy coat, hat and gloves and got to work on the driveway and sidewalks. I still haven't convinced myself that I need a snow blower. I like shoveling snow, go figure. But I knew a treat waited for me inside the house and so I think it added a special impetus.

Earlier I had pulled out the recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks that had been published by the women's group of a local church. I gathered the ingredients for soup, my favorite comfort food on a snowy day and knew it would soon be ready.

Tomato-Basil Soup

8 oz. cream cheese 1 large can V8 juice

28 oz can of stewed tomatoes Dried Basil

1 large onion diced Fresh garlic

1 pint half and half Salt and pepper

6-10 oz cans of tomato soup 1/2 stick butter

(or equivalent in larger size cans)

Process the cheese and stewed tomatoes in blender. Combine the tomato soup and half and half. Add the blender mixture. Add the V8 juice. Saute the onions and garlic in butter. Add seasonings to taste. Cook on low or in a crock-pot until flavors blend about 3 hours.

When I serve the soup to a large group, I have croutons and mozzarella cheese for toppings. However, I like to follow the custom of some local eateries and serve the soup with a slab of corn bread.

New Year's Resolutions, Ben Franklin and Me

When I started the blog in September I had these plans of writing if not daily at least weekly. So much for plans. There are many things that I had slated for the past four months that didn't happen either,such as Christmas cards. One of the few things I have done is I read a biography on Benjamin Franklin this fall. I also reread a little of his autobiography in which he wrote about improving and perfecting his virtues, Ben didn't make it either. So I guess I am in good company. However, I will try to do better on this and other things. One of my resolutions was to create a place for mail that included a spot for bills to be paid and letters and notifications to be filed. It also had to include the shredder for all of the pesky mail that seems to invade the mail box on offers for credit cards etc. It is all ready to go. I also took care of some of the mail that seem to accumulate in various spots around the house. Let's see if I can continue with the process.

Acts of Kindness

My friend has always brought a lot to our friendship. She has always lent a sympathetic ear to our many discussions and always provides thoughtful insights. I dearly love my friend. However, she has some of the most interesting interactions with animals. Her dog would always run away during our phone conversations or be barking to tell her that the cat was outside the door, probably up to no good. Most of these have left me laughing until I cried.

Today, as we were talking about what needed to be done that day, she started to tell me that her day started unusually. I am thinking being stuck in traffic or a problem with her car. No, not the usual reasons for a hectic morning.

My friend was leaving for the gym this morning to work out before work and heard a sound outside. She was pretty sure it was an animal, probably one of the many raccoons that occupy our urban settings. It wasn't a raccoon, it was a skunk-with its head stuck in a jam jar. She put on gloves and went outside to see if she could help. She pulled on the jam jar and the skunk pulled the opposite way. The jam jar was not coming off.

She ran into the house and upstairs and woke her husband. He got up put his clothes on and came outside to survey the situation. He tried pulling off the jar with the same result. He went to the garage and got a block of wood and a hammer. He placed the wood over the jam jar and struck it with a hammer. The jar broke and the skunk ran off into the bushes. At no time did the skunk raise its tail in fear and even when it was free the tail remained down.

All I can think of is how fortunate the little skunk was to make its way to my friend's house. And that she took the time to help free it from its prison. As always she helped to solve a problem, but I will tell you all the time she was telling the story I was laughing.

Bounty of the Season

One of the earliest memories I have as a young child is having a dishtowel tied around my neck as I perched on a stool using a wooden pestle and a sieve to crush grapes to get juice to make jelly. Summers at our house were spent with gathering fruit from grape vines, peach, pear and plum trees, strawberry beds and raspberry bushes.

Those summers are always hot in my memory with my sisters and brothers helping to pick the fruit. A lot of the berries went into our mouths and never made it to the kitchen, but the fruit that did make it was washed and became jellies, jams and preserves. I still make jams and jellies. There isn't a large family to eat it at the house anymore, but my friends and family seem to enjoy receiving a jar of jam at various times during the year.

I go to roadside stands now to get the fruit. I used to be able to go to a couple of local farms and pick my own, but a lot of those have fallen wayside to subdivisions. A few weeks ago, I went to a peach farm near where my parents had a small farm when they were first married. The peaches were made into jam and a cobbler the next day.

I recently found I had no less than 4 of the Blue Books published by the Ball Canning Company. I have discovered that the recipes in the book are easy to cook and can. When I first learned to make jams and jellies as a young woman, I used my mom's method of using parafin to seal the top of the jar. Now I use a hot water bath using the instructions on the recipe. In this age of samonella etc., I feel better about the products I give to others.

Recently, I have asked the family and good friends to start returning the jars. The cost of canning and jam jars has increased over the past few years. I tell them if they want a refill I would appreciate it if it came back. Most everyone is happy to comply especially after they have told me which jam they would like have in their "goodie" basket. A favorite this year seems to be the Blueberry and Lime Jam. The lime seems to bring out the taste of the blueberries.
Nothing is better than homemade jams and jellies on toast, or PB and J, waffles and pancakes, oh my!

Lazy Days of Summer......

I love to vacation next to water be it a pool, a lake or if I am lucky an ocean. As the summer days diminish, I went to a lake resort last week with friends and family for a few days. This has been an unusually wet and cool summer, but we were hoping for good weather. My nephew and his wife had invited their parents, aunts and uncles and siblings to join them in sharing two cabins and house for the week.

The cabins and house have been undergoing a remodel, but the knotted pine in the cabins took me back to the fifties and sixties décor when people used it for paneling rooms. And there is always the damp smell at the lake that reminds me of camps when I was a child.

The first few days were overcast and the waves were brisk. On Wednesday, the day was warm and sunny and we spend it on the lake either swimming, sunning ourselves on the island, jet skiing or fishing. Unfortunately it rained for the next three days and our activities had to go indoors.

One of the activities was preparing food for the fifteen or more people who were there at the lake. Breakfast featured pancakes, waffles, French toast, omelets and the best bacon I have ever eaten. One of the couples came from Minnesota and had gone to Pierz, Minnesota to Thielen’s Meat Market which in one hour from St. Cloud and two from the twin cities and had brought several pounds of this wonderfully meaty and flavored bacon and sausage. I understand the bacon has been featured in The New York Times and Oprah.

One of our favorite breakfasts was a French Toast dish featuring an egg custard and cream cheese in the middle that you make the night before and place in the refrigerator.

Mel’s Company French Toast
1/2 c. butter

1 c. light brown sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

12 slices French bread or equivalent firm white bread

5 eggs, well beaten

1 1/2 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. cinnamon

**Melt butter and mix with brown sugar and cinnamon in the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking dish.

**Arrange the bread slices in 2 layers on top of the mixture.(Sometimes I spread between the layers with cream cheese, because it's soooo good that way, but you don't have to.)

**Then beat the egg mixture and pour over the bread. Sprinkle with a little more cinnamon, if you like. Let stand overnight in the fridge or at least 6-8 hours.

**Bake in 350 degree oven for 45 min.Serve with warm syrup, or any berry syrups or compotes are very good, as well. Another addition is to mix toasted pecans or walnuts into the brown sugar and butter on the bottom, also very tasty.

Enjoy!

Life List

A few months ago, I was having breakfast with some friends. One of my friends told a story about a woman who was writing a blog because one of the things she had always wanted to do was to be a writer.

After some reflection and a conversation with some one much more adept at creating blogs than I am, I decided to go ahead with a similar project. I, too, wanted to write and if this would help begin that journey I wanted to try it. The first thing my blog creator asked me was what the focus of my blog was going to be. Hm-m-m. I pictured my blog as one in which I could write about my hobbies, my efforts to maintain an old house and my activities in the small community in which I have lived most of my life.

The title came easily. I live in a one hundred and seventy five year old house that is described in a book about historic homes in the state where I reside as “a vernacular, symmetrical, two story cottage built of coursed sandstone blocks on the two primary walls and of uncoursed sandstone rubble on the remaining walls.” So of course, the blog had to be the Stone House Journal.

I have lived in the stone house for over forty years with time out for college and other adventures. It was my parents’ last residence after a marriage of moving to different homes in many communities. I know every nook and cranny. I have painted every inch, torn up floors, and moved walls on the interior. With the help of relatives, I have learned how to tuck point its’ exterior walls when the mortar between the stones began to crumble. In a society in which mobility is often the watch word, I am an anachronism. I am o.k. with that title.

So I begin a new activity of documenting life as viewed from my old stone house.