A few of you have asked for the recipes for some foods I made recently. So here goes.
Lorraine, you asked what goes into my "Grandma's Casserole." The history of this particular casserole goes all the way back to 1972. Dick's mother had a family gathering at their place, and she made this dish. It was a huge hit. She had gotten it from her neighbor, Ella Hess, who had gotten it from the Eastern Mennonite Missions headquarters where she volunteered. It was considered to be a good, inexpensive meal to serve a crowd, because it used just one pound of ground meat, but made a huge amount because of all the cream soups. I made it often for our family over the years, but had not made it in a long time until Jeremy requested it a few weeks ago when I was in Portland. We always called it "Grandma's Casserole" because Dick's mother was the first one who made it for us.
Grandma’s Casserole
1. Brown 1 pound ground beef or turkey with chopped onions. Add 1 t. salt and ½ t. pepper.
2. Cook ½ pound medium noodles according to package directions.
3. Stir together:
Browned meat
Cooked noodles
2 cups frozen peas
½ cup sour cream
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
2 cans cream of chicken soup
4. Top with:
4 T. melted butter combined with plain bread crumbs
5. Bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.
Mary Ellen, you asked for my Frozen Strawberry Fluff recipe. This is one that my "mothering mentor" Grace Faus used to make. Long before I was a mother, I was her hired girl. So I had experience making this in her kitchen. Again, I often made this when our family was at home, but I had not made it in a long time until Jeremy requested it.
FROZEN STRAWBERRY FLUFF
Mix together:
1/3 c. melted butter
1 c. graham cracker crumbs
¼ c. finely chopped nuts
Press into bottom of 9 x 13 cake pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes.
Cool.
Beat together with mixer:
2 eggs whites
1 t. lemon juice
Gradually beat in:
1 1/3 c. sugar
2 c. crushed strawberries
Beat at high speed 15 minutes until mixture is fluffy and fills the bowl.
Fold in:
1 cup whipped topping
Spread over cooled crumb mixture. Freeze overnight.
Mari, you asked about my Baked Corn recipe that I made for Thanksgiving. This one is from the Mennonite Cookbook. When our children were growing up I often made this whenever I made meatloaf and scalloped potatoes. Now it's a MUST in our Thanksgiving menu.
I've been back home over a week already! We've had some really warm weather, but lots of cloudiness. I haven't been able to get many sunrise pictures. However, Thanksgiving morning was quite beautiful.
It was good to be back at church again on Sunday. As planned, we had our Thanksgiving service that morning instead of having a Thanksgiving Eve service as usual. My amazing flute player, Brenna, joined us for the first time since March. It was absolutely wonderful to hear her again! Here's a video of our prelude, Amazing Grace.
We came home and watched Calvary's service online. Then we hit the road. Dick had found someone on Facebook Marketplace that had a hunting suit just like he wanted. He agreed on a certain exit along 322 and a time to meet him.
And I had realized that I'd left my very favorite apron at Jeremy and Mike's. It's the one I had gotten at the little flea market next to Sam's place in September. I wanted to go there to get another one. And of course I was hoping to get to say Hi to Sam and the kids!
As it turned out, the hunting suit fit great, and Dick was a happy buyer. But the flea market did not have those aprons anymore. Bummer! Jeremy said he'll mail mine to me.
Sam had just taken the kids to Jenn's place and was on his way to watch football at someone else's house, so we didn't get to see him. But we went to Jenn's and got to see the kids for a bit anyway. So fun!!! They had just taken all their pumpkins, including a lot of those tiny ones, out behind the shed, because they were decorating for Christmas. Bianca wanted me to see the pumpkins, and she had a name for every one of them - at least twenty of them, hahaha! She's too much! It was so great to see them.
We have had a Secret Sister program at GBRV this past year. We were planning to have our Christmas gathering on Monday evening, and we would have revealed who our Secret Sisters were. But due to the rapidly rising COVID cases in our area, it was cancelled. So on Sunday morning I received some gifts from my friend Bonnie, who revealed that she had been my Secret Sister this past year. One of her gifts was this beautiful cactus, which has begun blooming this week. It makes me so happy when I'm working at my sink.
Another thing that made me so happy this week was a card that Austin emailed me. I'm quite sure it's my favorite card ever. I had tears as I read it.
Our Thanksgiving plans were very different from normal. We felt that we simply could not risk having a bunch of people together in our little house at this time. So instead, I cooked all my regular Thanksgiving food on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I put portions into containers I had gotten at Sam's Club. With magic marker I put on the lids the name of the person who would get it, and also the contents of the container. There were some containers with turkey, stuffing, and gravy. Others had green bean casserole, gourmet potatoes, and sweet potato pudding. Others had lots of baked corn, always the favorite dish. Still others had apple pie, and the smallest ones had cranberry sauce.
One of our deliveries was going to be to Bjorn and Jess's apartment near Manheim. They are actually in Colorado this week, but they really wanted my food, so they gave us the combination for their door and asked us to put it in the fridge. As I was getting dressed on Thanksgiving morning, I got a text from Bjorn. "Happy Thanksgiving! No Penn State game this year, and no cookies from my Grandma's cookie jar." I had thought of making cookies, but hadn't. When I read that I decided I could quickly do a small batch of Peanut Blossoms. I didn't have any Hershey Kisses, but chocolate chips work too. We kept them on the cookie sheets, covered them with wax paper, and put them on the floor of the van to cool as we drove, hahaha! I brought extra containers along to put them in at each stop.
Grandma's Thanksgiving food wagon on its way!
Our first stop was at Ray's apartment in Lebanon. He met us in the parking lot. I filled a grocery bag with all his containers of food, and he put it right into his car. He was going to his bio mom's house in Lancaster. He said the cookies would never make it there. He would eat them all on the way, hahaha!! We always had to keep him from eating all the cookies when everyone was here. It was fun to chat and catch up a bit before we went our separate ways.
From there we went to Bjorn and Jess's apartment. I had fully intended to take a picture of my food containers in their fridge to send to them, but I completely forgot.
From their place we went to Dick's brother Fred's house. Dick had ordered some socks for Fred, and we delivered those.
Then we went back toward home. And of course, on the way we had a very important stop at Sam's. The kids were riding their scooters in the parking lot. Good grief! They are wild and crazy! I was scared to watch sometimes!
Then I put all their food containers into a grocery bag, we posed for a picture (which Sam took), and we said our goodbyes.
Later Sam texted that they had eaten, and Bianca wanted him to tell me that it was the best apple pie ever. Sammy's favorite thing was the baked corn, and Sam's was the stuffing.
I took these pictures after we left his place.
I did not take the following picture, however. I saw it on Facebook today. It was taken from a tower at Sled Works in Duncannon. What an amazing picture!! That is the bridge we cross every time we travel from State College to Lancaster County. This summer the river was so low that Sam and the kids walked the whole way across!!! It's so wonderful to see it now without any rocks sticking up. It was such a sad sight this summer and fall.
We were back home before 6 PM on Thanksgiving day. We had our own Thanksgiving meal then. It was a fun day - not as fun as having everyone together, but a whole lot better than staying home by ourselves.
We've had lots of FaceTime calls this week with the Portland crew. It's so much more fun now that we've been together. Here are some pictures from them this week. Jeremy got up on the roof and strung those lights. One day they went to a waterfalls about 20 minutes from their place.
Of course I get daily pictures of my favorite baby!! Destiny and Elizer are actually still at Alex's mother's place in Ocala, Florida. Destiny and Alex are making plans to move there. Boohoohoo!! But it's not about me. I will be supportive - as long as I get pictures and videos and we can do video calls. He's growing up so fast!!!!
I had a long phone conversation with Lisa while we were driving home on Thursday. They were with George's family at his sister's house. George took this picture for me. I wanted to be there too! I had such fun with all of them at the beach when I was down there for Mother's Day weekend last year.
Anthony and Lori had their Thanksgiving at home. Today they went hiking. I miss them so much. A vaccine cannot come soon enough!!
Miki and I had a fun Messenger conversation while we were driving Thursday morning. I told her that I was on my way to put food in her boy's refrigerator and that I had made him some cookies. She said that they had celebrated Thanksgiving with Katrina and her boyfriend on Sunday. I love that Miki has kept the Thanksgiving tradition all these years of living in Sweden.
Well, that's all for this time. Have a good weekend!
I'm back home on my computer, so I will try to finish up my Portland trip pictures now.
Tuesday was a better day - not one meltdown all day. Later in the afternoon we went for a walk. It looked like it might rain, so I took my little umbrella along (very un-Portland-like!), but it didn't rain at all. However, we DID see a unique rainbow! I told Jeremy, "That's God's promise that you're not going to drown."
Here are some pictures from our evening.
I had fun making some JibJab videos with the boys. Everyone got a great kick out of this snowball fight!
On Wednesday Natasha and I made a favorite dessert from Jeremy's childhood - Frozen Strawberry Fluff. Sooooo delicious!!
We went for a walk again. Mike got this video of Watson's adorable reaction to it, haha!
We saw so many airplanes during that walk. Brennan kept asking, "Are you going to go on that airplane tomorrow?" Jeremy said, "We're not talking about that today." None of us wanted to think about this being my last day.
For my last dinner they ordered in pizza, including my favorite - Margherita. It was a really fun last meal together. I set the timer on my phone camera for a picture of all of us, and we were counting down with the numbers flashing on my phone. I was saying, "Blast off!" on the first picture. Then I told them I wanted an unposed picture, but Daniel just couldn't keep from looking at those numbers flashing, haha!
I had brought a Christmas book along, and of course, the most popular songs were Jingle Bells and Deck the Halls. But when I played O Holy Night, and Jeremy started singing along, he amazed the kids with his beautiful voice. I persuaded him to let me video it. It's very impromptu, and he's not exactly proud of it, but it's a wonderful memory.
We had a lot of fun playing with the magnetic tiles that evening before the boys went to bed.
Jeremy made teal bows and added them to the living room tree. I love them!
And then Thursday morning came. We had one last playtime with the plastic blocks.
Before we left for the airport Mike took these pictures. The tears were hard to hold back.
Jeremy took me to the airport and went with me all the way through to security. It was very, very hard to say goodbye, especially having no idea when we will see each other again. Brennan was so sure it would be next week.
I had all three seats to myself. As we took off I looked down thinking perhaps I would see a water tower in one of those communities down there.
There was much more cloud cover on this trip, so I did not get the amazing pictures like I got on the way to Portland. It was fascinating one time to see an airplane flying below us!
I was so disappointed when I realized that the sunset was on the opposite side of the plane. First I tried to get a picture out the window across the aisle by zooming in. After a while I couldn't stand it, and I got up and moved to an empty row across the aisle so I could get a better picture. It was incredible - much more amazing than I could capture with my camera.
I was watching the flight on my seat screen, and when I saw that I was flying over Lake Michigan I messaged my blog friend Mari to let her know I would soon be flying over her place. She said she would blink her lights for me, hahaha! What a beautiful sight Detroit was at night as we flew in!
This time I had several hours of layover time, so I didn't need to rush from one gate to the other. I got this short video as I entered the magic tunnel. It was so gorgeous and festive with the Christmas music and lights.
I posted something on Facebook about having several hours until my flight to State College. Our Calvary pastor's wife commented that their daughter was going to be on my flight. She lives in Minnesota! I had never met her before, but I knew what she looked like from pictures. We had fun chatting as we waited for our flight to leave. In fact, I owe it to her for not forgetting my backpack! I had walked right over to get in line for boarding without it! Whew!! I'm so glad she noticed it!
It was a much shorter flight, just a little over an hour, but it seemed long because I was so eager to be home and to be able to take my mask off. I also was starting to feel hungry after eating just snacks all day. I was thinking of the leftover spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread and frozen berry fluff back at Jeremy and Mike's. I surely would have liked to have some!
I got to State College shortly after 10:30 pm, and Dick was there to pick me up. Even though it was hard to leave Jeremy's family, it was good to be home. Dick took a vacation day on Friday, so we were able to sleep in.
On Friday morning I took this picture. I didn't see clear skies like that very often in Portland. The good thing out there, however, is that they rarely get extremely cold temperatures, so things stay quite green all winter long.
Of course, I had gotten plenty of pictures of Elizer! Alex's mom lives in Florida, and she flew Destiny and Elizer down this week so she could finally meet her grandson.
I've been catching up on things around here these two days. Yesterday I went to Med Express to get the rapid COVID test. I had no reason to suspect that I had it, since Mike and Jeremy and family stay at home, and every precaution was taken during my flights, which were not at all full. But because of the increasing COVID rates, PA has new guidelines for people traveling from certain states, one of which is Oregon. My test result was negative, which I fully expected it would be.
I really hate that COVID is again making such an increase in cases and deaths. As you know, my stepmother Mary died from that in September. In October my dad's brother, Luke Witmer, died from COVID. And now today I just got word that my 63-year-old cousin Don Miller died from it.
Time to update here again! So many days and so many pictures to share! Unfortunately it will be done on my phone, so I can’t promise how it will look. Everything takes at least twice as long to do this way. I will not be proofreading.
Last Wednesday was a bright, sunny day. There were no usual activities because of Veterans Day, so in the afternoon we went to a nearby park. What a great place! We had a really fun time.
Scenes from around the neighborhood. The hydrangea blooms are at Jeremy and Mike’s house.
I caught this precious moment later in the day.
I have done lots and lots of playing with the boys. A big project while here was organizing the toys into clear tubs so the boys can easily find and put away their things. We LOVE Jenga, and are getting really good at it.
On Thursday afternoon Mike and the boys and I went for a brisk walk around the neighborhood. I loved it.
That evening I made an old favorite recipe by Jeremy’s request - Grandma’s Casserole. It was a big hit for everyone. I hadn’t made it in years.
That day the chimney cleaners came, and after they were finished cleaning and inspecting everything, the fireplace was declared good to go. Jeremy wasted no time. We had gotten firewood when we went to the hardware store that morning.
While he built the fire, Natasha and I made a recipe off her phone. I had to change the recipe from metric, so that was a bit of a challenge. The recipe was for a stove-top apple cake. I have never done a cake on top of the stove before, but it was such a delicious surprise. It had a caramelly top when turned out of the pan. Perfect treat by the fire.
On Friday I did lots of playing again. I really enjoyed listening in on Daniel’s kindergarten class.
The big anticipation of the day was decorating for Christmas. We realized when Brennan got up from his nap that he had kind of missed the word “decorate.” He came downstairs asking, “Are we getting presents now?” But decorating was exciting too.
I made oven BBQ’d chicken, baked potatoes, and stir fried cauliflower and broccoli for dinner. Takes a lot to feed this crew. There were no leftovers!
On Saturday we played some more, decorated some more, cleaned, and made food.
Natasha and I made an apple pie, sloppy joes, and green bean casserole. And like my mom always did, I used the leftover pastry dough to make cinnamon rolls. Sooooo scrumptious!
After such a big day, it was wonderful to relax in the decorated living room with the fire crackling in the fireplace. We watched the amateur baking show “Nailed It” and laughed so much.
Sunday was another big day. The guys were reorganizing the garage while I raked leaves with the boys.
Then the big production of the day commenced - making spaghetti, red sauce, and meatballs, all from “scratch.”
Mike made his dad’s red sauce recipe. They are Italian Villani’s, so you know it was an authentic recipe, complete with pork neck bones. Never heard of such a thing, but it surely was delish!
Natasha and I made my favorite meatball recipe.
And then there was the pasta making. Jeremy has it down to a science. I have never made pasta, so I thoroughly enjoyed watching the long process. Even the little boys had their own little jobs in the process. It was so much fun!!
There was energetic music playing as we worked, and once or twice a dance party broke out right in the kitchen!
Monday was the day after. The adults were tired and the children energetic. By evening each boy had had the worst meltdown of my entire visit. There are so many factors that play into the meltdowns, and I certainly cannot go into them here. Parenting during the limitations of a pandemic is challenging for almost all parents. All those challenges are magnified when parenting broken children. The needs are enormous. I’m proud of Jeremy and Mike for doing the best they can. There are many joys and much love. But “easy” it is not. It will be hard for me to leave.
On Monday evening they added some things to the Christmas decorations in front of the house. I made another favorite recipe from Jeremy’s childhood for dinner - Creamed Sausage and Potatoes. Natasha and I made Jeremy’s favorite cookie recipe - Molasses Ginger Snaps.
We ended the day with some much-needed relaxing by the fire and watching The Voice.
