When There Was Only One

This was a photo taken by my mother when John was a baby. All of us looked a little younger then. I don’t know about the galaxy far far away, but it was definitely a long tome ago.

Mom’s Beef Stroganoff

After the last recipe posting, I had a request for additional family recipes. This is Mom's Beef stroganoff recipe.

1 lb Sirloin steak cut in to small strips
½ cup flour
½ tsp seasoned salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/3 c butter or margarine
1 10½ oz can concentrated beef broth
1 soup can water
3 Tbs butter or margarine
½ lb fresh mushrooms cleaned and sliced
1 cup dairy sour cream
3 Tbs tomato paste

Coat meat strips evenly with a mixture of the flour, seasoned salt and pepper.

Heat 1/3 cup butter in a large heavy skillet. Add meat strips and remaining flour mixture. Brown on all sides over medium heat, turning occasionally. Add the broth + water, cover and simmer about 20 minutes.

Heat 3 Tbs butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add mushrooms and cook until lightly browned and tender. Add mushrooms to meat and remove from heat.

Blending well after each addition, add a mixture of sour cream and tomato paste in small amounts. Return to heat. Continue cooking over low heat, stirring constantly, until thoroughly heated (do not boil).

Serve over egg noodles.

I do not have a photo of the stoganoff, but I think most of you know what it looks and tastes like. Instead of a photo of the food, I thought I would post a photo I found recently of when Mom and I were on a vacation without kids in May 1986 in Hawaii. This was 8 months before Sheri was born, so she was the first of our children to go to Hawaii. This is what we looked like 23 years ago:

Dad’s Lemon Basil Shrimp Recipe

Many rears ago I used to make lemon basil shrimp frequently. For some unknown reason we did not have it very often for quite a few years. In the last year or so, I have started making it again more frequently. Since the recipe was never written down, I decided to document the ingredients so I can still make it when I get too old to remember how. The following recipe is what I make for three of us and depending on how hungry we are, there may or may not be enough for a lunch of leftovers. I cook everything in the same frying pan.

Ingredients:
1 lb of shrimp (uncooked are best but precooked are OK too)
2 Tbs olive oil
Juice from 2 lemons (about 1/3 cup to 6 Tbs) Extra cannot hurt
1 tsp dried basil leaves.
8-16 oz mushrooms (optional, but highly recommended) Baby Portabella is best
2 Tbs butter or margarine
2 Tbs flour
1 cup heavy whipping cream

Wash and slice mushrooms and sauté in 1 Tbs olive oil in frying pan. Empty mushrooms and liquid into a bowl.

Wash and devein shrimp. Sometimes I leave the shrimp whole and sometimes I cut them in thirds. Leaving them whole is easier and makes some bites have lots of shrimp. Cutting them up makes it easier to get shrimp in every bite.

Sauté shrimp in 1 Tbs olive oil, lemon juice and basil until shrimp is done. This takes a few minutes and you can tell the shrimp is done when all of them have a pink color. Empty the shrimp and liquid into the bowl with the mushrooms.

Melt 2 Tbs butter or margarine in frying pan and add 2 Tbs flour. Stir until uniformly mixed. Add liquid from shrimp and mushrooms to the butter/flour mixture to make the sauce. Add 1 cup heavy cream to the sauce and simmer briefly until thickened. Add shrimp and mushrooms into the pan with the sauce and stir. Add salt and pepper to taste. It should look like this:
This can be served over rice or pasta. I think I like it better over pasta. We have used linguini and farfalle (bow tie pasta) and like either one. Most recently we had it over farfalle as shown in this photo.For those that are not fans of shrimp, I would think that chicken could be used instead of shrimp, keeping everything else the same, with excellent results.

It tastes really good but is not recommended for those on a low fat diet. Since we do not know anyone on a low fat diet, I guess you can ignore that comment.

Follow Up to Downed trees

There were comments in my blog entry about the downed tree that we should get the wood from the tree for firewood. In another storm, another tree – a decorative pear tree- also went down. I talked to the tree owner and he was happy to have me remove all of the wood from both trees including removing the trunk of the first broken tree. On Saturday, I completed the tree removal by taking the trunk of the first tree down and cutting it up. I then brought home in the truck and added it to the pile with the top part of the tree and also the decorative pear tree.

In this photo the decorative pear tree limbs are on the right, and the first tree that broke in the storm is on the left next. For perspective, the wheelbarrow gives a reference for the size of the tree trunk sections. I could only get 3 or 4 of the larger diameter trunk pieces in the wheelbarrow at a time. There were about three pickup loads of firewood from the two trees that will make some nice fires next winter.

Another Batch of Old Photos

I had some additional old photos that I thought I should share.

This first one is of John at the beginning of his mission in 1997 in South Florida.

This is Sheri, Katie, Julie and Sarah at Neil and Ashley’s wedding. Cute girls.

Neil was involved in an “invention” competition in 4th grade. He made it to the finals and had to demonstrate his invention before the school board. His invention was a remote control vacuum cleaner that was made with a clever combination of a Dust Buster, a remote control car and Lego’s to provide the connecting structure. Neil did quite well in the demonstration of his invention and creativity.

Bret was highly skilled at catching frogs. This was the captive frog that they played with one summer day. Bret was not very good at keeping his clothes clean while catching frogs.

Bret, Sheri and Katie on a favorite fall activity of apple picking at Eckerts. Those were good apples.

This Sheri at age 2 while camping in July 1989. She was not as modest in those days. That orange tent went on a lot of camping trips.

This is 2 year old Joseph and 4 year old Sarah on a camping trip in 1993. Who cares about shoes?

Sarah started climbing at an early age. When she was 2, she climbed up on her dresser, but the climb must have worn her out and she fell asleep. Of course, we put her back down on her bed where she would be less likely to hurt herself. When she woke up, she found something else to climb.

This was Joseph’s first Christmas at 8 months old.

The last picture is of Sheri when she was still a tiny baby in January 1987. We should soon be able to see how much her baby looks like her baby picture.

It is beginning to look a lot like spring

Earlier this week, we had several days of warm weather and some of the spring flowers decided it was time to start blooming. The first flower out in the front of the house was a crocus. This was taken Tuesday afternoon.

There were also grape hyacinths starting to bloom.

These are the first to daffodils to start to bloom.
These were all taken Tuesday afternoon. By Wednesday, there were a lot of daffodils in bloom.

In the back yard, the apricot tree had popcorn on it.
This is a close up.

I love spring. It is a time of new life. Not just plants this year, but grandchildren too.

What goes "Crack" in the Storm?

One evening last week, we had a thunderstorm and it was raining hard but. I had to go over to the Wheeler’s to bring in their mail. I got half way out of the subdivision and was blocked by a tree that was covering the entire road. One of our neighbors was out with his chainsaw in the rain working on the tree. He said he heard a loud cracking noise as the tree broke, so he came out to see what cause the noise and saw the downed tree. Since I could not get out, I went back home and changed my cloths, put fuel and oil in my chainsaw and went back to join in the community effort to take care of the tree. When I got there the neighbor had not made much progress because his chainsaw was pinched by pressure on the branch he was trying to cut.. His chainsaw was “wedged in great tightness”. I got out my chainsaw and cut the branch that held his chainsaw captive and then cut up the rest of the tree. He could see that my chainsaw was doing a good job, so he put his chainsaw down and decided he could most effective by moving the branches that I cut off the road. When we half way done, his wife came out in the rain with us and helped pull branches off the road. Just was we finished getting everything cleared, it stopped raining. A couple of minutes after that, another neighbor came to help.

This is a photo of the broken tree and its cut up sections at the side of the road. This is across the sink hole from our house.