When I wrote about my flower garden recently, built by friendships, my youngest daughter pointed out I had left out her rose bush.
Doreen, at a much younger age, pointing to our lovely red tulips.
True. I felt it was a separate story, one that I am equally proud of, but it deserved its own post.
I could say that Doreen has always shown an interest in nature and flowers but then, all of my girls love flowers and will one day likely be even more knowledgeable and eager in this department than me.
Top to bottom: Michelle, 8; Tanya, 6; Doreen, 3.
But Doreen was the one to bargain for a little flower garden of her own, and even purchased and planted her own rose bush sometime while she was in middle or high school. I was always worried I didn’t have a green enough thumb to grow roses, but she plunged right in.
The first home for the rose bush. It had a nice rustic look, but too shady. I always wondered about the age/history on those old wagon wheels we inherited with the place, but never found out.
After we planted the rose, we realized it needed more sun than the shady nook behind a garden shed provided, so we moved it behind the house.
I warned her that it might not survive the move, but she wanted to try it anyway. Over the years I had planted many different flowers there, trying to figure out what worked best. The white rose bush flourished, and my daughter dug up this photo from her collection.
When we moved to our current home in 2007, of course the white rose bush moved along, I believe the only plant which we brought along—the first bush and landscaping at our new home.
So it has survived several moves already, and I am the current happy host of the lovely white flower bush she chose, although it has had its ups and downs (bugs, holes in leaves).
(It began blooming again yesterday, but can anyone tell me what to do for the rusty edges on the petals??)
It will likely have to survive more moves if it is to follow her to where she eventually settles in a non-rental location. I was just happy it eked out this past winter, as my other rose bush succumbed to the cold (and I was negligent and did not cover it with straw as she always did so carefully).
My formerly lovely knock out rose bush (modified, the blooms were always bigger than most knock out roses)
which did not survive Virginia’s harsh winter.
Doreen has also become an avid gardener—although I hate parental typecasting of one’s children and will not rule out where my other daughters go in this area, who are happily focused on raising babies right now. For instance, I did not start out loving gardening, and was mostly a “we-garden-to-eat” variety of gardener. But I confess that now that we have a garden which is very close to our back deck, on level land and where the weeds are visible from my kitchen window, I’m taking some joy and satisfaction (and a little cursing of bugs) in almost daily work and exercise in our patch which is really much too big for a pair of empty nesters.
Doreen posing with our gigantic corn stalks (Silver Queen) a few years back,
(10 or more), in our old garden at the bottom of a big hill.
My point here is two fold: to celebrate Doreen’s interest in nature and the career path she has followed into environmental science.
Doreen more recently in one of the fields where she studied habitat at urban/forest edges for her master’s degree in urban ecology.
It’s also a reminder not to fall into the parent trap of bragging up a child “oh this kid has always loved swimming, she is so good” when another child is going (in her head), “well Mom, I love swimming too and I’m not that bad” or whatever their interest, sport or hobby. We tend to classify and stereotype: “Timmy has always loved cooking even when he was small,” and Bobby is thinking, “I like baking too …” Or “Tiffany was always so good at math,” yada yada.
Whether it is skills, grades, looks, or mischievousness, or whatever, no one wants to be cast into a mold. Our children are great and tender gifts, as beautiful and sensitive to their environment as any flower or rose, and deserving of our best support. We want them to “grow and be strong in spirit,” like Luke says of both John the Baptist and of Jesus.
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Did your parents typecast and stereotype? Do you do that? Or am I the only one who ever felt that way?
Do you wish there was someone you could tell: stop typecasting me!
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*The name for my blog post today inspired by the the novel Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith.
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Somehow this all reminds me of an earlier book I wrote, Why Didn’t I Just Raise Radishes, published by Herald Press in the early ’90s, not a book on gardening but meditations on the challenges of raising children. You can still buy it used online. And no, that is not a picture of me on the cover. 🙂
For years I have made the same old cucumber salad, using the homemade all-purpose salad dressing I shared here, which I basically got from my mother.
This summer I have already picked at least seven 5-galloon buckets of cucumbers from our patch of 10 plants and the season is just getting started. I’ve given most of them away, and we eat cucumber salad almost every evening.
We had a staff potluck this week and of course I knew I would bring something cucumber-y, and then I wondered: what if I took my standard sliced cucumbers and onion, and used the tangy soy sauce-based dressing from Jessica’s Cabbage Slaw recipe, and added her toasted and slivered almonds, and then threw in sesame seeds just because it seems like something to go with soy sauce. It had to be good, didn’t it?
It was. The proof? A woman I consider a great cook asked me for the recipe. I couldn’t find similar recipes readily online–most added garlic or other herbs but I wanted to keep this pretty plain jane.
Here goes:
Tangy Cucumber Salad
5 medium to large cucumbers, peeled and sliced
1 small onion, cut in rings, pulled apart, and chopped to the size you prefer
½ cup slivered almonds, toasted in 300 degree oven for 5-7 minutes; do not over bake
Optional: Add small amount chopped green or red pepper as desired for color and crunch
Dressing
½ cup sugar
3/8 cup olive oil
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
1 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sesame seeds
Slice salad ingredients into large bowl.
Mix ingredients for dressing in shaker or bowl with leak proof lid. Pour over salad right before serving and stir. (As the salad sits with dressing on, the cucumbers become limper, but still good later for leftovers.)
Serves 8-10
(And a shout out to commenter SK who clued me in that it was likely easier to just brown slivered almonds (or pecans in her case) in the oven than sauteing them in a fry pan. Thanks!)
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What’s your favorite way to serve cucumbers (other than raw or in tossed salads) in the summer when they’re plentiful? I’d love to hear about other recipes.
Could I have survived as a hunter/gatherer? Would I have been happy, or happier?
I think we all wonder that at times. Many folks not so long ago in these parts lived naturally off the land, and I’m not talking about the 1400s. I’m talking about the early 1900s. I’m reading a second book right now about cooking in the early 1900s in Appalachia by Peggy Shifflett called Mom’s Family Pie and I’m looking forward to sharing highlights here in a few weeks when I finish the book. (Her other book on the folk traditions of Hopkins Gap, Va., I looked at here and here.)
Recently I did a little foraging of my own and was amazed how pleased I felt making a pie out of raspberries that we had not planted nor pruned nor sprayed—the old fashioned way. It was a dirt-cheap pie.
Earlier this year when walking along our fence row, I saw that scrub, briar-y canes were forming real raspberries, the purple kind.
I kept watch and sure enough, through two pickings along the fence and down by our very small woods, eating while I picked, and still ended up with 3.5 cups of berries.
I was excited. It felt like I had enough for a pie for the first time since moving here (we also have one red raspberry bush from which I could only collect small pickings at a time, which I froze or turned into jam). For me, I’m glad to be living in 2014 but enjoy using as much as possible from my own garden, fence rows, and farmers market or roadside stands.
Psalm 65, a lectionary text this week feels appropriate here, in praise to the God of the raspberries and all the summer bounty (at least around here things seem plentiful with frequent rains):
You care for the land and water it;
you enrich it abundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water
to provide the people with grain,
for so you have ordained it.
You drench its furrows and level its ridges;
you soften it with showers and bless its crops.
You crown the year with your bounty,
and your carts overflow with abundance.
The grasslands of the wilderness overflow;
the hills are clothed with gladness.
The meadows are covered with flocks
and the valleys are mantled with grain;
they shout for joy and sing. (Psalm 65: 9-13, NIV, Bible Gateway)***
For this pie, I found and adapted a simple recipe off of the PBS website. While this is too late for some readers, many live where raspberries and other wild fruits are just ripening.
Raspberry Pie
Make (or buy) your standard pie dough recipe for a 2 crust pie. My standard pie dough recipe is first.
Pie dough: (two crusts)
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cups lard, or add 2 Tablespoons to quantity if using Crisco or generic brand
¼ cup water
Mix salt with flour. Cut in shortening. Add water. Mix by hand until dough clings together. Form two balls.
Pie Filling:
4 cups fresh raspberries
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions
For the filling, mix together raspberries, lemon juice, cornstarch, sugar and vanilla in bowl. Let sit while you roll out the pie dough. Or, if you use purchased crusts, let the above mixture sit for about 10 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Take ½ of the pie dough, reserving other half for lattice top. Roll out first ball of dough til thin and place bottom crust in pie pan. Place raspberry filling in pie but don’t overfill. You may not use all of the filling.
To make lattice top:
Take the rest of the dough and roll out thin. Cut long one-inch wide strips of dough and weave onto the pie, beginning with center strips and laying each piece loosely because you will lift each piece back up many times to create the up and down weave. Alternate with horizontal and vertical strips.
Seal edges of pie with your usual method, either pressing with a fork or twisting with your fingers (an art in itself: I can finally come close to my mother’s slick twisting, which used to amaze me as a child). Bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool for 30 minutes before slicing. We enjoyed this pie for four meals.
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For a video demonstrating how to do lattice, check here:
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Do you enjoy going wild raspberry or blackberry picking? Or do you dislike foraging with the thought of snakes in your mind? How do you think you would have done as a cook in 1914 instead of 2014? What stories from your mother or grandmother or older have you heard about foraging or cooking in the “old days”?
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You can sign up for a free e-mail subscription to my Another Way newspaper column at www.thirdway.com/aw
I love my flower garden. Somehow in the almost eight years we have lived here, it has slowly evolved. Like one daughter said recently, “It may look a little messy but I like it.”
I like it personally because almost every perennial in it was given to me by someone I know and therefore represents a relationship—mostly close friends and relatives—and memories. Not to mention, flowers from friends create a low cost garden. Mostly free, a few purchased, with a story attached.
Barbara’s Coreopsis. First I’ll show you the coreopsis that has just grown huge this year. It even seeded a baby, growing nearby.
This is how my coreopsis started out, a transplant from my beloved sister-in-law, Barbara. Sometime I’ll take you on a walk through her flower garden. Now there is a real green thumb, and she knows so much about flowers I try to learn from her all I can. (I do have the name right, don’t I? Let me know if it’s wrong!)
Willie’s Flowers. My neighbor Willie gave me these and I can never remember their names but once started, they come so prolifically I have to weed out and throw away many many plants each year. Anybody want some starts? Anyone know the name?
Kimberly’s Ribbon Grass. This is one of my newest additions. The closest I can come to identifying it is that it must be: Feesey’s ribbon grass (Phalaris arundinaecea). Can anyone verify? It has astounded me how quickly it has taken off. Please don’t tell me it’s invasive. Last year we had a retirement party for a staff member and several of us brought flowers and made up bouquets, and Kimberly brought a bunch of these. I liked them so much for fill in for flower arrangements that when Kimberly thinned her garden last fall, she put a start of these in my car. I left them go several days til I got around to planting them and still: this!
Cosmos. The cosmos shown here I started in my vegetable garden from a little pack of seeds, so technically I bought them for likely less than $2, but they are such good self seeders (or birds dropped them?) that I now have them throughout the front flower bed.
Janet’s Lily of the Valley. I love my bed of Lillies of the Valley, which was my very favorite flower growing up, which grew in a shaded bed next to our front porch at this house. When my dear church friend Janet offered me a few starts, I was eager to plant them in this shaded spot next to the front porch of my house. I think I’ve had this bed no more than 3 years: my how they’ve spread.
Black Eyed Susan. I used to stop and pick Black Eyed Susans from beside the road but I don’t have to anymore. Janet took me once to a small event that is a flower lover’s delight—some friends of hers who annually get rid of “extras” from their garden by inviting folks to a morning tea and brunch in their flower garden (a mother and daughter) and offering starts for sale (at low cost). These have also self sowed—aggressively. I now pull them out to make space around other flowers.
Nolan’s Ground Cover. This is another nameless ground cover plants received from my brother-in-law, Nolan. He warned me it grows nonstop. I left it sit in a bag of dirt in the garage for a week or more, but it took off anyway, and I have to keep it trimmed back several times a summer. But it makes great greenery for cut flowers.
There are some other special plants in my flower garden that are not in bloom now:
Rhododendron for Dad – This has never done well, due to this west facing bed, and a lack of soil acidity. But you can’t blame a woman for trying to raise one of her favorite ornamental bushes. I purchased this with money given to me in memory of my father after he died in 2006, who filled his grounds with so many flowers that he ran out of flower beds. I suspect that there might be enough flower beds in heaven for him.
Rose. One of my rose bushes died over this harsh winter, so I replaced it with a purchased rose bush from Home Depot. When I planted it, there were two separate rose bushes in the pot. Should I separate them or plant together? I thought it was great to get two for one price, so I separated them, and they are now getting ready to bloom on their own. Happiness!
Charles’ Iris. Our dear friend and former neighbor, Charles, gave me a start of his Irises when we moved to this house. Sorry I can’t find photos right now!
Don and Betty Tulips. Most of our tulips were a housewarming gift from the pastor who married us Don and his flower loving wife, Betty. I enjoy the tulips so much.
Weeds. Occasionally there are flowers that crop up which are nothing but weeds, but I let them grow awhile anyway.
My flower garden reminds me of the poem, “I am growing a glorious garden,” once lovingly transcribed by my middle daughter, Tanya, which I found likely in the bottom of a book bag or notebook at the end of the year.
It begins:
“I am growing a glorious garden
Resplendent with trumpets and flutes …”
I had never read this beautiful poem by Jack Prelutsky, but I instantly fell in love. Neither she nor I remember when she wrote it down for herself, but I treasure how it combines our love of flowers with her special love for an instrument garden—a garden she tends professionally as the artistic manager of her city’s symphony. Online I found a child performing this poem at a school assembly, likely about the same age as Tanya when she transcribed the poem, and this girl’s delight and recitation is just perfect for the poem. Enjoy!
Thanks for taking a walk through my garden with me today, and you didn’t even have to stop and pull any weeds, like I always have to.
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Be a dear and leave a note or comment, especially if you can help identify Nolan’s Ground Cover or Willie’s Flowers.
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Andre and Mark Viette, horticulturists and growers of vast daylilies in the Shenandoah Valley near us, are my go to source for gardening advice, either on radio (show named “In the Garden”), or the book, Mid-Atlantic Gardener’s Guide (covering Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. One of these days I must go visit their farm and gardens in Fishersville.
Mother and many mid-century cooks at the time knew and served only their homemade dressings with any lettuce or salad of greens. Mom’s was a simple salad-dressing based (always Miracle Whip for us, she liked her brand names and while she watched her pennies, didn’t blink at the extra cost) concoction that added milk (or cream), vinegar, sugar, a dash of salt, pepper and occasional celery seed. Very simple but it was the way we ate our salad greens from the garden in the spring and summer. In the fall and winter, our salad was made using only iceberg lettuce. How boring! Not really nutritious, nothing but crunch and some tangy sweetness. In the summer we would add tomatoes from the garden.
People still seem to enjoy this salad dressing (and ask how I make it) whenever I serve it with a salad of ample greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, celery, sometimes onion, or whatever combo you come up with.
I use it not only for tossed salad, but spinach, Cole slaw, and cucumber/onion salads as well. I usually make it fresh for each use but in the summer I might make a small batch to keep in the fridge because we use it so often.
So here is an all purpose salad dressing, simple to make, and as used in this photo, with a mix of spinach, sweet white onion, and shredded boiled egg.
Mother’s Salad Dressing
½ cup Miracle Whip Salad Dressing
¼ cup milk or cream
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
2 Tablespoons sugar
Dash salt, pepper, celery seed
Put all ingredients in small bowl and stir with spoon until well mixed. It should be creamy like the consistency of most salad dressings out of a bottle. Add more milk if thinner consistency is desired. Taste. If it is tangy sweet to your liking, go with it. If not, play with the vinegar and sugar until you like it.
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What do you recall from your mother or grandmother in terms of salads and salad dressing? Plain & simple or a dish with a variety of fruits and veggies?
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There’s another recipe for Raspberry Poppy Seed dressing in my book, Whatever Happened to Dinner? Check it out or purchase here.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts 2: 1-3
June took me on an interesting unplanned journey beginning with Pentecost Sunday, a time lapse of my faith journey over the last 40 years and my family’s three faith traditions: Mennonite, Presbyterian, Lutheran. On Pentecost Sunday Christians celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to all the church after Jesus ascended into heaven. It is often known as the “birthday of the church.” Indeed, the first Pentecost Sunday I remember while attending Trinity Presbyterian featured red helium balloons strategically placed around the entrance way and sanctuary, and a huge birthday cake afterwards.
The Paul Klemt family greet Mark Fachnitz at Trinity a few years ago.
Gradually over the years, Trinity folks were encouraged to wear a celebratory red on Pentecost, just for the beauty and whimsy of it. That never happened in my Mennonite upbringing back in the day.
North Goshen Mennonite podium on June 8, 2014.
June 8. So this year on Pentecost, June 8, I found myself meditating on the artful and surprising display of red in the church where I spent the first, most formative 17 years of my faith journey, North Goshen Mennonite, Indiana. I was visiting my mother as a follow up to surgery in early May, which I touched on here
North Goshen Mennonite Church, Ind.
I was pleasantly surprised when I stepped into North Goshen and noticed 90 percent of the people were wearing red. The newish pastor there Mark Schloneger, a former attorney who most recently was pastor at Springdale Mennonite the Shenandoah Valley where I live, had stirred up an interesting experiment for this congregation. As I mentioned, it was not their tradition to wear red so like a whisper that became a roaring wind, at 2 p.m. on the Friday before Pentecost, he told one woman to begin a phone chain by calling 5 other members from North Goshen. She was to tell them to wear red for Pentecost, and to call 5 other people. There was no list, no one knew who would be calling who, but gradually by 9 a.m. Sunday morning, the word got around (and as Pastor Mark shared, yes, some got left out and some got repeated calls, but that was ok) Schloneger is not averse to making waves for important causes—as one of the key instigators behind another ecumenical wind of the spirit calling churches to Election Day Communion which has begun forming around each national U.S. election day (Presidential) to reunite as Christians on many sides of political and other issues by calling for a joint community communion service. The North Goshen congregation is a mix of traditional white mostly ethnic Mennonites and brown ethnic Hispanics delightfully (but not without controversy) following Christ’s call to be the church in that mixed neighborhood.
North Goshen congregation facing rear of the church at time of dismissal.
I loved the red, loved the sermon focusing on Pentecost, the singing (some led by a praise band, some traditional 4- part a cappella) and especially liked Pastor Mark’s additional new custom of turning around to face the exit as the charge and benediction are given, symbolic of the call to carry faith with us into the world.
June 15. On Father’s Day we joined my daughter at her church, Northern Virginia Mennonite in Fairfax, Va., with another daughter currently living in that area and 6 ½ month old grandson James, who gripped that hymnal like he could sing too. (Last fall the congregation hosted a baby shower for James which I covered here.)
Northern Virginia Mennonite hosts almost weekly potlucks, this time for our daughter and son-in-law’s baby shower.
We and several members of the congregation had helped my daughter’s family move to a newly purchased home that weekend. This is a small congregation, somewhere between 30-40 on a Sunday morning that meets on the third floor a converted office building. Because of that smallness, they frequently singing several of their morning hymns physically gathered around the piano because it helps them sound better. It is therefore participatory, you feel like you are in a choir, and my heart was so touched to hold my grandson as he grabbed and held on to that Mennonite hymnal—just because he loves to be doing what everyone else is doing.
The pastor Earl Zimmerman spoke on enjoying God in nature and looking at the world around them—even in that very urban/suburban setting, where some homeless persons have been known to “camp” in the tree-lined area at the edge of their property.
June 22. I was back at my congregation of some 39 years, Trinity Presbyterian in Harrisonburg, Va., a house-church based PCUSA congregation where I’ve written about here and here (and more).
Trinity Presbyterian, before several grand old trees had to be cut down.
Since 1990, we were privileged to have been pastored by ONE pastor, Ann Held, who retired at the end of May. Having been gone so much, it was also my first time to hear a sermon by our interim minister, Sally Robinson, a professional interim in our Presbytery serving around 12 congregations in the past 15 years or so. It was a little like trying to go back to “normal” after a death in the family, where everything has changed yet you want to move forward to a new normal. We had chosen Trinity while we were dating, a lifetime ago, because it was “neutral” turf for this born Mennonite and born Lutheran, and we both knew people who went there. So any of you who have gone through the transition from a very long term pastor (24 years) to starting over, you know the wilderness that can feel like. Sally wisely chose the theme of “Family of God.”
June 29. I joined four members of my house church visiting Muhlenburg Lutheran Church which is where my husband spent the first 19 years of his faith journey, a born and baptized Lutheran. Haven’t written about that so much, but my first experience in this grand old Harrisonburg landmark was when my eventual dear sister-in-law and brother-in-law got married, pictured here.
Richard and Barbara Davis wedding party, Oct. 1975.
Not only has Muhlenburg seen a sea change of people in 40 years, but architectural and liturgical changes of course. We go back frequently for weddings, baptisms, confirmations, funerals and Christmas Eve services (among the most impressive of the Protestant churches here).
Posing and waiting for pictures at another family wedding at Muhlenberg June 2012.
I went on June 29 because my house church at Trinity has a mission of hosting a community (free) clothes closet, and two other churches, Muhlenberg and Harrisonburg Baptist, help us out by staffing it two Wednesdays out of the month. Our house churches normally meet in homes at least once or several times a month through the week, and four times a year we meet in homes for our Sunday morning worship time, (see more about that here). June 29 was one of those Sundays so instead of planning and holding our own worship service, we opted to visit Muhlenberg. The Lutheran liturgy–in words said for communion, before and after reading scripture, confession of sins, passing of peace and so on are very much like we practice at Trinity, even though there is a whole lot more standing up and sitting down going on. J Here Pastor Bob Humphrey had an excellent sermon on things that hold us in bondage, including time for conversation with the people sitting next to us—something I had never experienced in that used-to-be very formal service. Kudos to Pastor Bob. A far cry from the days when my sister-in-law and brother-in-law very much wanted to write their own wedding vows but were not allowed to just because it wasn’t done. End of discussion.
Four Sundays reminding me of my ecumenical faith journey—not church hopping, but broadening my understandings of how as Christians we belong to local churches, filled, we hope, with God’s presence and Holy Spirit sent at the time of Pentecost. The church is a human institution and the danger, always, is that our humanness out-shadows the Spirit of the Living God as we struggle through policies, beliefs, human interactions, faith, love, disagreement. My personal belief has long been that the varieties of faith expressions and beliefs held dear by the various denominations—whether an emphasis on grace, peace, good deeds—can all help to balance each other out and keep God’s spirit and truth functioning among us in powerful ways. For that to happen, we need to allow Jesus’ love to have the upper hand in our lives.
For more of my husband’s and my family’s faith background, here’s an earlier series of posts.
For more on Pentecost or the liturgical year check here.
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I’d love to hear about the churches that have been important in your faith formation over the years. Stories? Comments?
I think it was when my father took ill in 2006 (in what became his last illness) that I first tasted Miriam’s tomato soup. Miriam is my mother’s first cousin and she lives at the same retirement complex (different buildings) and has been a great companion and confidant for Mom these past years as they both deal with the issues of aging, and life becomes more confined (Miriam has macular degeneration and Mom has hearing degeneration).
Mom talking with cousin Miriam
But in 2006, Miriam was still cooking and brought over some of her delicious homemade tomato soup for the family because she knew Mom and the rest of us were busy scurrying back and forth between home and hospital, and then nursing care for Dad. (Dad died March 26 of that year.) It was a thoughtful gift of the kind you welcome when dealing with the stress of serious illness, and it tasted so good. With its bounty of chopped onions, carrots and celery added in, and with a grilled cheese sandwich or shredded cheese on top, it makes a pretty complete meal. At the bottom of Miriam’s recipe she says “Sometimes I add finely chopped broccoli.” Mother was so happy for the soup and her enthusiasm caused me to fall in love with it too.
I got the recipe right then and there and later tried making some for my family at home, some of whom love tomato soup just out of the can. My daughter was living at home at the time. She was not impressed. Oooh. Too sweet! Too much sugar!
On my recent visit to Mom’s she had a request. Well several requests, as mothers do when their children come home, but this was in the food category. “Can you make me a batch of Miriam’s soup to put in my freezer?”
Love to. And here it is. We modified the amount of sugar and it was delicious.
Miriam calls her recipe “Tomato Juice Soup” because it is built off of plain old canned tomato juice. Miriam’s friends and relatives have argued about what cookbook it is published in and have scoured her church’s recipe book (Holdeman Mennonite Church) to no avail. So, unless someone else can find it somewhere, you read it here first!
Miriam Weldy’s Tomato Juice Soup
1 15 ounce can tomato juice
¼ cup sugar (original said ½ cup but we think that is too sweet)
1 stick butter
1 ½ cups water
½ cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped onions
½ cup chopped carrots
Optional: ½ cup finely chopped broccoli
(Note, additional ingredients of water, milk, salt and pepper listed in directions below.)
In a large pot heat tomato juice. Add water, celery, onions, carrots and sugar. Cook.
In a shaker, add an additional 1 cup water and ½ cup flour. Shake. Add to the mixture carefully and stir until thickened. Then add ½ cup milk (or cream), and stir frequently. Add ½ teaspoon salt and pepper, or to taste. Add the butter. Stir. Simmer on very low for ½ hour or whatever time you have, stirring frequently. When serving add shredded cheese for topping or sliced cheese on side.
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Mom also wanted me to help her try out her handy dandy new vegetable chopper, which she thought might be easier to use than a small electrical chopper that took a lot of assembling and cleaning up. Well guess what, this one did too, and for the record, was hard enough for me to chop through carrots, she definitely did not have the strength to use it at the age of 89. Just sayin’. So the handy dandy chopper is now mine.
What do you use to chop vegetables? Cutting board and knife? Electrical chopper? One of those choppers “As Sold on TV”?
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Natalie Francisco included a lovely tomato bisque recipe (adapted from a French restaurant) for a Tomato Basil Soup in my Whatever Happened to Dinner book a few years ago that I need to try sometime too! If you wonder (like I did) what is the difference between a bisque and a soup (besides sounding fancier), it includes cream or in this recipe butter. Check out my link to the about.com definition which includes the note that “some thick soups made with vegetables, poultry or meat are sometimes referred to as bisques.” So you could probably call this soup a bisque if you want it to sound like a French restaurant.
For other favorite recipes see my book, Whatever Happened to Dinner: Recipes and Reflections on Family Mealtime.
I had just finished writing the piece below about a book I enjoyed, and was excited as I prepared to share it on my blog. Then I did some more research and realized things had changed for Anne Rice. First you’ll find the blog post as I originally wrote it, and then a postscript.
I first met Anne Rice through the pages of Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. I loved it and wondered more about what had propelled her to write a book that seemed like a book inspired by deep Christian faith. I’m not a fan of vampire type books or much in the way of fantasy, so her rich backlist of best selling novels of those genres, and awareness of the novelist herself, had largely passed me by.
Later I read her second Christ the Lord book called The Road to Cana. It too was refreshing, gripping and “masterful” according to reviewers. “Simply rendered holiness,” said The New York Times.
Who is Anne Rice and what does she believe? Now we can know some of that through her spiritual memoir, Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession published in 2008.
Yeah, I’m late in the game and would never have picked this up had a copy of it not shown up in the Little Free Library, a movement I wrote about here.
The book starts out slowly with many reflections in passive past tense, “Another important element of my childhood was radio;” and “I remember …”– a little too filled with repetitious lines of her early memories of her Catholic upbringing in the very Catholic city of New Orleans, dripping in cathedrals, statuary, stained glass, flickering candles.
But for anyone who is Catholic, or has had a Catholic or formerly Catholic friend or family member, or likes any of Anne Rice’s 28 novels, it slowly sucks you in. This great wordsmith and storyteller was not much of a reader in childhood, nor well into adulthood, and in fact struggled with reading even in college. She says it was the visual aspect of her church background that communicated and formed her first inklings of faith, long before she could read. She writes about her dedicated, loving and film/art buff mother who was nevertheless desperately alcoholic, and the too early death of her own daughter. All this and more begins to enmesh you like a good novel with an unfolding, engaging plot. I enjoyed her fierce and surprising rejection of childhood (she didn’t like to be considered a child), and descriptions of her developing career as a writer.
Called Out of Darkness gradually becomes one of the most astounding faith testimonies of our times (but who am I to say that, I’m not a prolific leisure reader because I have to read so much for my job but keep plugging away at leisure reading when traveling or mostly before bedtime). I say astounding in that as Rice herself says, for a liberal Berkley (California) atheist for much of her adult life to return to Christian faith at the age of 57—well it gives me hope and faith for just about anyone. She details how the interior work of her own faith journey played out in the dark characters and plots of some of her novels.
I will not spoil a reading of the book for anyone else by revealing more of her journey except to say, in her words, a little of what her faith has come to mean for her, and can speak to us all of what is needed in this day of such raking conflict and controversy in the church universal:
“The more I study the New Testament, the more I see the contradictions enshrined within it. But I see something else there too. We have been a quarreling religion from the beginning, born out of an earlier quarreling religion—Judaism—and in a sense the New Testament enshrines us as such very clearly, with no easy solution as to how we handle our quarrels or the contradictory passages except that we must love! The voice of Christ speaks so loudly in the Sermon the Mount that surely it downs out those passages that urge us to condemn or to shun. But how is one to say so for sure?
To accept the canon [of the Bible] means to accept all of the canon. And that means there will be no easy resolution ever, and that learning to live with this tension, in love, is what we must do.
This may come across as simplistic. It is not simplistic. It is life changing and endlessly difficult and the steadfast determination to love is threatened at every moment. We walk a tightrope over a pit of grasping demons when we insist upon love. And sometimes we walk alone.
The more I study this, the more I listen to people around me talk about their experience with Jesus Christ and with religion, the more I realize as well that what drives people away from Christ is the Christian who does not know how to love. A string of cruel words from a Christian can destroy another Christian.”
And she goes on. I tell you, the book is rich and redeeming and hope-filled. She is as dedicated of Christian as my mother (and both of them would be quick to admit and confess their sins and shortcomings).
Anne Rice, thank you for writing this book, for sharing your faith and your story. It is a story for thinking persons anywhere—for those who are willing to go to the hard places and ask the unanswerable questions about God and faith and Jesus, and say with the father in Mark 9 who said in asking Jesus to heal his son, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
Postscript
Right before I posted the above, I learned that a few years ago Ann Rice had “recanted” so to speak and moved more to a position of secular humanism, or so said Wikipedia. Rice also calls it belief in a higher power.
I couldn’t help but be severely disappointed by this twist. I felt sucker punched (and a little behind on the news). I’m sure I heard the news at the time but it didn’t mean much to me not having read her memoir at that time. I thought of the line from her book which I quoted above, “A string of cruel words from a Christian can destroy another Christian.” Undoubtedly that has been part of what played as she met with criticism from some for her activist stances.
I still love her two Christ the Lord books (and I’m happy to hear there is a movie in production stages). Of course our faith is always evolving, is it not? In 2010, she said in The Christian Century she still believed in Christ, but was separating herself from the Christian church. In a story on NPR in 2010) she said she didn’t think she would ever return to writing vampire novels (but subsequently did a string of werewolf books), and now in 2014 a new vampire book is slated for publication in October.
I will move on, and let others decide for themselves whether this book is still worth reading as a memoir and history. I have come to be wary of ever placing my trust or Christian faith in the hands of others who might disappoint me, especially in the hands of well known authors, politicians, trusted spokespersons, even pastors.
Perhaps Anne and all of us could pray with the father in Mark 9 “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
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Have you ever been disappointed by the actions or statements of a “public person” in terms of your own faith beliefs? What happened and how did you deal with it?
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If you’ve read any of the above books, I’d love to hear your response to them.
The other week I was in Indiana just at the start of their strawberry season. I hankered to enjoy an evening meal of shortcake and strawberries. When I learned there was a U-Pick patch a stone’s throw from Mom’s retirement complex, I went over early the next morning. Only $1.25 a pound. What a delight to dig into a bounty of delicious berries in long straight rows after picking on my somewhat difficult hillside patch, described here.
You’re thinking they eat shortcake as a meal? How healthy is that?
Well, the kind of shortcake we like for a meal is not a sweet cake, more like a biscuit, made from a mix and doctored up just a tad. Cheating, I know. We use either Bisquik ® or Jiffy ® Mix.
Back to the healthy. A traditional Strawberry Shortcake meal at the Miller household consisted of (for each person):
Menu:
A cup or so of chopped, lightly sugared fresh berries.
A half cup of milk.
Bisquik ® type shortcake
Cheese or bologna or deli smoked turkey as a “side” – not on bread
Perhaps fresh garden lettuce as a wrapper for the cheese/bologna/turkey
Four food groups. A cup of strawberries supplies 160 percent of your daily Vitamin C, plus some fiber and potassium. Protein and calcium in your milk and cheese or deli meat. A small amount of veggie/fiber in your lettuce, or perhaps a carrot on the side if you insist on a traditional veggie.
Where the healthy comes in too, lest we forget, is that this is pretty much a low-effort, stressless meal. That has to count for something. You clean the berries, you bake up the shortcake, the house fills with delicious scents, you serve, you eat. Pure enjoyment. I’m mostly about eating simply which counts for a lot in the summer.
I laud my parents who practiced local simple eating before it was trendy, because that’s what we did frequently for an evening meal in summer. (As farmers, our main meal of the day came at noon, where Mom served traditional dinners of meat, a starch, veggie and salad.)
But once spring fruits got under way, for our evening meal there was a steady succession of bread and milk topped with the fruit of the week: strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, peaches. These were our favorites. We did not grow blueberries in our orchard but Mom would buy those in bulk, as I do now, from those who did or, if necessary, shipped in. (You gotta have blueberries however you can get your hands on them.)
Then the surprise. On my recent visit, Mom shocked me by saying she NEVER LIKED the soggy bread part of these meals. And now that Daddy is gone, she feels free to skip the milk-soaked bread, and just have milk and strawberries, milk and peaches, and her bread on the side, not all mushy like Daddy loved.
Now I’m wondering what if Daddy ate it that way because he thought Mom liked it that way?
Kind of rocks the underpinnings of your understandings about your parents, you know, if they could live with such secrets.
But that’s always the way I liked Mom’s shortcake best too—I crumbled a little for my strawberries and milk, but saved a nice hunk to eat on the side, warm and slathered in butter.
I was never able to get my husband and three daughters to enjoy this as an evening meal except for when we were at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. They ate it then. If I served at home, someone was sure to ask, “Is this all we’re having for supper?” (But then, we do not have our main meal of the day at noon!) So it remains a special treat just for strawberry season, just at Grandma’s house. Some foods are like that. But maybe your family will think it’s cool.
And the results from the “How do you like to eat your strawberries” poll a couple of posts ago?
55 % love shortcake best
44 % pie
Neither jam or cheesecake got a single vote.
(Jiffy ® used to make a versatile version Mom used called “Baking Mix” (here) but after scouring two grocery stores, I’m not sure they make it anymore. Anyone know?)
Shortcake (Using the standard recipe on the box)
2 1/2 cups Bisquick ®
2/3 cup milk
3 Tablespoons sugar
3 Tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
Stir mix, milk, sugar and melted butter until it hangs together. Spread into greased 9 inch pie pan or other baking dish of those approximate dimensions. Bake in 425 degree oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Slice into pie-sized servings of your choice, for 6-8. Serve while warm.
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Did you ever learn something new about your parents, or your mom or dad that surprised you or changed your picture of them?
Or, did your mom or dad ever stop doing something once their partner was deceased? I’d love to hear more.
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For hundreds of recipes helping you cook whatever is in season, check out Simply in Season, from Herald Press.
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I was privileged to attend two birthday parties recently. Both were rather grand affairs with 150 or more in attendance at the first one: a brunch for a 90-year-old friend of my mother’s, Cora Schrock. Cora has been a great confidant over the years for mom and I was delighted to be able to take my mother to the party during a visit to my home area in Indiana as Mom continued to recuperates from early May surgery; I wrote about the train trip here.
Cora left, and my mother, Bertha.
There was a “queen for the day” crown that embarrassed Cora slightly but she played along regally, greeting friends, family, church members and fellow residents in her retirement home complex.
There was plentiful good food: homemade omelets, home baked cinnamon rolls and other sweets, fruits, and of course, birthday cake.
Mom and a cousin catch up, even though they talk by phone almost every day.
But mostly there were a hundred conversations all over the ample dining room of people reconnecting, sometimes after many years: emotionally close brothers who still had not seen each other in four years, a brother who recalled baling hay with my husband–helping my father many years ago.
The Schrock family, in an earlier photo, on display at the party.
But one conversation was especially meaningful to me: a woman who was first on the scene (with her father) when my maternal grandfather Ivan was tragically killed in a single car accident when I was just a baby—a scene so gruesome I’ll spare you the details but which understandably haunted her as an 11-year-old child for a number of years.
Rather than cause me nightmares or aversion it somehow made me feel closer to this grandfather, being right next to a woman who experienced my Grandpa in that terrible moment, horn still blaring on his vehicle in awful serenade. She said her father then sought help (long before cell phones, 911, or even much in the way of rescue squads). Many years later her own sister was killed by a drunken driver, her only sibling. Yet she seems to have healed as well as you can from that kind of tragedy. Such is life.
At the other end of life’s spectrum, I got to join in the joyful mayhem of a party for two three-year-olds, step-siblings.
There was a rented bouncy house (as I call them), kids playing steal-the-flag in wild woodsy terrain behind the church cabin where the party was held (I think they fancied they were acting out a movie, maybe), a sprinkler, swing set and of course, adults sitting around reconnecting and eating pizza.
Given all of the various grandparents, steps, ex’s and generations, I’m guessing there were 40 at this party, all connected through their love of these children.
Several members of the Kemp family, including a great grandfather.
I couldn’t help but reflect: what will life be like for the pair of three-year-olds if they are blessed to reach 90 years of age? What was life like for baby Cora in 1924? I can imagine that at most a 3-year-old girl in 1927 would have gotten no more than a special cake, a small toy or new dress.
These three-year-olds each got little scooters, a plastic sandbox set, mini basketball goal, some dolls and trucks/bulldozers. I was glad for the active, creative play these gifts signaled rather than too much in the way of electronics at this early age.
Is it too obvious to suggest that whatever the age, the gifts of love we share with the three-year-old or the 90-year-old are what matter, what’s important, the true treasure.
I once had the opportunity to interview Amish farmer David Kline. author of the book Great Possessions; in it he’s talking mostly about farming and stewarding God’s gifts in nature, but the application here is family as great gifts, our possessions. Not in the sense of “owning” anyone–but in the sense of belonging to a group of people or having a place that is truly “home.” As another author/poet Robert Frost said so memorably in the voice of two characters in his long poem , The Death of the Hired Man:
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
“I should have called it something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”
Our families are great gifts–and the important thing is to treasure them always, whether through hard times or great days celebrating birthdays. Even two or three at once!
I also always like this verse: “God sets the lonely in families.” Psalms 68:6
And when you don’t have family nearby, a good friend is a great gift, too.
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Which definition of “home” from the Robert Frost poem do you like the best/resonate with?
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