Portrait of baby Jodi

It took my daughter Meredythe a while and a lot of convincing to finally get her daughter Jodi, who has multiple sclerosis, accepted at The Gables nursing home in Marysville Ohio.

Here you see Jodi in her beautiful room at The Gables.

image1Meredythe decorated her room with portraits I had painted of Jodi’s son Levi at a lake in Canada holding a fish he had just caught and her daughter Holli sitting on a little white pony. And then put between the paintings a creation of mine with a bird house on a tree limb and eggs in a bird nest. Jodi’s aunt Pamela sent her the beautiful new bedspread.

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Close up of Levi’s portrait

image4Close up of Holli’s portrait

image5And for Jodi’s birthday this special treat chocolate caramel brownies made especially for her by her gramma Flo.

We, all her family, are so happy to know she is where so many advantages are offered. Delicious food, fresh clean clothes each day, bingo with funny money rewards for winners and a special store set up to spend that money for delightful gifts. Plus ever so many other wonderful advantages to keep her busy and happy.

The Gables nursing home, owned and operated by the Marysville hospital is truly THE ANSWER TO OUR PRAYERS for our beautiful JODI !!!!!

FRF ❤️

 


Things to buy at your favorite market.

Pkg of fresh chicken breast
One can Campbell cream of chicken soup
Pkg of linguine (pasta noodles) from the store cooler case One half gallon College Inn chicken broth 50 percent low sodium

Butter sides and bottom of large casserole, wash chicken pieces and place accross the bottom in one layer.

Add one cup of chicken broth, sprinkle with meat tenderizer, thyme, dill weed, garlic salt and parsley.

Bake covered at 325 for 2 hrs. Remove from oven and allow to cool to room temperature.

Separate the linguine in long strips on a cutting surface and cut 1 and 1/2 inch pieces. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons flour over linguine pieces and shake to mix through.

When chicken has cooled enough to handle, cut into small pieces ready to add to the noodles.

In a large kettle, pour the remaining chicken broth, the drippings from the roasted chicken and bring to a full rolling boil. Add the linguine noodles a little at a time while stirring constantly.

Boil until tender and add Campbell’s cream of chicken soup and bring to boil.

Add the cut up chicken and bring to a full rolling boil stirring constantly with flat end wooden spoon before removing from burner.

I serve this over mashed red potatoes with the skin left on and add salt, butter and sour cream. Save the hot water you drain from the potatoes and add some back in to give your potatoes a good consistency. I like to add a little parsley to the potatoes for a smidgen of color added to the color of the red potato skin.

With this dinner my granddaughter Sarah likes buttered peas, my granddaughter Evin likes the cherry jello salad and my daughter Pamela likes coconut cream pie.

HOW DOES THIS SOUND TO YOU? So….who’s counting calories already!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FLO ❤️


I am almost settled in my new home. My bedroom is all furnished with new purchases, just have to wait for the man who painted my walls white to come back with his ladder and hang a few of my high school paintings. I am still working on my studio/sitting room.

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Sunday November 1st Tracy Pamela and I met Maia Morrison at the Casey Key Fish House for a 2:00 PM lunch. She is such a super lady with her beautiful red hair streaked with gold. She was dressed so neat in yellow denim knee shorts. Yellow with green and blue lace short sleeves and inserts, and yellow strap sandals. Quite the stylist!!!

We all enjoyed drinks while sharing a plate of crab cakes and a plate of coconut shrimp as we visited reminiscing of by-gone days.

Maia was in my blog in January 2014 “PLASTIC SURGERY! WHO? ME?” She was president of the Venice Area Board of Realtors and had named me membership chairman and just after I had inducted as realtors the new salespeople of the Venice area, she ask me to tell everyone that I had just had a face lift and I had foolishly declined.

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Tracy, me, Maia

We all enjoyed our delicious sea food meal while Tracy and Pamela questioned Maia of developments in the area since we were last here. This delightful lady is still helping people find the perfect Florida home.

But wait a minute! My birthday wasn’t Sunday…….so now it’s Monday November 2nd and I am now 93 years old. And……….Tracy made a delicious dinner of short ribs, mushrooms, carrots and tiny red potatoes slowly roasted in a wine sauce. YUM!!! YUM!!! Followed with slices of birthday cake and ice cream all washed down with red wine. Who could ask for anything more?

Footnote:
I have a sister Fannie who is 97 and 1/2 and another sister Mabel who lived to celebrate her 98th birthday.

HEY! I MIGHT LIVE TO BE100!!!!

FRF ❤️


My daughter Meredythe Wedding gave me her recipe for making these delicious salmon cakes. And………she gave me several pint glass jars of her home canned salmon the her husband Joey had caught while on a fishing exposition in the icy waters off Alaska. She added a teaspoon of vinegar and a teaspoon of ketchup plus water to each pint of salmon before canning.

Here is her recipe

  • One pint salmon
  • 12 soda crackers
  • 1 egg
  • 3 shakes of garlic powder
  • Mix together using a fork to keep little pieces if the salmon in the mix
  • Press into cakes and fry in butter

My version when I make them:

  • I add of lemon juice (I use a few drops of lemon from the lemon plastic container of concentrated lemon juice)
  • Make it 14 soda crackers ( mine are saltines)
  • Add a tiny pinch of each of the following herbs
  • Dill weed
  • Thyme
  • Rosemary

Form cakes and fry to light golden in skillet with a quarter stick of butter on low heat. Here is a picture of my salmon cakes as soon as I removed them from the skillet of butter.

SAVOR THE DELICIOUS FLAVOR!!!!!!

FRF ♥


Back in the 50’s and 60’s while on my dairy farm I would attend meetings given by Mrs Diehl who ran the Union county Extention office in  Marysville Ohio.

At a pre-Christmas meeting for the entire county a lady brought orange cookies with orange icing and gave out a printed copy of her recipe. I have over the years some how misplaced that copy but my daughter Meredythe had written it down and gave to me.

Recipe

  • 1 cup shortening (part butter)
  • 1 and 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/3 cup frozen orange juice (thawed)
  • 4 cups flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon soda (rounded)
  • 1teaspoon baking powder (rounded)
  • 1 cup buttermilk (can be made with I tablespoon vinegar and finish filling cup with milk)

Cream sugar and shortening, add eggs one at a time and cream, add orange juice and mix. Mix flour, salt, soda and baking powder and add alternately with buttermilk adding flour mix first and last.

On greased cookie sheet place tablespoons of cookie dough and bake in 350 degree oven until just barely done. Do not over bake. When I remove them from the oven I can just barely see my thumb print in the center of the cookie. I ice them while still warm.

Orange icing

  • 2 cups confectioners sugar
  • 1 tablespoon soft butter
  • Add frozen orange juice (thawed) to spreadable consistency.

As I have done over the years I did revise this recipe from the original given me. I have now given you my secrets to how I make these (loved by everyone) orange cookies.

It has become a family favorite and often made for Christmas by some of my family. You have to be careful to get them out of the oven at the right time (like seconds before they are quite done) and ice them soon while still warm. When I was making them at my daughter Susie’s home in Lawrenceville Georgia, her step-son Scott was there and as I baked the cookies, he iced them. It almost needs two people.

Actually, he was having fun icing them. Whenever I made cookies or cupcakes, I always allowed my children and grandchildren to eat them while they were fresh from the oven and warm and he loved that little tasty favor.

When I was growing up, my mother would come to the home by my dad’s stone quarry where I lived with brothers and sisters and she would make a big batch of bread dough into several loaves of bread. I watched this procedure in amazement as the bread would rise to well above the baking pans before she placed them in the oven to bake and then enjoy that wonderful yeast aroma that filled the kitchen and beyond.

But the best part of all was after those beautiful loaves of bread were taken out of the oven, removed from the pans the golden tops of each loaf buttered and glistening. Because……..we were not allowed to cut them unto they were cold made me want more than ever to eat a ‘heel’ of that warm bread spread with butter. YUM!!!

I would always get a good scolding for my reckless actions. But that never stopped me. Those times are some of my best memories of growing up. I wanted my children and grandchildren to have some of those same wonderful childhood memories.

AND………THEY DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So when you bake these delicious orange cookies give your children and grandchildren the enjoyment of building good MEMORIES THAT LAST A LIFETIME!!!!!!!!!!!

FRF ♥